I awoke on impact!  Yet, my nightmare had just begun.  The sounds of breaking glass and crushing metal were all around me.  I had not yet felt the pain.  Then I tried to speak.  To ask the others if they were o.k.  That's when I realized something was terribly wrong.  First... the pain, then a flash of memory.  A memory of feeling and hearing the bones in my chest break as the weight and momentum of my body caused my chest to fold around the head rest in front of me. 

Panic!!  I try to breathe.  Pain!  A sickening realization that I am in serious trouble.  (be calm... be calm... think... breathe...) Panic!  I can't breathe!  More pain.  I move to get out of the car.  more pain. Black. Pain. I wake up on the ground by the rear tire.  A flash.  A memory.  I try to move.  Pain.  I try to breathe.  Panic!  Black.....

Oh God!  I'm dying!  A flash. Pain. Panic! (breathe.. be calm... be...) Oh God!  I'm going to die! My kids!  What will happen with my kids? Black. Pain. Somebody please help me.  I can't breath.  I can't speak.  (be calm... be calm... breathe...) 

I came to accept that I was going to die.  I couldn't breathe and every time I tried to force myself to breathe I would black out from the pain.  My kids although sad would be o.k..... without me.  I could feel myself going unconscious again.  This was it.  I was dead.  There was no more pain.  "God, give my Mom the strength to take care of my boys day by day." Then everything went white!  No pain, no panic, I was going 'home'. Thank you Jesus!  I'm coming home.

That was may 24th 2005.

august 26th 2005-I had been given the news.  Patty was dead.  Murdered.  Shot in the face at point blank by Sean, her baby's Daddy.

It ( my life) was all a bad dream.     Later that day....

(me)  NO Mom!  This can't be real!  God's not THIS cruel!  None of this is really happening, because I'm not really here.

(mom)  What do you mean, not real?  Not really here?  Where do you think you are if you're not there?

(me)  You want to know what I think? (very sarcastic )  I think I'm either dead and in denial and this is what my brain has 'made up' as my afterlife, or I'm still in the hospital in a coma and this is all a bad dream.  I'm stranded, stuck in a coma, waiting to wake up.  I want to wake up Mom, but I don't know how!

(mom, starting to cry)  Well, I hope not honey.

(me)  Why?

(mom)  Because that would mean I'm not really talking to you right now.

The following are poems I wrote at different times during my recovery.  A lot of times I was still questioning  if I were alive or dead or if I was in a coma or was everything that seemed too terrible to be happening, REAL?