Out with the past and onto the present. Life after Deployment. Mac was gone from June 2004- November 2005. When he returned all seemed honeymoon perfect for a few days. He was monitoring the kids alot. They didn't like this at all. They had become my Friday night date night. Now here was dad demanding my time and my Friday was his again! Not happy campers! I started to notice Mac seemed to be a little on edge and just contributed it to trying to readjust. After all that is what I had learned at all the meeting on coming home.
Nov 18th was the date of his release from Active Duty. We decided to take advantage of the full 90 days off before going back to work. I had saved some money up and we could make it while he was home with no work. Unfortunately life has a way of taking a high speed turn that you can never make it back from. Nov 22, was one of the worst days of my entire life. My dear daughter my oldest child at the age of 15 was a passenger in a terrible car accident. It was our car but for some reason we don't know why- her friend happened to be driving! Again for what reason we don't know- they left a girls basketball game and went on a drive- the driver did NOT have a license. The car left the road, over corrected a couple of times and then slid sideways off the the road. It went into an area where there is alot of open marsh, but there was 1 tree and they hit it from the drivers side. Unfortunately the boy in the back seat was killed by a tree branch hitting his head. The driver was pinned under the steering wheel and hanging out the drivers door, and our daughter was in the front passenger area. Maybe she was reaching for the wheel but ended up having the steering wheel hit her in the left shoulder/chest area. She tore the left atrium chamber of her heart most of the way off, broke her collar bone, shoulder blade, back, bleeding on the brain, collapsed lung and launched her heart out of the chest wall cavity into her throat. She was broken and hurt very fatally. Then the car erupted into a ball of flames 15' high out of the engine. By some miracle of God and a divine plan I don't know. Our daughter did not die. She lived. She was rescued from the burning car by two wonderful angels disguised as men. They pulled her from the car, went to work on the driver, finally freed him and were not able to get the boy in the back seat. He burned in the car fire. I am so saddened by the terrible loss of her dear friend that I continue to think of him so often and pray for his family.
