Emma Byers: Personal topic 2

     On December 4^th  2011, two of my residents, Kim and Sierra, were hit by a drunk driver going down the wrong way on Jefferson. One was killed instantly and the other one died in intensive care the next night. I had never experienced death so close to me before and did not know how to handle the situation at all. I cried every night thinking of how unfair it was for my girls to be taken away at such young ages, Kim still being 17. I had to be strong for the rest of my residents because none of them knew how to handle the situation either, I helped them all cope with it as much as I could, but neglected to make myself feel better in the process.

     On the day of their memorial service, my resident Abbie came up to me, a sense of loss and confusion blanketed her face as she looked up at me. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she just couldn’t figure out what to do about the death, she was experiencing the distress of losing someone close for the first time just as I was. I told her that they were such good girls that they couldn’t have ended up anywhere but heaven. She then started tearing up and clung to me and told me that she wished she could believe that but in her religion there was no heaven or hell and that once you died, that was it, there was nothing afterward for the soul. On hearing this I was in shock. I had never imagined what it must feel like to not believe in a heaven and how scary it must have been for her to think that Kim and Sierra’s lives had just vanished from this world with nothing for them afterward, gone forever.

     This made me begin to cry as well. I held her close and told her to think of the good things they did and the happiness they brought to people while they were here with us. Only think of the smiles they brought to our faces, the laughter we shared until tears rolled down our faces, and the long talks about our futures that we would always ponder while together. In my mind I recalled the poster that they hung high in their room that said “Smile every day because you are alive”. The girls who had the most wonderful outlook on life were the ones that had to be taken from this earth so unexpectedly. Talking to Abbie helped me heal, it helped me to talk myself into seeing the good things they had brought to this world and without those thoughts I don’t think I could have recovered from the incident. She saved me.