Five years ago ago today Lloyd and I were living in Clarkdale Meadows. We went out to Home Depot around 4pm or so. I remember I sat in the car while Lloyd ran in to the store. It wasn't snowing much when he ran in to the store but by the time he came back to the car, the snow was coming down REALLY heavily....the change was amazingly dramatic. We could barely see the road on the way home and I was very glad that it wasn't far home.
The next day I got phone calls from two friends, Kerry and Michele, telling me that my friend Mandy had been in a car accident - smashing head on with a big truck/ semi on highway 21 in the bad weather. Her partner Curtis and her Son and Cameron had been killed instantly, and her daughter Ashley had died soon after the accident, while waiting for emergency workers to arrive.
I phoned a friend of ours and let her know, and the next day a few friends from Calgary came up and gathered at my home before we all headed into Edmonton to go and see Mandy at the hospital. I was also able to meet Curtis's Mom there.
A few days later I attended the memorial service with friends and we all stood with Mandy as she read Ashley and Camerons favourite bedtime story. ' Love You Forever' by Robert Munsch. It felt like a real honour to be included with Mandy friends as I had only known her for such a short time and had only been in Canada for a year.
A few weeks later I visited Mandy at her parents house ad she would spend time at our house. This lasted for a few months...unfortunately after a while Mandy started shutting all her old friends out of her life - a coping mechanism I'm sure as she faced life without her children and her partner. A little digging online five years later and it seems that this shutting people out isn't necessarily working though :(
I hope one day Mandy finds a way to let her true friends back in and finds peace. There is room in her life for the past, present and future. Sometimes old friends are the most comforting.
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