It was a normal day for me. I had worked all night dispatching and had come home to crawl into bed and sleep. Normally I would have slept until 3:00 and then spent some time with my kids before doing it all again. It was a little after 11:30 when I woke up with that feeling... the hair on the back of my neck standing up. I thought for a minute that I had heard something.. maybe a loud bang or maybe something had fallen in the living room and it scared me without me remembering hearing it. I ran from my bedroom into the living room to check on my kids and found my daughter and youngest son watching cartoons on the couch looking confused at why I was running through the house in my underware. I was told that nothing fell, no noise had woke me up. I had just sat down on the edge of the chair and was explaining to my daughter that something felt off.. like the world had tilted somehow when the phone rang. It rang one time when I grabbed it and it was a lady named Barbra.
Barbra asked, "Is this Kelly?" My heart was racing and I didn't know why, but when I said yes and she told me that my Zackery had asked her to call and that he needed me to come that there had been an accident, my heart stopped a little. I asked her several times to put him on the phone and she just kept telling me that he couldn't talk but needed me to come.
Now to back up a little, my brother was 19 years old. He was a little different from most 19 year old. He had grown up in a violent home and I think because of that was really close to my Mom. He hardly ever went anywhere that she wasn't tagging along. He was the only grown man that took his mother on dates with him to play doubles in pool that I had ever known. So, when I asked Barbra was my Mom there, I knew she had to be close by... what I heard scared the hell of me. She whispered, "Oh my God, Zackery is your brother?"
I don't remember what I said to the lady except that panic was starting to set in and I was screaming for her to make him talk to me... to put him on the f-ing phone rite then. When I heard his voice, he couldn't hardly talk at all. He just kept saying, "Mama's gone Kelly, there was an accident and Mama's gone"
I pride my self in the fact that after 14 years of dispatching I have learned to be the calm in the storm. At that minute, dispatcher mode clicked in and I started to envision what he was seeing. He became my caller and I became the life link. I pictured that there had been an accident, and that he was mistaken.. there was ALWAYS something we could do to save her. I raised my voice.. told him to stop his crying... he had to listen... we could help her and I was going to tell him what to do. I asked him to tell me what he saw... Is she still in the car? Could he see where she was injured... he needed to go and see if she was breathing and check her pulse.. we were going to do this together.......I was already going through the steps to CPR in my head.
My brother told me, "Daddy shot her. They covered her with a sheet."
Stop... that's what my world and heart did at that moment... stop... no sound... no breath... no air... no feeling... no memory of the next few minutes.. just stopped....
I remember later looking at my children and seeing them scared.. noise came back and I realised that the loud screaming, that sound was me.
Its amazing what things you chose to do when you whole world crumbles. I stopped crying... stopped screaming... tried to calm the kids while getting dressed, called my brother in law to have him go and get my sister from her work in the hospital's emergency room before they brought my mom in there, ( she was 6 months pregnant). I called my ex-husband and asked him to come and comfort the kids... I was in my car driving to my brother and had made arrangements for everyone in less than 10 minutes from that call that had altered the world. It was after that that I realised that I didn't even know where I was driving to.
I called the county dispatch center and found out where my Mom was and then called my rock. My Dad had always been the one who could calm me and make everything better but when I told him I was driving to where my Mama's body was supposed to be he started begging me to pull over and give him time to think. He was all the way in Texas and felt helpless to and lost as of what to do. But I kept driving and listening to what he was trying to tell me to do and trying to focus on the road. This time he couldn't help me. It was the longest drive and the shortest at the same time.
When I got there my brother was in a ball laying in a ditch refusing to get up. He was a 6foot, 200 pound little boy crying in a ball in the bottom of a ditch trying to hide. I was running toward where I saw the sheet. Past the Deputy's car, past the group of people standing there.. I could see the truck on the side of the road and the fire engine to my right hand side. I could see the paramedics and the man who had killed her sitting on the other side. I could see the sheet that had my Mom covered by the back wheel of that old truck. I was only about 20 feet away when I saw one of my own firemen stepping out with his arms open to try and stop me from getting closer, coming toward me. I remember that I thought I was running. I felt like I was moving fast and tried to get around him. I realise now I must have been barley moving because he wasn't moving fast at all and the next thing I knew is was in the bear hug of this huge fireman and he was holding me and telling me not to go there. He was whispering that she was gone and that my friend and co-worker was with her and protecting her dignity and that they had done all they could. There was nothing I could do. They would treat her with the respect that they would treat my Mom but to please not go and look at her. I'm not sure how long I was there with him only that he, Kip, saved me from something I can not imagine I could have handled seeing. Thank God for my Angel in turn out gear.
I had someone take my brother to my sisters house. Everyone tried to convince me to leave. I could not. My Mama lay on the side of the road with a sheet covering her while people walked around taking in the scene where she had took her last breath. It was December 17th, 2004. It was cold and there was nothing I could do to comfort the woman who had spent her life comforting me. I could not leave her there.
My boys, the EMS workers, Firemen, and Law enforcement officers, I had worked with and come to know them all before this, protected me that day. They put a police line for me not to cross, and one behind me to kept away those just wanting to see what happened. They kept away the newspaper lady trying to get her story. They took turns standing there with me to make sure I was okay. They cried with me. They sat with me on the ground when I couldn't stand. Eric, my paramedic friend, stayed with my Mom just like me until the SBI was done with their crime scene. It took over 7 hours. It was he edge of dark when Eric came to me and that the coroner would not be coming. My Mom would be driven by my friends. Cared for as my Mom, not just a body. They pulled the trucks to face my direction and flood lights came on blinding me. I found out later it was to block my vision of her body being picked up off the road. Someone took me home. I don't remember who. And then I started the long process of grieving my Mom and praying that the man who had shot her would be held accountable.
What I learned from this... (it took some time to understand this lesson. It hurt way to much to think back then. )
1. Always let the last thing you say be said with love.
My mom died on Friday Morning. The last thing I said to her was that I loved her. I have no regrets.
2. That children really do bare the sins of their fathers.
My Mom's life was taken... she did not have to live to see the suffering of those effected. My brother is no longer the same man. He is lost to us all. My children lost their Grandparent, and I still need my Mom.
3. There are Heroes and Angels in our lives... drifting in and out...
4. God does not put on your shoulders what you can not handle.
The load is sometimes heavy.. and burden hard... but with his grace all things are possible.
5. Sometimes the guilty get away... and there is NOTHING you can do about it.
6. If he hits you once... DO NOT STAY... No person should ever learn the lessons in life that my mother taught me. No person should ever be left on the side of the road. Run.. Hide... Live
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