A Piece of My Heart: My Journey Through Grief

This entire book was written as a result of losing my eighteen-year old son in a car accident. He was driving in a caravan of five cars going to a car show. He was driving too fast on a turnpike in Oklahoma in the rain when his car hydroplaned, spun around backward, and slid under the front of a wrecker on the side of the highway. The wrecker and a highway patrol officer were there as a result of another car that had hydroplaned in the same area prior to my son. The other people in the caravan knew that Michael had been in an accident and pulled off the highway and called me, saying they didn't know what hospital he would be going to yet. My husband, my youngest son, and I jumped in the car and headed toward the accident, thinking that he would be taken to a Tulsa or Oklahoma City hospital fifty to one hundred fifty miles away. I saw a sign on the way that said dial *55 in case of emergency. This happened shortly after cell phones became a thing. The call center patched us through to the patrol officer who said our call was breaking up and if I could hear him, to meet him at the police station in Bristow, Oklahoma. At this point, I was sure we had lost him.

Months later, I contacted the patrol officer to see if he remembered the accident and could tell me what had happened in detail. When the officer got to Michael from his patrol car, where he was sitting with the girl who had wrecked previously, my son was "breathing like people do before they die." Mike was pinned in his car, and there was nothing they could do. He died soon after. The officer said he was afraid we would drive up on the accident, which is why he had us go to the police station. I wrote this book as a way to vent my anger at God for taking my son, and this book is what happened next.