Death Notification

Angela and I had nine children and she had gotten the younger 6 into Irish dancing. On March 10, 1993 she had taken four of the children to SUNY Geneseo to dance in a St. Patrick’s day program there about 40 miles from our home on Ridge Rd. in Clarkson, NY. At about 10:30 PM I started to worry because they had not arrived home yet.

I was downstairs in my office on the lower floor of the house when my 17 year old daughter, Mary, came down to tell me that there were two police officers at the upstairs front door. I immediately went up to find two Monroe County Sheriff Deputies who told me, “Mr. Markham there has been an accident and your son and wife are at Strong Memorial Hospital. You need to go there right away.”

“Are they all right,” I asked?

“You need to go to Strong right away and talk with your wife,” they replied.

They seemed very tense and uncommunicative and I was feeling somewhat panicked and frustrated. It seemed that there was much more to the story than they were telling me.

“Where are my other children?” I asked

“Your youngest daughter has been taken to Genesee Hospital, and your 12 year old son is at Park Ridge, and the older daughter is at Lakeside. If you go to Strong and talk to your wife, she can tell you more.”

In my mind I knew things were very bad. Having been a Psychiatric Social Worker who worked in the emergency rooms at Rochester General Hospital, Genesee Hospital, and Park Ridge Hospital, I was well aware of how the community emergency response system worked when there were multiple injuries and casualties spreading the victims out among the various Rochester area hospitals. With this new information about my children and wife being at different hospitals I knew that things were not good and that this accident was a major event with significant consequences.

I thanked the Deputies and sent them on their way. My daughter Mary said, “Come on dad, we should go to Strong.”

“We can't,'' I replied. “Not yet. We have to find out what has happened to the other kids. Call Colleen and ask her to come down here.” Colleen, my 20 year old daughter, lived about 1 ½ miles away in the Village of Brockport and she would be a help.

I had a private practice in my home which had its own phone so there were two phones in the house. When Colleen arrived, I asked her to use the office phone to call Park Ridge to find out how Joe was at Park Ridge. I was on the house phone calling Genesee Hospital. Fortunately, a woman I knew and had worked with Genesee Hospital answered the phone in the emergency room at Genesee.

“Carrie, this is David Markham, do you have my daughter there?”

“Yes, David, we do. Brigid is here.”

“How is she?”

“David, you will have to come in.”

“What do you mean? Just tell me.”

Carrie replied, “Well, I can’t. You are going to have to come in.”

“Carrie, I can’t. My wife and son are at Strong. Another son is at Park Ridge. My older daughter is at Lakeside. Please just tell me how Brigid is.”

“Are you alone,” Carrie asked?

My heart sank. This is not good I said to myself. “No, my daughter is here.”

“How old is she,” said Carrie?

“Mary is right here and she is 17, and Colleen is downstairs calling Park Ridge and she’s 20.”

“I’m not supposed to do this, David, but since it is you. Brigid is dead. The doctor declared her about 20 minutes ago.”

“Thank you, Carrie, for telling me. I appreciate it very much. It saves me hours of not knowing and second guessing with everyone in so many hospitals.” At that moment Colleen came into the room and said, “Dad, they won’t give me any information at Park Ridge about Joe. They say you have to come in.”

Carrie said, “I’m very sorry Dave. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes, Carrie, will you call Park Ridge and find out the status of my son there. They won’t give us any information and say we have to come in.”

“Sure”, said Carrie, “give me a couple of minutes,” and put me on hold.

While I was waiting, I shared the news with Mary and Colleen that their littlest sister, Brigid, was dead at Genesee Hospital. My adrenaline was pumping and I was functioning on high alert attending to the information which needed to be gathered and not able to tune into their emotional response to the information. Just then, Carrie came back on the phone and said, “I’m sorry Dave. Your son at Park Ridge is dead too.”

“Thank you very much, Carrie, you’ve been a big help.”

“I am so sorry for your losses, Dave.” Said Carrie.

“Thank you,” was all I could think to say, but I was very grateful for her cool, calm, effective and efficient help.

“Are we going to Strong,” asked Mary and Colleen?

“Last thing before we go,” I said, “is to call Lakeside and see how Maureen is.”

I called Lakeside and Maureen had been admitted to the hospital from the emergency room. I talked to the floor nurse who told me that Maureen physically was fine but emotionally quite distraught. The nurse said that Maureen had a shoulder belt injury with  quite a burn on her right shoulder and bruising to her sternum. The nurse said that the doctor admitted her for observation because he was concerned that there could be congestive heart failure if the pericardial cavity filled up with fluid as a result of the bruising. Other than these injuries, the nurse said that Maureen was fine. “However,” the nurse said, “Maureen keeps asking about the other people in the car.”

“Her sister, Brigid, is dead at Genesee, and her brother, Joe, is dead at Park Ridge, and Angela and Ryan are at Strong where I am going right now.”

“Do you want me to tell this to Maureen,” asked the nurse?

“No, no, no, “ I said. “I will tell her when I can get there which probably won’t be til morning. Thank you.”

I reassured Colleen and Mary that Maureen was all right and said, “Now, we can go.”

When we got to Strong I was told that Angela was in ICU and that my son was in the orthopedic section of the emergency room. I chose to visit with Angela first in the ICU on the 4^th floor. When I arrived I was told that Angela had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury and multiple facial fractures around her left eye and cheek. She had been placed in an artificial coma to reduce any further swelling in her brain and that she would probably be kept in this coma for 48 hrs or longer. When I saw her she was hooked up to all kinds of tubes and IV lines and it was very clear,  in spite of what the two deputies had led me to believe at the accident notification, that Angela not only was in no condition to tell me anything about what had happened, but would be unable to for some time to come. It crossed my mind that she did not know that two of our children were dead.

Angela had come from an Irish middle class family who lived on Long Island. Even though they were professional people they were big drinkers and domestic violence was a common occurrence which included regular visits from the local police department. Angela had told me stories about how when her mother became intoxicated her father would berate her in front of the children and pack them all in the car telling them he was taking them to the children’s shelter since their mother was such a lousy drunk that she couldn’t be a proper mother to them and take care of them. Angela told me that one time her father had become enraged while he was intoxicated when her beagle dog had defecated in the house. The father chased the dog up to her room with a broom where the dog hid under her dresser. Angela said her father beat the dog to death hitting it with the broom trapped under her dresser. During our courtship Angela told me these stories and she would end these gruesome tales saying that while these incidents were terrible and traumatic, they had made her stronger, to the point that she could deal with anything in life but the death of one of her children. Now, she will have to deal not with the death of one of her children but with two, and I doubted that the future for her and us would go well in light of the enormity of the tragedy which had befallen us.

I left her bedside, dreading the return when she became conscious again, and having to tell her that two of our children had died. 

I went back down to the first floor emergency room to see my son Ryan who I believed to be in the orthopedic area. I had been told that the “12 year old” had been taken to Park Ridge Hospital where I had learned he had died from Carrie in the emergency room at Genesee Hospital. Our other son, Ryan, was 8 and he was a big boy. Ryan was 11lbs, 6 oz when he was born, and at age 8 he was so big for his age that he might be mistakenly thought to be 12. When I opened the curtain to the cubicle expecting to see Ryan, there was 12 year old Joe. I quickly had to shift gears because the son I thought was dead was alive and the one I thought was alive was dead.

Joe was conscious, shaken, still in shock somewhat. He had fractured his pelvis with a hair line fracture which was not immediately diagnosed on the x-ray but only diagnosed a couple of months later when the fracture calcified and could be seen. Joe’s left arm  had been cut and was sutured. I consoled Joe as best I could and while waiting for him to be discharged from the waiting room I was approached by Ogden Police Chief Christopher Schrank who asked if I could go with him to the Monroe County morgue to identify the body of Ryan since there had been a mix-up in the identification of the children. I agreed.

When I got to the morgue, I was asked to view Ryan’s body on a gurney behind a window. I positively identified Ryan’s body as indeed being my son Ryan and then asked if I could also see Brigid who also was in the morgue. While I didn’t have to identify her body for legal reasons, I wanted to see her as well and the coroner techs agreed to my request and brought Brigid’s body to the window after they removed Ryan’s. It was a small comfort to me to see my two children so soon after they had died.

I returned to the Strong Memorial Hospital to await Joe’s discharge which finally occurred. Joe complained of great pain in his hip when he walked and I asked for the doctor to see him again which he did and re-x rayed Joe’s hip, but insisted that he was okay. I took him home and put him to bed where he was looked after by Colleen and Mary while I went to Lakeside to tell Maureen what had happened and that her brother, Ryan, and her sister, Brigid, had died.

Maureen was 14 and the only one in the vehicle carrying Angela, herself, Joseph, Ryan, and Brigid that stayed conscious throughout the  crash and its aftermath. Besides telling my wife two days later that two of her children had died, one of the hardest things I have ever had to do was tell Maureen that her brother and sister had been killed and that her mother had been severely, but not critically,  injured and was in a coma. 

Maureen seemed to have guessed that something severely amiss had occurred and while very upset understood that her brother and sister were dead. I spent some time with Maureen helping her process what had happened and reassuring her that she would be discharged from the hospital the next day and that her body was okay acknowledging that her heart was broken. As I was leaving, Maureen called me back and said that she wanted to tell me something that had happened when our parish priest, Father Kiggins, had visited. I could tell that Maureen was very upset about the incident she was to describe to me.

“What happened, Maureen? What are you so upset about?”

“Dad, Father Kiggins came to visit me.”

“Oh, that was nice of him,” I said.

“Yeah, well, he told me I should forgive the driver of the truck that hit us,” Maureen said, getting more upset.

“Okay,” I said “and then what?”

“I told him to get the fuck out of my room,” Maureen said breaking out into huge sobs.

“Good for you,” I said thinking the poor guy must have slept through grief counseling 101 in the seminary if they even offered the course.

“You’re not mad at me, dad, for telling Father Kiggins to go fuck himself?”

“No, Maureen, I am not upset with you at all. You did the right thing. Father Kiggins should have known better than to say something like that to you.”

It has been 20 years since March 10 and 11^th in 1993. I have lived through my memories of that night many times over the years. I have wondered how I managed it all. It is a horrible story that is the basis of every parent’s worst nightmare, to lose a child. It certainly is the basis of Angela’s worst nightmare which not only came to pass but came to pass twice.

I have never blamed God for what happened. I blame alcohol. The driver of the 18 wheeler tractor trailer which crashed into Angela and my kids had had two prior DWIs and crashing into my family was his third. 

In 2011 still over 11,000 Americans are killed every year in DWI crashes, about 500 a year in our State, New York. I tell parts of this story on DWI impact panels 4 or 5 times per year when invited. I do this for two reasons: to keep the memory of Ryan and Brigid alive, and to feel that, if even one person learns from this story not to drink and drive, and this prevents even one more death from drunk driving, Brigid and Ryan will not have died in vain.