I'm told that your actions 5 picture perfect so | am a paegiony Your words. My memory prior to th a s 7 YUhOW your cherry ero thecrash wes almost ms became my consequent Click. It’s a beautiful Sunday afterno. their grandparents in King City. 1 ee nee & [ate comming home from an overnight trip to see my boys designed and my Daniel hunginthe et 'anging off a headrest on a van in the news. The bag to seream and ery. itcart be mine. ck ve ary van We picked up almost 94 hours ago. start keep in my wallet of almost everyonein thevay hy Police station, handing to the desk officer a photo! Daniel and my daddy are dead. leantapeap ena, Hs names, nicknames and ages. Being told that my Kids. I don’t know where mom and lola iat ; | can’teven breathe. My youngest two are in Sick get to the hospital quickly. Click. We're in the Stee eee ea a 7 jump out of the cars a few times. | can’t move to sto ni Wine, peers bam : Betting people tothe hospital who can help me san a iv fave to choose between helping ea cs need me. lam forced to choose tase ids. | am only one and they are two and they the back of my hand becsieaeseatt aa husband. Click. | bolt into the hospital that ! know like nS ata the clinical appointments, surgeries and visits | have been to in the cree fiat na ele and tells us both my kids are brain dead, dying, being kept alive by henpiAit yee © Support so we can come and say goodbye. | remember crying out “All of e gone? Not ONE left?” Click. | see my daughter lying there, eyes half ened, gaze fixed. As soon as | touch her curly haired cold head | know she has been taken and the reason why they were so late. I hear her saying in my head “Papu, inky bum. Bah”. | see my Harry and pull out his towel hair from my purse to put on his head. He is so so cold and still. 'm asking to see the scans they did, seeing the reason why they are cold and lifeless. Their spines resemble the block tower that | built with my daughter the day before your selfish actions killed her. Click. They are going to change one of the drugs they are using to keep my Miilly’s heart pumping for me. | know that there is a risk that her heart could explode. | am forced to choose between more time with my babies and her heart exploding. This is the choice I have to make because of you. What kind of choice is that? | ask that they be put together so they can die together. The team puts my babies hands together and Ed and I crawl into bed with them. Everyone sings goodbye to them. | ask for time alone with my dead children. We look at their little bodies, so small. | watch my baby girls cervical collar fill with her blood Click. Trying to find information about my Daniel. Where is he? Other than knowing he died without me | have no idea where he is. Where is mom? Lola? Everyone is scattered across the city. Click. | think its Tuesday. | have picked out a final resting place for my family, the beds my children will sleep in forever. | can’t choose Daddy’s bed on my own soa friend takes pictures and sends them to what is left of my family. Another friend is looking frantically for blankets to make their forever beds a little nicer and more comfy. 1am dying inside waiting to see my Daniel and my dad. Click. I'm at the funeral home where | can see my Daniel, he looks like he is sleeping. He was admitted as a John Doe, Oh Daddy, you are so cold. | stare sobbing at the man who taught me my first signs, held my hands when | took my first steps, who taught me how to drive honourably and respect the rules of the road. i'm so so sorry. My Mill and my Harry are so small. They share a gumey, just like they always tried to share my Harrys bed at home. We tuck them in as best we can, say the good night prayers we always say, wich them sweet dreams and turn out the lights. We won't see them again tl Friday. I've never been separated from my kids this long, not without talking to them. Nor my dad for that matter. Click, | need to decide on pallbearers. 20 pallbearers. My Daniel was taller than | thought so he needs the ime as an adult - 6. | can’t write their names and the word “pallbearer” so we go by colours that! sa write on one of Harry's prescription bags. | ask everyone to wear that colour to help the funeral hom, ler before you ended their lives.. Dad is buried in his barong he wore for his 25" wedding anniversary. What toys and.treasures do we send with them? Click. Its Friday Oct 2, my 10" wedding anniversary. | am overwhelmed by memories of my special day, how Daniel kicked me as my dad walked me down the aisle. Ed and | are pacing, waiting to hear when we can come and see our family. The call comes and we 80. We sit and stare at the beautiful family that we created, Click. My dreams, my loves, my world and my legacy are lowered into the ground. 1 want to 80 with them so badly. Click. It’s now 2016 and | still don’t know how, when or where my Daniel died, Ineed to know what happened to my beautiful dancer. Seconds, mili seconds and how much pain and fear someone can feel in those heartbeats, An sorta being transected. My daughter not having knee caps yet. The differences between a toddlers body, a Young child and a seniors body. Acceleration/deceleration injuries, Compound fractures. Subarachnoid hemorrhage. Spinal cords cut in half. The reason why my Milly was so cranky that last day ~atooth had just broken through the roof of her mouth. Intraventricular hemorrhage. The internal decapitation of my dancer, These are pieces of my devastating reality as a result of you driving drunk. Our home was a very busy, very active house, full of laugher and love. My day would start at 5 am and would be filled with medical and feeding protocols, working at a job that | loved, balancing medical and therapeutic appointments, creating things we used at home, volunteering with Boy Scouts, at my kids school and knitting blankets for NICU babies. Every day had either dance, music or swim classes and of Course, play. Hugs, kisses and the occasional thrown toy were the norm. The melody of my childrens shouts of laughter, seeing their kindness towards each other, of little giggles and the tantrums of a two Year old who was learning fast how to manipulate her Kuyas filled my ears. The joy and pride | took in all their accomplishments. The roaring silence that has been left behind as a result of your actions is so deafening and is so incredibly, painfully discordant for me to listen too. Shame on you for taking my loves from me! Now its another 5 am wakeup, another day of this hellon earth that live in because of you. 1am listening in vain for my kids to call out my name and I don't hear them. I don’t have anyone left to call me mom. Not one left. You killed all my babies. No more cries of “Mommy!” “Mom, | have a question.” You have silenced my childrens voices, taken away thet right to speak. 1am looking at what | have left, trying to see what, ifanything remains in which can use to rebuild. Where there was once joy in waking up and greeting the day there is only despair and heartache. The soothing night time sounds of my childrens gentle breathing oftheir tte footsteps coming into my room are all gone. | sit and stare at the pictures that your drunk driving left me with, the only pieces Ihave left, sitting for hours on end, waiting nt so patiently till can join them. miss my kids. I miss my dad. | want my od ie, back. My world was full of wonder with new places and experiences to explore daily with my little loves, It has shrunk to my children’s forever bed, where they lie with my dad. 1 have so many doctors and therapists that are doing their best to keep me alive now. Our family lived the simple life, | yee RS make everything by hand that my family needed, from shampoo and soap to bread, cheese,/ eaciease and oy worms. Now I need assistance with the most basic of mundane tasks; cooking, eee Gi i dressed, eating. Turning on the stove triggers a violent episode of tears and 2 pain fore . sical. Looking at our family table in the kitchen where | spent so much time teaching my Kids to cook and bake, ta sclenge exaerkments, eolouring pages; therapy, writing stories and letters to super heroes and Santa Claus and paying before each meal now has so many empty places because of you. It hurts to look at our family tabl ene because of jou. Its like a repeated sucker punch Hise cara ago fal dead bee? i ote a Punch to the gut. The clothes | wear now are either from what someone et ash or from an emergency suitcase that | kept packed and ready to go if Soe went wrong, pid) my Harry and | needed to spend time at the hospital with him. I can’t gO into my old bedroom that is full of the memories and pieces of my old life. My bedroom which contained a bed big enough so that the kids could come and sleep with us is now full of boxes of broken dreams and is too painful to walk into. | am assaulted by the happiness and sunshine that is in there waiting for me in the form of physical memories. That big bed that was chock full of happiness and the slumbering dreams of my little loves is akin to a coffin for me now. | walk through the empty rooms of our home every day aimlessly, searching for my family. Our home fit us so well as a family of 5 and we were going to welcome another little love to be a family of 6 this year — another blood price | paid because of your actions and your choices. | realize with despair that your choices have destroyed every identity | have ever forged my whole life. Mother, daughter, wife, sister, lover, friend, leader, therapist ~all have been destroyed or altered irreparably as a result of your choice. When you killed my children you took away my identity as a mother and without my kids, I’m nothing anymore. Our family has been obliterated by your selfish actions, your narcissim and your magical thinking of “It can’t happen to me. 1 am okay.” Edward and | are now empty nesters because of you. The little moments that make Life So special are gone. | realize that like most moms, a lot of my friendships came about and were maintained because of my children and their friends. We would go through the same stages of life with our children. My children are forever frozen in time, how do | relate to them now? | don’t belong anywhere. Being around children is very difficult for me now and that is essential for my job. Every well meaning attempt at communication cuts me like a knife, | die the death of a thousand cuts daily. Everywhere at home | am surrounded by the echoes of my children, the equipment that my Harry needed to be safe and despite his many issues, to thrive. Did you know you killed a kid with special needs? My Harry was an amputee who had physio-med issues and worked hard to be able sit up on his own, to walk, to talk and eat — basically everything most people took for granted. The bathroom that was adapted for my little amputee less then two months before your actions ended his life was supposed to allow him more independence. The therapeutic equipment that | scrimped and saved for, that | had to learn how to use to teach him, how to adapt things for his needs — it's all for nothing now. Every single skill | learned and used with my clients | brought home to use with my kids, especially my Harry. | got him dancing and he loved to twirl around in a beautiful dress that was his reward for working hard at therapy. The sewing machine that | bought to adapt his clothes and sew costumes for my Daniels plays is a painful reminder _ of my dad sitting with me and helping me figure it all out. | cry everytime | see his log books, the files) _ kept full of exercises, ideas, schematics of items Ed built from materials we found. The conversatio had with specialists from everywhere, therapists, the school board are all kept in binders. Feeding journals that detail how many times we needed to work on a single type of food, how many minutes could sit before fatiguing. Your action of drinking was something that ironically, my Harry cot yet. He couldn’t drink anything from a regular cup without help. Another goal he will 2 because of you. The Christmas gifts that arrived in October that | boug norning thsdrove drunk an immense sadness ins f their it je ry time | see adness instead of their intended joy eve! d killed my family bring i i tl a a into their empty bedrooms where little people should be getting dressed, should be oki f : I Playing and where little heads should be dreaming but aren’t because of you is agont ing. There are so many places that | used to go with them, songs we used to listen too, activities we used to do that just elicit pain and overwhelming sadness when | try to do them without them. When | begin to cry over one Of my dead, | feel so guilty because | am crying for one and not the other. I don’t know how to even begin to sort out the grief for my dad, my rock, my protector. The man who practically shared my birthday, shared his love of the outdoors, taught me how to check the oil and change my car tires, taught me how to do taxes and shared his love of the oldies. | won't get to teach my children all the lessons that my dad passed on to me, nor continue to share the fun of campfires, hiking, gardening, swinging at the park or speaking in our secret language with my kids. In my numbing grief over my children | can’t even begin to comprehend how | start to cope with his loss too. Unlike me, the consequences of your actions are riot permanent for you. My Milly will never be toilet trained. Your choices denied her the right to her first day of school. | will never dry away the tears of a tender heart that was broken from a first love, see my children complete their Sacraments, watch Proudly as they graduate or watch them get married. | will never meet my grandchildren. share the excitement of my daughter going to her first dance, My Milly will never see the ocean. | will never see my Daniel will never ear my Harry say “I didit! lam the best!” when he learned how to do something, 1 will never know what they could have become and what they could have contributed to our world. You took that from me, destroyed the dreams that | made fl lesh. Milly's birthday is Dec 23, Daniels is Feb 3, My feisty Milly and her kind Kuya Daniel should have celebrated another year with us since your selfishness took them away from me. Instead | sat and remembered everything about their beginning, how anxious | was to meet them, haw fullof hope | was for them and how thele short lives ended, My daughter was here with me for less then 1008 days. The inury she got from you happened around 4:10 pm. She was born at 4:57 pm. | should have had thousands of more days with her. 1 never got to know her like | knew her brothers and my dad =I had to guess at hee favourite colour for her palibestees to wear because she was only 2 and ked everything. She never had the chance to develop and express likes and dislikes ~ because of you. Edward and I spent the almost ten years of our marriage creating and building dreams, full of hope and joy, looking forward to tomorn our 10 wedding anniversary. 10 years together and only caskets, fow. You drove drunk 5 days before urns and a grave to show for it because of you. You are responsible for us having no more hope, more point to living for me. fo more joy, no more dreams, no Iwill never never hear about my childrens first dates. dance on stage at the Rose Theatre again. | Your actions have shattered my world completely. 1am left standing on a piece of broken, slippery glass surrounded in a sea of blood and with every day that passes, another piece crumbles away. 1am drowning in the horror of what your choices have done to me. No more kisses from litie faces, dirty and sweaty from playing outside running to greet me when | come home from work. No more hearing the dreams of any of my children, their stories, thelr hurts or playing games with them. No more kisses being blown to me from the front porch as | drove away to work each momning. Nights of fece painting, dress-up and building forts out of bed clothes have been snatched away because of your cholece and replaced with nothing. lust emptiness. I want my kids back. | desperately dream of feeling thelr itle arms around my neck, of hearing their sweet voices call me mom. Getting that daily phone call from my ‘iod asking about how our day was, telling me his plans forthe next PA day for my kids and remindingme that he would be Waiting at ho me anymore. | see my mother | the streets in her neighbourhoo, sister is now my caretaker and lifeli my grandmo' he and lifeline, | w ven aa atch ny Grandmother as she walks through the end of her here anymore. Watching my ‘ brother as serving a life i al ie “lig sentence because of you where every waking moment is haunted by what was and what }¢ again. The physical pain from migraines, crying so much, the lesions and hair loss from the stress and trauma from your actions is minor compared to my mind filing in the missing and incomplete pieces of what happened to my children and my father. There is still so much | don’t know about what happened to them and so I'm left to fill in the gaps on my own. You are responsible for my nightmares, wondering what each of my children felt in the last seconds on their lives as you destroyed them. My only solace is that my baby girl and my little man were too young to understand what horror they were living before they lost consciousness because of you. | cry myself to sleep, torturing myself over and ‘over about my Daniels last seconds before your choices destroyed his brain stem and spinal column. | know that when I crack my knuckles I can hear the bones, did the sounds of my kids necks snapping echo in the car? Is that the last sound my Daniel and my dad heard? Is that what keeps my mom up crying at night? cctions speak louder than words. Do good work. Both of these statements can be used to describe Your actions sp fhich you have destroyed me, the fear that you have instilled in me. 1am afraid when peorie rel ‘ow, have anxiety attacks until | hear from them. Leaving home is painful for me, eretional fe hhysically. My kids never came home from an overnight trip to their grandparents, ‘emotionally an anise my family on 2 clear Sunday in the middle of the afternoon. | wish I had been. You drove dun tinal insult of this atrocity You chose to commit is that my name, my childrens names in the van 100. are now forever horribly, revoltingly linked with yours. | don’t know if I can ever live and my dacs roe yeing associated with a drunk driver lke you. W's been over 150 days since I ast ae es ver 150 days since | last heard “Ilove you” from my babies, Do you realize that your spoke to my " v entire line, killed an entire generation of our family? | was the only one with child actions ended 2” ast ofthe Neville-Lake family will be gone forever, wiped off this earth, When | am B07 ne world are sending me letters telling me how afraid they are for their from all 27 ewice before heading out in the car with thelr kids, visiting their gra ee eee ‘All my children’s identities, all of who i r ae Bc of them special ~all gone, painted by you on a horrfVing ca the first but | want to be the la because of someone like YOu anothers actions, let alone You deserve to know exactly you. One day if you have Kia