Kiss and Tell Read Online Free PDF Page A

right now with five kids.
    A friend of my dad’s bought a brand-new car and drove over to show it off one cold evening. He was anxious to take my dad out for a ride. My dad was really more interested in feeding his horses, but his friend helped him with the chores and persuaded him to come out for a short ride. They wound up at a pub and had a few. While they were relaxing in the pub, snow started to fall, making the roads, which weren’t all that great to begin with, much more dangerous.
    Who knows what really happened? Maybe they were busy talking and joking and not paying attention; maybe they hit a patch of ice; or maybe they were really too drunk to drive. Whatever the case, they were certainly speeding, going much too fast on winding, narrow country roads. My dad’s friend completely missed a treacherous right-hand turn on the familiar road home and slammed the car into a huge rock wall. He was thrown out of the car and died instantly.
    My dad was hurled through the windshield and into the branches of a tree, where he hung undiscovered for hours. Nearly every bone in his body was broken. It wasn’t until daylight that another car happened along and reported the accident. It initially appeared to be a fatal crash involving only the driver because my dad was nowhere to be seen. The only reason he was found at all was that the rescuers heard a very faint breathing-moaning sound and discovered him tangled up in the tree, barely clinging to life.
    Since his injuries were obviously far beyond the scope of the little local hospital where I was born, my dad was taken to the hospital 60 miles away in St. John’s. All of the doctors were sure he was going to die, and they concentrated only on keeping him alive minute by minute. He was in a coma, where he remained for a long time, and was certain to have brain damage. He had 19 fractures and stem cell injury; was hooked up to catheters and monitors; laid out on a refrigeration sheet—everything. It was catastrophic.
    The days immediately following the accident were a blur. There was a popular song at the time with the line, “Daddy don’t you walk so fast.” I used to sing that song and cry every night for weeks after my dad’s accident. When I went back to school, the other kids and teachers kept coming up to me and offering condolences, and I didn’t really understand why. Other people who knew more than I did about the accident were patting me on the shoulder and saying, “I’m so sorry about your dad,” as if he was gone already. He was gone, physically, but not dead. A hole in my heart appeared that I would spend many years trying to fill. It was a terrible, frantic feeling. This was about the time we stopped going to church and reciting the Lord’s Prayer each night. I ditched God; where was he when we needed him?

MOM AND DAD IN ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND.
    The accident was such a tragedy on every level. Up until the minute it happened, my mom and dad were still crazy about each other; they were always having fun together, whooping it up. Whenever one of us burst into their room in the mornings they’d have to scramble to get decent. He was always smacking her behind when she walked past and grabbing her and kissing her. That was my frame of reference for how a marriage should be. It was what I wanted in a partner. I wanted someone to adore me, and I looked for it forever. But for my mom that ideal husband was no more.
    The entire structure of our lives was gone. My parents had been an excellent team in every way. My mom’s job had been to raise the kids, keep house, and do the bookkeeping for the ranch. My dad’s job had been to provide for us and do the manual labor. After the accident, my mom had to take on the physical outdoor work as well as run the whole operation.
    Daddy was allowed to come home after several months in the hospital. He emerged from his coma a very angry man. He was not the father I remembered; he had become an entirely different