One Crash Kills Mother

Shannon Marie Livaudais

Senior, Class of 2011

A recollection on drunk driving

For the Vanessa Wolf Scholarship

October, 2010

“VAN-TYPE TRUCK IN WHICH LOUISIANA WOMAN WAS KILLED…One of Five Children of Vietnam Veteran Injured,” reads an article of a 1973 Laurel, MS newspaper. The Louisiana woman is my grandmother. The one of five children is my mother, the other four being my aunts and uncles. The Vietnam Veteran is my grandfather. On a February morning in 1973, the Portier family was on their way to Virginia Beach for a highly anticipated family vacation, receiving their father only a few days earlier after a yearlong Navy tour. Piling into the “Adventure Van,” a personally customized van adapted for long trips for the comfort of five children ranging in ages from 2 to 11, it seemed like a normal journey for the nomadic Navy family. My mom, Becky at age 9, sat nearest to her mom, my grandmother Mona, in the backseat. Asleep for the majority of the ride, my mom was confused and scared when she woke up, lying on her back in the grass, surrounded by sounds of sirens and crying. All she could remember was the abnormal swerving of the car.

She was taken to the hospital and treated for various things, but above all a crushed spleen and a critically broken right leg. Her brothers, sisters and father only suffered cuts and bruises. She was confused when first arriving at the hospital, but she knew they had been in a car accident. With her family dispersed among accommodating aunts and uncles back in Louisiana, it was a rather lonely 3 weeks for the 9-year-old in the Mississippi hospital. She was, however visited by her father, who tenderly brought her the tragic news of her mother’s death. And so my mother lied in a hospital bed, virtually immobile, typically alone and stewing over the death of her mother. When her time in the hospital was done, she had a bittersweet homecoming. She was happy to go home and see her family again, but crestfallen at her new cast, which covered her waist, the entirety of her right leg, and half of her left thigh. Despite this additional calamity, my

mother was at least, for a while, able to be around someone who loved her, her godmother back in Louisiana.

However, the Portier family was still dispersed. Desperate for help and to achieve some normalcy for his family, my grandfather remarried not 6 months after the car wreck and his wife’s death. With another parental figure to watch over the children, he was able to proceed with his Naval duties, leaving for more extended periods of time. During his absence, the new addition to the family, who my mother aptly nicknamed Stepmonster, “cared” for the children. With her habits of verbal abuse, slight physical abuse and food hording (a lock and chain was routinely placed on the refrigerator), it was a very tough 9 years for the Portier children. My grandfather had one child with her, my uncle Eric. When my grandfather eventually wised up to the Stepmonster’s insanities, he divorced her to the delight of his children. He remarried some time later to a woman, my grandmother who I call Coco, who finished raising the two youngest of my mom’s siblings, and was a sigh of relief for the family.

Now for some closure. How did my grandfather get into a car accident in the first place? Driving down Interstate 59, he began to pass a slow moving truck in front of them. Speeding up beside the slow truck, he found himself facing a pickup truck directly in front of him, traveling in the wrong direction. He tried to swerve out of the way, but he was boxed between trucks. The pickup truck hit the driver’s side of the van, the doors flew open and my mother and her mother were thrown out. The pickup truck driver was drunk. He survived the accident with some injuries.

You might be thinking, “Okay, this is your mother’s story. What does it have to do with you?” I think this car accident, this defining moment in my mother’s life, has more of an impact

on me than many people may think. Life runs a course of chain reactions. Some we can control and some we have no control over at all. My biological grandmother’s death was something that no one could control. However, that truck driver’s decision to drink alcohol and proceed to drive was a decision he could have and should have changed. But it was because of that accident that my life is how it is today. Whenever the story of the accident is mentioned, a million questions run through my head. How would my life be different? Would my mom be different if she never had a Stepmonster telling her that she was worthless and dumb? Would I be different because my mom would be different? Since the money from the accident paid for my mom’s college tuition, would my mom have ever met my dad like they did in college? Would I even be here?

And then there are the things that I know would be different. My uncle Eric, who is really cool and I love, would not be here. I would not have my step grandmother, Coco, who has been a positive influence in my life since I was a baby. In fact, it is strange for me to think of her as a step grandmother. When I talk about her, I never say “step grandmother,” I just always say “grandmother.” To me, she is no different than a biological or a “real” grandmother. She does all of the jobs that grandmothers do, and does them well. Despite the positive effects that the tragedy from so long ago has had in my life, I still cannot help but wonder sadly what she is like – Mona, my mother’s mother, my grandmother. She was married to my grandfather and raised my mother, so I bet she was a wonderful and captivating woman. My grandfather says that I inherited a lot of her traits, even though I never knew her. This gives me more reason to believe that if we really do all have guardian angels, I think she would be mine. I have felt this since I was little because of this strange, sad and inspiring connection I feel I have with her.

“One Crash Kills Mother” was the name of the article that documented the car wreck. I think this title carries more weight than the journalist who wrote it could have ever imagined.

One crash changes the life of a family. One crash sends a little girl to the hospital. One crash causes 5 children to be put under the care of an abusive food hoarder. One crash affects the life of a daughter 37 years later.