Epilogue

South Dakota highways are littered with crosses and signs that say, “X marks the spot. Why die?” They are erected to tell the passersby that someone died there. I pulled off the side road facing the highway. It was late afternoon and as usual in this land of openness, it was sunny. The heavily tinted windows of my car hid me for now. As I waited for nightfall I was forced to relive the most painful experience of my human life. My family had moved to South Dakota nearly six months prior to the accident. I hated it. It was too dissimilar from the life I’d known out east. And I chose that time in my life to be a rebellious teenager. We had decided to take a trip up to Sioux Falls to shop. It was just after Christmas and we had some gift certificates we wanted to use. I had gotten some cds and some movies. I was excited to try them out and chattered excitedly as we headed home. It had been a mild winter so far and there wasn’t any snow or ice. The temperature was unseasonably warm and of course, it was sunny. I think the setting sun was why we didn’t see it coming. It was bright in our eyes. All I remembered was the semi coming out of the sun. It looked as if it was floating, some sort of angelic being. Then tearing metal and a feeling like running headlong into a brick wall and being flung back from it. I know what they told me afterwards. They described it all for me in gruesome detail when I woke up in the hospital. I was flung from the back seat of our van. I was found lying in the ditch, safely away from the crushed mess of the van. The semi had tipped and landed on the van and my parents. I lay unconscious in the hospital for a week, then spent another month trying to recover. It took the social workers awhile to find a place for me to be. By the time they had finally tracked down a distant relative I was out of the hospital and could manage most days without a breakdown. I had never been back to see the place where my parents had died. It was too painful. But here I was, reliving it all. It was easier to look back this way. Since my 17th birthday it seemed that my life had been filled with loss. I’d lost my parents, my life, my best friend, and my first boyfriend. But I understood it now. If my parents hadn’t died that day, my life may have continued, or it may have still ended as it did, except in a much more painful manner with many more people becoming suspicious. I was glad that my parents weren’t here to see me now, a “living dead.” I smiled bitterly at my internal joke. I would survive. The wound from the loss of my best friend and my first love was still fresh but I was already gaining the perspective of my immortality. I knew that those two relationships could not continue now. I had changed. I was searching for something else now. I grabbed the two bundles of flowers off the passenger seat and stepped out into the cold night air. I walked slowly to the two lone signs that stood watch on the busy highway. I knelt in the place where they had last lain, placing the flowers next to the signs.
         “Goodbye mom and dad, I love you.” It was all I could manage. I was past crying but this memory still held the grief of a breaking heart, which had ceased to beat months ago. I spent a few silent moments before I stood and walked back to my car, sucking in the air I no longer needed. As I started the car, blaring a cd I had bought on that last day, I smiled. The loud, angst filled music filled me. It was time to move and I headed onto the open road and just drove.