A LIFE IS LOST TRAGICALLY, BUT A FAMILY'S LOVE ENDURES
/The Boston Globe
BEVERLY BECKHAM
There's a dogwood tree in her front yard in Randolph. "It's my Mama's tree," says Michaela, who is 6. "It has all the things my Mama loved. See?" Surrounding it are flowers and in it are Beanie Babies and under it is an engraved stone that reads, simply, Christine.
Michaela doesn't remember her mother. She was a baby, just 16 months old, when Christine died. But she talks about her every day. And she prays to her every night. Last week she asked her grandparents who are raising her, "Do you think Mama would be happy with me?"
They told her, "Yes, of course," and Michaela smiled.
Michaela is always smiling.
She does a cartwheel in front of her mother's tree. It's a perfect cartwheel, arms and legs as straight as pencils. "She practiced all summer long," says Joe Roche, her grandfather. Michaela's eyes are as brown as Hershey's Kisses. You can't tell by looking at them all the sadness that they have seen.
Her mother was 28 when she was killed by a drunk driver, struck on the side of a highway and dragged across the road.
It was in the newspapers, but people forget.
But Barbara Roche Christine's mother, Michaela's grandmother can't forget. Everything about Michaela reminds her of Christine.
Michaela runs to show off her school uniform, a plaid jumper and white blouse. She runs to find last year's school picture, then points to each child. "This is my friend. And he's my friend. And she's my friend, but she goes to a different school now." She runs to find her kitten, Cinderella, a male named after Michaela's favorite princess. And then she runs to her room to retrieve her Halloween costume. And a picture of her mother in costume, dressed as Dorothy.
While she has memories, others have a mission. On the day that Michaela was running and cartwheeling through life, a district attorney in Nassau County in New York declared war on drunk drivers. It was the lead story on America Online. "If I'm a one-term DA, then I'm a one-term DA, but I am going to do everything that I can to make the changes in this country," Kathleen Rice told the Associated Press.
Twenty-six people were killed in drunken-driving crashes last year in her Long Island county adjacent to New York City, and more than 4,100 drivers were arrested for drunken driving, a third of them repeat offenders.
But the case that has taken this beyond numbers, the case that drives Rice and that, God willing, will force Americans to rethink their habits behind the wheel, involves a 7-year-old girl. She was asleep in the backseat of a limousine, with her family, on their way home from a wedding, where she had been the flower girl. A drunk driver hit them head on.
The flower girl died instantly. She was decapitated.
It's a grisly image. A beautiful child. An unusually ugly, horrific death.
But all the spilled blood on the highways comes from someone's child, and all are horrific. And it's only a breath, a fraction of an inch, a second, a blink that separates us from them, the living from the dead, parents who can touch and talk to their children from parents who can only pray for them.
Michaela's Grammy drives her to school every day. Now that she's retired, life is a little easier. For a long time it was drop off, pick up, late nights, uncles helping, friends helping, a patchwork of care.
For a long time, it was harder than it is now.
But it's still hard not because of Michaela. She is Joe and Barbara Roche's world. They take her to dancing class. And swimming. And skating. They are planning a Build-a-Bear birthday party. They went to Disney World last summer.
It's hard because there's an overlay. They have done this before. Loved and protected. Worried and watched. Be careful, Christine. Don't go near the street. Watch yourself on the stairs. Hold my hand.
A tree grows in their front yard. They planted it after Christine died. They chose a dogwood because it was Christine's favorite.
When Michaela goes apple picking, she puts an apple under the tree. At Easter, she leaves a basket. At Christmas, she hangs an ornament. When she came back from Disney World, she placed a Cinderella on its branches. She calls it her Mama's tree. But it is a tree for a daughter, too, and for a sister and for a friend.
Disease you can't control. This you can. But people drive drunk. They drive stoned. They drive fast. They drive recklessly. And a flower girl is killed. And a young mother, and a son, and a man, and a woman. And there's no getting them back.
"Most first-graders don't know about death. Michaela hugs a headstone for Mother's Day," her grandmother says.
And the grandmother? She hugs her granddaughter and keeps her close and thinks, but doesn't say, "Once upon a time, I had a daughter just like you."