The nightmares have returned

I've passed the spot where you died 7 times today. I can't avoid it when I'm up at this station. I try not to think about it but seeing the places in the asphalt where parts of your vehicle violently gouged lines in the ground as they twisted and flew through the air. I try not to remember the bruising left on the roadway from all the fluids brings back that day fresh in my mind. I pretend that I don't see the permanently-burned-into-the-asphalt rubber marks from where your tires were drug across the roadway. Unsuccessfully, I try to block out the sounds, sights, and the smells from that day that seem so fresh in my mind.

I wonder what would have happened if I could have saved you. Could we have gotten you extricated from the tangled metal fast enough to make a difference? What kind of quality of life would you have? And the simple fact that it took the Fire Department over 2 hours to extricate your body after the investigation was complete doesn't lessen the guilty feeling that I have. We SHOULD have been able to do something.

I see your face--what was left of it--twisted in agony and I know in my heart that you did not go peacefully. I know that you suffered and only hope that you were already unconscious when the dump truck barrelled down on you at 65 miles per hours. Every time I've closed my eyes today, I see the scene from on onlookers point of view. It's like hitting the replay button on the DVD and watching it from a disembodied distance. Almost as if I was a spectator and not the one to pronounce your lifeless body, broken and bloodied, dead.

I anxiously wait for the dreams to come tonight, knowing that by the time I am fully awake they will have turned into nightmares.

Your blank stare, the stare of death and agony, will haunt my days and interrupt my nights for the rest of my life.

Rest in peace.