| OCR Text |
Show Inside Out, 72 Jaycee put her arm around my shoulder. "She's been in an accident. It's pretty bad," she said. She was walking me to the loveseat, pulling me down next to her. "She's in surgery right now. Your father has gone to the hospital, in Salt Lake. That's where they took her. The life flight. To Salt Lake." I hadn't known what "life flight" was before then. But I figured it out. We sat there, frozen, watching cartoons until Paul got bored and whiny. He was only two. After a long time, Sophie came home. Then Jaycee's husband came and took baby Megan home, but Jaycee stayed with us. Late that night Dad came home and told us that my mother, aged thirty-six, had died in surgery. It was a drunk driver who had hit her little car. I found out later that he had been arrested for drunk driving three times before, and he had been driving without a license. His name was Hank Schmidt. Jaycee came back the next day, and that was when she began to teach me yoga, starting with slow breathing. The drunk went to jail, but he's out now. I know because I Google his name sometimes. I'm in favor of capital punishment for drunk drivers. When I think back to those first few days after the accident, what I remember is a horrible feeling of claustrophobia. Because even if there was life after death and I might see Mom again someday after I died, I had a whole life to live first. Days and days and days and days and days of getting up and then going to bed again. All those days stretching out ahead of me. It was like when we drove on the freeway to California to see |
