Two years ago, my world fell apart. I’m 46 now, but I can still remember that night — the night a drunk driver took away my husband and our two children. Since then, I’ve been moving through life like a shadow, in a quiet house that once overflowed with laughter. I thought the rest of my years would be about surviving, not living. But one ordinary afternoon, a Halloween flyer at a bus stop changed everything.
Before the accident, our life was perfectly imperfect — messy, loud, and full of love. My husband, Mark, and I had been married for eighteen years. We met in a college cooking class, where he nearly set the kitchen on fire trying to make scrambled eggs. His grin that day was the same one he wore when he proposed, when we danced in the kitchen, and when he tucked our kids into bed.
Our son Josh was sixteen, tall and shy, always pretending he was too grown up for family traditions, but he still asked for chocolate chip pancakes every Sunday. Emily, fourteen, was full of energy and imagination, forever reading and dreaming. Every morning in our house was a whirlwind of homework, laughter, and Mark’s famously bad dad jokes.
Then, one rainy October night, everything changed.
Mark offered to pick up pizza for dinner. Emily and Josh went with him, still arguing about the car playlist. “Don’t fight in the car!” I called out, laughing. “Drive safe.”
He kissed my forehead and smiled. “Always do,” he said. Those were the last words I ever heard from him.
Continue reading on the next page…