The next few days are lost from my memory. I don’t remember much other than at times just sitting in a daze, thinking about things, but then not really thinking about anything at all. People would come and talk to me, but I can’t remember what anyone said. I remember that for most of that time I hated God because I felt like he took Christy away. How could someone so merciful be so cruel? Yet, there were moments when my heart would open up and I could feel Him and all I wanted to do was run to Him and let Him hold me in His arms while I cried like a little kid.

Later, we would learn from witnesses driving behind my cousin and her husband that they had been fighting in the car. According to one witness, my cousin started slapping her husband when he lost control of the car. The car rolled four times before coming to rest on it’s side. They also said that a little girl’s body was thrown through the front windshield. At first they thought it was a doll because that‘s what it looked like - she looked like a child‘s doll being carelessly thrown out the window. According to the witness it all seemed “so unreal.“ The police would later tell us that Christy was the only one not wearing a seat belt.

My mom and my cousin were the ones that went to identify the body. Later that night, while standing outside the emergency room my cousin would tell me, “I wish I hadn’t gone and seen her like she was. Her nose was sliced off, one eye was gone and the other was hanging…”

I remember yelling and covering my ears. “Shut up!’ I grabbed him by the collar and shoved him as hard as I could against the wall. “Just shut the fuck up!” I was crying. “I don’t want to hear that! I don’t want to remember her like that…” For years afterwards those images would fill my thoughts and dreams. “I don’t want to remember her like that!”

The hardest thing for me to deal with was the funeral. I don’t know why but for some reason it was even harder to deal with than the actual confirmation of Christy’s death by the doctor in the little room where my family had gathered. I looked at the small, white casket as The Father spoke about the earthly shell dying, but the spirit remaining alive and going to a place much greater than where we were at now. I didn’t hear much of the sermon after that, I didn’t want to hear anymore. I sat there clutching a small bunch of pink roses and a teddy bear with the words “I love you beary much” written across the front of it’s shirt and all I could think was that I wanted Christy back. I would do anything to have her back. I asked God to change things and take me instead, just to please bring her back. Four year old kids aren’t supposed to die.

Images of the past went through my mind, but then I imagined the future too. I imagined Christy going to school and crying because she wasn’t used to being away from home. I imagined her drawing turkeys out of an outline of her hand that would proudly be displayed on the refrigerator door. I imagined what she would look like in a girl scout uniform selling cookies outside the grocery store down the street. I thought how terrified I would be at the notion that she was learning to drive. I thought about how happy she would be when she found the person of her dreams and how I would sit in the church pew with tears in my eyes as I watched her get married. I thought of how all that was taken from her, she would never do any of those things.

As I walked by the casket one last time before it was lowered into the ground I laid the roses and the small teddy bear on top of it and as I did, I was hit by finality and reality of her death. Christy was dead and no matter how hard I prayed, no matter how much I cried, no matter if I threw myself on the ground and kicked and screamed nothing was going to bring her back. I would never see Christy again. Everything after that is now just a blur of images; people leading me away from the casket, stopping to hug someone or to be hugged, crying and then finding myself in the backseat of the car not knowing how I got there.

It would take me a year before I could find the strength to go back to the cemetery. My eyes filled with tears as I laid a single pink rose on the small heart headstone that simply read: “Baby Girl” and her date of birth and date of death.

Many times I tried to go back to the lake but I couldn’t. It was too difficult. It would be many years after her death that I would finally find the strength to go back to the spot where she lost her life.

As I stood on the bank of the lake watching the sun set on the water, I couldn’t help but feel like I should be somewhere else. I should be doing something else. I should be anywhere except there. I picked up a small, smooth stone and skipped it across the water, a trick one of my father’s Army friends had taught me a long time ago when I was a kid. I’ve never been the kind of person that wishes he could go back and do things differently, but as I watched the rock skip along the surface of the water then sink to the bottom of the lake I couldn’t help but wonder, what if I had done things differently? Would things be different? Would my life be different? Would I be different?

“I love you, and you, and you…”