Saying Goodbye

Warning: The following is long, rambling and possibly depressing. :)

Carrie died in a car accident on a Wednesday and the following Monday, two years ago today, I said goodbye to my sister for the last time.

The day Carrie died I had stayed late at work getting ready for our book fair that was to begin the next Monday. I left the school an hour later than usual and checked the answering machine when I got home. My dad’s voice came on. My dad rarely called me. Mom usually called and passed the phone if he needed to say something, so it was a little strange that he called and that he left a message. Then his voice was soft—softer than usual. I must have processed all these little hints very quickly because it didn’t take him long to say that there had been a tragedy in the family and that I needed to call home. Immediately I thought of my grandparents, because that’s what you do. The fact that he used tragedy didn’t register until I called back and he said Carrie had been in a car accident. At that moment I knew she was dead, but didn’t want to accept it so I desperately asked if she was okay. Once I heard the final news I couldn’t breathe and frankly can’t remember much of anything my dad said after that.

Although I remember what I was doing each day from the moment I learned of Carrie’s death until days after her funeral, I also remember feeling like I was living in a fog. Between the lack of sleep and food and the general numbness that comes from such a terrible event, I felt like the world was rapidly moving past me but I had no desire to join in. I walked slower, I thought slower, I was ready for life to stop and leave me where I was—feeling everything and nothing all at once.

Specific memories of the week I said goodbye to Carrie include:

• Crying that the last moments Carrie knew on this earth were scary ones.
  
  
• Feeling okay enough to sleep that first night until I turned off the light and TV. Then only thing in my mind was that my sister was dead.
  
  
• Anxiously counting the mileposts as I got closer to Utah I-15 MP 23. The closer I got the harder it was to catch my breath. Before I knew it, I was driving over her skid marks and had passed them. I started crying, not so much because being in that place made it any more real, but because I felt like that was my last chance to be with her, like somehow I would feel her there. But driving by at 70 miles per hour didn’t give me any time to soak her in.
  
  
• Wishing the miles between home and me would quickly disappear. However, once I drove in to the Sevier Valley, I suddenly dreaded walking into my house. I was afraid of what I would find there and how I would deal with my family and the people stopping by.
  
  
• Seeing her the first time after her accident. She looked so bad—not the perfect little Carrie of my memory. The road did awful things to her. The trauma seemed to make her body twice the size it should have been. It felt like only her hands were her. The little red marks from the gravel marred her beautiful skin, but seeing that skin comforted me because at least that was something of her I could say goodbye to.
  
  
• Living off beef stew, frogeye salad and Wal-Mart steak rolls. Food was the last thing on my mind, even though the house was full of it. I don’t think we ever sat down and had an actual “meal,” partly because we were so busy with all the arrangements, but food just wasn’t a priority. We were so wrapped up in our grief that we simply forgot to eat. When I actually did, I turned to the only three things than had any appeal.
  
  
• Watching my sister Sarah get ready for her Junior Prom two days after her sister died. I was so sad for her. She had her dress all picked out and my mom was about to start the traditional last-minute-sewing-fest, but when Carrie died that didn’t matter much to anyone anymore. Although Carrie’s prom dress was far from Sarah’s style, we pulled it out. Sarah is taller and slimmer than Carrie was, but when she wore the dress, she was perfect. We tried hard to put Carrie aside for a couple hours as we got Sarah ready and went to her program, but she knew and we knew where our hearts were. Sarah was so brave. I think that day she took a big step toward becoming a grown up.
  
  
• Visiting my "home" ward. My family had moved from the boundries, but my brother, one sister and I somehow decided that was where we needed to be that Sunday morning. It was so comforting. They had what is best described as a musical testimony meeting where members come up and talk about their favorite hymn and the congregation sings a verse of it. As person after person got up and mentioned their love for our family and sorrow at our loss, I was bawling my eyes out yet felt so much peace. Jason got up and acted as our family spokeman and expressed my feelings perfectly when he asked we sing "Be Still, My Soul." I don't know that I sang a single word, but that was my plea with the Lord, that He be with me and comfort my aching soul.

• Getting Carrie ready for the viewing. Once she was lying in the casket, I stood there looking at her. Of course she didn’t look right, but I couldn’t live with the fact that the skirt of her dress was crooked. I needed to take care of her—to make sure she would rest peacefully and perfectly.
  
  
• Trying to find the words to say goodbye to my sister. Each of us siblings wrote Carrie a letter to leave with her. I struggled over mine. What do you say to your 19-year-old sister who never got to experience so many of the joys in life? All I could hope was that she was happy.
  
  
• Gathering with my immediate and extended family at the end of the pre-funeral viewing to pray and say our last goodbyes. As I waited my turn and watched my brothers and sisters go before me, I knew that I wouldn’t ever have the time I needed to be ready to let her go. It seemed I had only stood there for a few seconds when my mom pointed out that a close relative had come into the room. I distinctly thought, “I don’t care!! I need to be with my sister. No one matters but her. Don’t make me leave her.” They say one of the stages of grief is anger and this moment was the closest thing to anger I felt about the whole situation. At that moment, I couldn’t understand why I had to do this. I didn’t know why everyone else had to be there for this. Why everyone got to witness the last time we said goodbye to our sister and daughter. I felt pressure to make it quick, to keep myself together but I wanted so badly to hold her, to kneel next to her casket and have time to get my thoughts together and let her feel everything in my heart while I could still see her.
  
  
• Watching old home videos that night after the funeral. Some family members had already left, my husband and one sister included, but those of us that were still around pulled out the Carrie classics. We watched her fall in the creek and get rescued by my dad, hop from grass patch to grass patch in the outfield as softballs rolled by, and other silly antics. However, one of the most trivial clips broke my heart the most. Our family had gone camping in Zion National Park and as Mom set up camp, Dad filmed the kids as we ran around the campsite. As we watched, we laughed at Jason’s squeaky, girlish voice and then Carrie’s chirpy soprano filled the room. Hearing her voice made me miss her so badly. I ached for her and stayed up long after the movies were over and everyone was in bed, just missing her.
  
  
• Returning to work a week after the funeral. Nothing there had changed. Everyone did what they always did—life and work went on as normal. Yet I was changed. I couldn’t believe that all these people could keep answering phones and checking out books when Carrie was gone. How could the world keep turning when it was upside down?

Isn’t it strange that try as we might, some memories will always be filled with holes—incomplete bits of information floating around that, no matter how important or precious the event, we’ll never piece together? Then other parts of our lives we can remember with vivid detail: what we were wearing, how the room smelled and the tone of a person's voice. The latter is my memory of the second week of March 2007.

It breaks my heart that my memories of her when she was already gone are so vivid and complete, but that my memories of Carrie alive are imperfect and hole-ridden memories. I’m sad I didn’t take the opportunity to make more. One night I dreamt that Carrie was fine, life was normal, but we knew she would die. Even in my dream I felt so desperate—knowing I had to come up with the perfect words to let her know how much I loved her and would miss her. It was impossible. As hard as it was to say goodbye to my sister after she was already gone, I wouldn’t have been able to if she had been alive.

She was a wonderful girl, full of happiness, sadness and everything in between. Maybe in her short life she had experienced all she needed to and it was time for her to prove herself in the next world. Of course, no matter how much faith I have that she’s okay and progressing more now than she would have on Earth, I still miss her terribly.

A New Poll

I'll post about this topic after the poll closes, but I need your opinion on the question at the right. What facial hair style should Troy sport? I don't have a pic of the full beard phase, but in the header you can see examples of two of the options (well, the goatee is a little bushy, but use your imagination).

Two Years

We miss you Carrie.

Here's a little video of her. Too bad there's no sound. It would be good to hear her laugh.

6 is the Magic Number

This is the 6th picture in my 6th pictures folder. We're in a hotel in Alhambra, CA on our Peterson/Finley Fun Trip. I don't know if this is before the fun really began (we did four amusement parks in 5 days) or after, but Troy's sure loving that water.

I tag everyone!! Ha ha, but only if you really want to.

Day 50 is Lucky

Yes, this is an actual picture of my actual (very dirty) car.

It has finally happened! I got the plates for my car today!!! The paperwork to change the title arrived, Troy signed it, I sat at the DMV for 20 minutes, the guy typed some things, and he gave me my plates! I was actually a little disappointed that he didn't jump up and do cartwheels like I felt like doing, but I played it cool. Perhaps not seeing my face with angry eyebrows any more isn't as exciting for him as I thought it would be. Oh well. It's all over and I am now legal. Hooray!

Dear California DMV: I hate you

It's true. It has now been 37 days since I brought my car into this state and I still do not have license plates. I drove into California on the late afternoon of December 29 and visited your office the first of many times the morning of December 30. I have since spent hours in your office, on the phone and performing other endlessly maddening tasks to jump through your hoops.

Perhaps my mistake was that I paid you too soon. Within 24 hours of bringing my new-to-me, never-registered-in-my-name car into your budget-crunched state, I had written you a check for nearly $1,500 dollars to cover sales tax for a car purchased in another state and registration fees. Perhaps if I held out you would be workable.

You claimed I needed a smog check although my car's specifications clearly state it passes the California emissions standards. Then I bring you the paperwork (again, within 24 hours of bringing my car into the state) and instead of entering the information, your dolt of an employee prints off a temporary registration stating I still need a smog check and scribbles that out in pencil. So I guess for those 3 seconds he knows I've taken care of my "responsibility," but that doesn't help the next time I call or visit your not-so-helpful department.

You required that a DMV employee (or some other inaccessible official) verify the VIN, odometer and who knows what else on my car. Again, on my immediate visit to my local field office, I am informed this cannot happen at a convenient time because you are short staffed. I guess I can understand that. I need to come back on Wednesday or Thursday between 2 and 4, but not this Wednesday because you're not doing them and not this Thursday because it's a holiday. Then you can only give me a temporary permit that's valid for two days because with the new year you are apparently switching to a new program. Thank goodness good old Utah has taken care of me by providing some kind of temporary license.

So a week and a half later you verify my VIN while having the same number of employees in the office as you did the first day I came. Thankfully I am granted a temporary permit until the end of February. Of course, rather than entering and updating the smog and verification, you just staple it all together and hand it back to me because you "wait until everything is taken care of before putting the info in the system." Whatever.

Now for the kicker. You need evidence of previous registration (I did not register the car in Utah because I live in California, duh) or the title. Hello, I don't own the car! No one in this "thing" obsessed state pays for anything with cash. There is no other option in everyone else mind but to finance, so why should it be any surprise that I did the same? I don't have the title because the car isn't officially mine. The bank owns the title, dimwit. So after talking to the fools in my field office, I call the state DMV to verify procedure. Of course first they tell my I need to get a smog check. I swallow my anger and proceed. I'm told that the lien holder has to send the original Utah title to California, where you create a CA title and send that back to the bank and I can finally get my plates. Stupid, but fine. So I call my credit union and they say okay, they'll send it to CA.

A week and a half later I call Sacramento to check the status of this mess. No, there's not evidence of a title, but I still need to get my smog check. Thanks for the tip. Then this guy tells me duh, I don't need a title. I financed it so of course I don't have one. THANK YOU! I go back to the DMV field office and have another pointless visit where they stand by what they've said.

Soon after I get a letter from the dealership saying the title clerk there has sent my title work to the local DMV field office. Oh, I guess a Utah title doesn't even exist in my name yet. Fine. I go the to DMV again and of course they haven't received it. So I call the dealership and learn she sent the title the same day she sent my letter. So either the DMV has lost it, or I now have a beef with the postal service. Either scenario is plausible. Of course the title woman didn't get the letter certified, so there's no way of knowing what happened to this title. Great.

I wait until the end of the week, still no title paperwork. After brainstorming with my Utah title friend, she decides to call the California DMV and figure out what is going on. Of course the local field office where she sent the paperwork only has an internal line (whatever that means), so she can't call them. Instead she talks to some rude woman (I guess you would call her the DMV stereotype) who doesn't know what's going on, is not interested in the problem, tells her there's no real point in the discussion because I still need to pass a smog check and she can't tell her anything anyway because she's not the registered owner or lien holder. Thank you. Very helpful.
Forget that she is, in fact a representative of the current, official legal owner because the title is still in the dealer's name. I can't legitimately register the car in Utah because I don't have a Utah address and therefore can't get the "alternate" verification from the Utah DMV stating I am the registered owner and who my lien holder is. And we can't get it titled in California because every blasted person I talk to says we need to do something different. Get your story straight!!! I visit your office one last time and after making it clear how upset I am, practically have to force your employee to enter the smog and verification information so I don't have to hear about again.

So for 37 days I have been trying to follow the law. You have your money, I've jumped through the hoops, and you have lost legal paperwork. Thank you. I could have been like many others and registered my car in another (cheaper) state and dealt with you when it came time to renew my registration. I'm just trying to get my safe, clean and fully operational car legal.

Perhaps I should not have purchased my car out of state, but I checked with your website (which is only slightly helpful) and thought I had my bases covered. Clearly I don't. Now we have to get a duplicate title and keep our fingers crossed that once I receive it and walk it into your office that you don't decide you want something else instead.

Troy

I just have to tell everyone that Troy is the best husband ever. I'm getting the last of my sharing time ready and was whining that I wanted a treat so we went to get me a smoothie. He's so good to me. THANKS!!

Oh, and he's a winner. The basketball team won today and is on a two game winning streak (more on that later). Those of you familiar with PV basketball will be impressed.