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Crash's emotional wounds linger

A woman is learning to live with the guilt she feels after a car crash leaves one of her grandchildren in a wheelchair.

By TAMARA EL-KHOURY
Published September 19, 2005

	[Times photo: Ted McLaren]
	Jessica Smith gets a kiss goodbye from her mom's fiance, Joe Judice, as mom, Mandy McKeever, right, and grandmother, Glenda "G.G." McKeever, look on at the HealthSouth rehabilitation hospital in Largo on Aug. 4. Her grandmother spent many days and nights with Jessie as she worked on her recovery at the rehabilitation center.

PALM HARBOR - A few weeks ago a deliveryman came to Glenda McKeever's house to pack up her granddaughter's wheelchair.

He asked what happened.

McKeever, 55, told him she was driving her grandbabies, Sadi and Jessica Smith, ages 12 and 9, home from the grocery store and McDonald's one Thursday afternoon in May. She made a left turn, an oncoming truck smashed into her car, and the girls nearly died.

The accident was her fault, she said.

"How are you dealing with the guilt?" he asked.

McKeever was stunned.

He was the first person to ask her that question.

Finally, she said, "it's an everyday healing process." Then they dropped it.

But the feeling, something more physical than emotion alone, still makes her heart and stomach hurt. It's something she expects to live with for the rest of her life.

"Part of the question of people who have survivor's guilt have to ask themselves is, "What will it take for me to forgive myself?"' said Dr. Kim Fuller, director of the University of Miami Psychological Services Center. "Because guilt is self-blame. It's not people blaming you or God blaming you."

* * *

McKeever, "G.G." to her granddaughters, doesn't know why she turned left when she did.

May 12, she took her granddaughters grocery shopping. On their way home, they got dinner from McDonald's. They ordered it to go.

At the entrance to the Hidden Grove subdivision, McKeever turned left. It was the same turn she always took to get to her neighborhood from Tampa Road.

Maybe she didn't see the pickup coming in the far lane.

Maybe it was fate.

Either way, the truck came and she turned and her world changed.

She remembers little of what happened next.

The Ford F-150 crashed into the passenger's side of McKeever's car. The truck's front bumper smashed through the passengers' window and rolled the car door over on top of the girls.

In a daze, she called her daughter, Mandy McKeever, who was driving to Boston. She gave 9-year-old Jessie mouth-to-mouth. She couldn't find a pulse. She couldn't get her breathing.

At some point, she was in the back seat. She called her granddaughter's name: Sadi. Was she breathing? She tried to give her mouth-to-mouth. A passing driver, a former emergency medical technician, was in the back seat too. He had blood on him.

Then she was in an ambulance. A man told her if she didn't quiet down he was going to get the police.

McKeever was no stranger to tragedy. Her stepfather died when she was 15. Her father committed suicide when she was 19. Her husband drowned, leaving her with two daughters younger than 6. Her niece and sister-in-law killed themselves months apart. As a teen, one daughter was hit by a pickup truck. As an adult, the other, Jessie and Sadi's mother, almost died racing thoroughbreds.

But at that moment, seeing her grandbabies hurt was almost more than she could take. She made up her mind that if they died, she would too. She'd swim until she couldn't swim any more.

She quieted down.

* * *

The wreck broke Sadi's hips and tailbone, cut her face and fractured her skull and bones in her face.

Jessie was worse. She suffered a broken pelvis, skull fracture, lacerated liver and brain injuries that put her into a coma.

From the hospital, Jessie went to HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Largo, where she started a long, slow recovery.

McKeever went to HealthSouth almost every day, kissing Jessie, stroking her hair. When the room was full of therapists or family, McKeever hovered in the background, fiddling with her necklace, watching with sad eyes.

At night, she'd go to check that Jessie was breathing and cry.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Now, four months later, Sadi is walking and has returned to the seventh grade at Carwise Middle School.

Jessie is home too, having grown more alert a little at time. She's relearning to walk and eat on her own. Therapists are still working to help her find her voice.

Neither McKeever nor the driver of the truck have been charged or cited in the accident, Pinellas court records show.

But the grief still strikes McKeever at random times. The other day, Jessie was throwing beanbags at a revolving tic-tac-toe board.

"Oh God, she shouldn't be sitting in that (wheelchair)," McKeever said to herself. She went to her bedroom and cried.

"I feel like I've taken away her God-given gifts," she said.

She said she wouldn't blame Jessie, a natural athlete, for being angry with her.

"She may wake up one day and say, "It's G.G.'s fault that I can't play ball like I used to,"' McKeever said.

Sadi said she doesn't blame her grandmother.

"It took her a long time to talk about it," Sadi said. "Even when she didn't want to talk, I'd tell her, "G.G. you know it takes two to get in an accident."'

But McKeever wouldn't drive for a month. Her head pounds when she drives with Sadi.

"G.G., it's really silly that you don't drive because of the accident," Sadi told her.

"Well Sadi, I'm having a hard time dealing with the guilt," McKeever said.

"I understand," Sadi said. "But you need to get over it."

A rapid-fire talker, Sadi often seems to be a typical preteen. She goes to dance class. She points out in her yearbook which boys she has a crush on. She colors her nails with a black marker.

But she said she too feels guilty that Jessie was in the front passenger seat that day. The sisters usually fought over who got to sit in the front. They didn't that day, and Sadi wonders why.

"I'd rather have been hit than her because I think I could have taken it better," Sadi said.

Still, Sadi thinks the accident was meant to be and searches for the good.

"It's fate," Sadi said. "It's brought our family closer together. It's one of those push-pull things."

McKeever doesn't know why she turned left, but she also thinks the accident happened for a reason. She finds strength in Jesus and her family's love.

"It's up to us to decide whether something good will come out of this or if it will destroy us," she said.

[Last modified September 19, 2005, 01:17:04]