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A Mother’s Love

ANNA AND JOHN REDGATE were beginning a new venture in the horse industry wintering in Florida and summering in Connecticut. So, on December 30, 1999, they packed up their family — two and a half year old Whittaker and nine month old Grace — for a season tour of Wellington in Palm Beach.

New Year’s morning 2000 dawned as so many others do on Singer Island — a seamless crystal blue horizon broken only by the sound of waves crashing on the shore. Anna, a former lifeguard, always appreciated the serenity and beauty of the beach. Sharing it with her children, Anna unpacked their picnic lunch — peanut butter and jelly — while Grace ate sand and Whittaker chased seagulls.

The smile on Anna’s face is genuine; her eyes bright like the sun on the ocean as she relives that six-year-ago memory. She recants these events as if it was yesterday… or as if she had relived them everyday, over and over again from the moment they occurred.

Done with lunch, but not done with the day, “We decided to go for a walk,” she continues. “I packed the kids up into their red Baby Jogger and headed to the park. It was just up the street from the house, near Blue Heron Bridge. There’s a small connector bridge to an island with a little park on it, for dive boats by the docks. From here, you could see Peanut Island, Palm Beach and Riviera Beach from every direction. I wanted the kids to see it.”

Walking along the waterside pathway, the young family peered out over the boats, gazed at the birds and even spotted a manatee. “The kids were enthralled,” Anna says, “having never seen a manatee before.” She stopped at the intersection and assessed her side of the bridge. It was busy, but there was nobody on other side of the bridge. When the light turned red, she could cross over.

She waved to the cars before her, which waved back. She pushed the stroller forward. “I could still see a red glow from the traffic light on my hands,” she says, and then BANG! She looked over her left shoulder at the sound. The Ford Escort parked at the red light was flying directly at her!

Anna broke into a sprint trying to get out of the way of the car. She maintained a death grip on the stroller, but it was jerked out of her hands with the momentum of the careening vehicle. Powerless, she watched the stroller spin out of her hands, her helpless children torn away. The car crashed to a halt a mere five feet ahead, but the stroller was wedged between the car and the bridge railing. Grace was lying on Whittaker’s lap but facing her. Anna reached down… instinctively she must have known that Whittaker was okay but Grace wasn’t. In shock she screamed toward the car “What did you do?!”

She reached down, unbuckled and lifted her baby. When she cradled her, Anna’s right hand was inside her baby. “I looked at her feet. Normally… a baby’s little feet point outward. Hers were pointed downward. Then I kept thinking: ‘She’s torn in two — how are they going to sew her back?’ I never imagined they couldn’t.”

They say, in such moments, that times stands still. It doesn’t seem real, but as Anna’s world spun out of control in mere seconds, she remembers each detail with movie-quality clarity. She was detached from reality — paralyzed but screaming. An EMT pulled Grace out of her arms. The fishermen gathered. A fireman arriving on the scene blurted, “Oh my God!” and recoiled in horror at the sight of little Grace.

According to the gruesome homicide report, Grace was killed instantly by a severe laceration, whereby only a small piece of tissue was connecting the two halves of her body. The report indicated that Grace’s intestines visibly hung from beneath Anna’s cradling arms. The EMT who stabilized the hysterical mother pushed the child’s intestines back into her torso.

At the hospital the time warp continued. The doctors told them that Grace was dead. John lost it. The Chaplin took Whittaker so the grieving parents could say goodbye, and they entered a curtained-off emergency room where she lay wrapped in layers of cloth.

“To say goodbye to a child is really impossible,” Anna explains. “I just gave birth to her on the first day of spring nine months earlier. On the first day of the year, she is gone. Being so safety conscious, thinking things through – it is unimaginable that this could have occurred. I kissed her goodbye and looked into her beautiful blue eyes. Her face was perfect, but she was pale. The last thing I heard from her was the remaining air expelling from her little mouth.”

SIXTY FIVE-YEAR-OLD Robert Barnes had arrived in Florida several days before his wife was due to join him. The police report indicated that he was on a two-day drinking binge, “living it up” before his wife’s arrival. On that New Year’s Day he was, in fact, hurrying home in his Chevy Tahoe to take care of his dog.

Barnes hit the Ford Escort parked at the traffic light at 70 mph with no warning sound of screeching breaks. The impact literally lifted the Escort off its wheels. As they arrested him he said, “What’s going on? I didn’t kill anyone, did I?” His blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit, and he couldn’t walk on his own accord. He was charged with vehicular homicide for Grace and bodily injury for Anna. Whittaker escaped with scrapes and bruises. Ultimately, Barnes was sentenced to 10 years for DUI manslaughter. One week after he was imprisoned, he died. Tragically, the only person who would testify for him was his cardiologist. Of Barnes’ five children, none appeared in court.

Meanwhile, the grieving parents found themselves in the midst of a huge story with enormous national interest. Grace was the very first person killed New Year’s Day of the new millennium. Anna took Whittaker to the best psychiatrist in Miami, Dr. Michael Hughes. Unfortunately, the media circus grew. Elian Gonzales, the 6-year-old Cuban refugee found floating near Miami in a raft, was being seen at the same office. The Redgates were powerless participants in a spectacle of tragic human lives and experiences. Politicians called asking if they could use the spot where Grace was killed to promote their agendas. Grace’s image ended up in a statewide DUI campaign while they were in Palm Beach. Their court appearances required police escorts through the back stairs.

Stories such as these seem to abound in today’s media. Much is made of gruesome horrors with little to no follow-up. But really, this is where Anna’s story begins. As tragic as her story is, a mother’s grief has transformed over time to become a story of love. In the past six years, Anna has learned to cope with her anguish, finding the strength to redirect her energy — from pain to hope — all over Florida through the Victim’s Impact Panel (VIP).

Her job, as she sees it, is not to bring strangers deeply into her personal life, but to present her perspective as an avenue for learning. She talks about the accident and its preventability, using the experience as a catharsis for herself and others, and as a way to help our society heal itself.

Her intentions when she goes through these presentations are to invoke responsibility and healing. “I had a conversation with a priest back in Connecticut,” Anna explains, “and I said, ‘Father Tom, people tell me I need to forgive. What right do they have to request this of me?’ He replied, ‘You do not have to forgive the selfishness, but you can forgive their brokenness.’ I never forgot that.

“[It was] my light bulb moment,” she continues. “It helped me process through a lot because when I thought about it, I thought, I am broken. Everyone is broken somehow. We all have a hole, and we choose to fill it differently — whether it is excessive shopping or eating or drinking or a prescription or running or exercising or obsessing at work. The beauty is that once you can forgive someone’s brokenness, you can realize that all selfishness is attached to brokenness, and therefore forgive that too.”

As part of her advocacy, Anna recounts her story every third Tuesday to a room full of people convicted of alcohol related charges as part of VIP in Marion County. “This didn’t happen by accident,” she says. “Alcoholism is no accident. But my goal in this is for Grace and myself to make a difference. I want to have people affected by my daughter’s life.”

Grace may be gone, but Anna’s advocacy is an extension of her parenting. She upholds that VIP sessions are really non-judgmental. “I go in there and I give them the love that I have. Because I am not there to judge them and say you did something wrong. I am saying look where you are — aren’t you grateful? Have gratitude for where you are sitting because you could be on this side and you could have killed my daughter. You have a chance to make a difference. You have a chance to heal yourself, be better and kinder to others — make a choice… you have a choice to not do it again.”

ANNA’S STORY IS NOT UNUSUAL. Dozens of similar stories are shared each month. In fact, Karen Calloway’s story unfolded only three days before Grace died. Her daughter, Alicia, then 18, was on break from CFCC and had gone out with friends for the evening.

At 9:10 p.m., Karen’s telephone rang with the news that Alicia had been rushed to Munroe Regional Medical Center. They only knew that the car had hit an oak tree, that Alicia was in a coma and that the doctors were still assessing her. When Karen arrived at the hospital, doctors informed her that Alicia had a broken left arm, a lacerated liver, shattered right femur and a dislocated left hip that caused a pelvic fracture. She was given a 10 percent chance of survival. Once they were able to see her, a sheet covered up all the injuries to her body. Her face was visible, yet unrecognizable.

“Her face was swollen and her teeth had gone through her lower lip.” Karen’s voice cracks at the memory. “Honestly she didn’t look like herself so that this felt like it wasn’t really happening, but of course… it was.”

She went into surgery at 11 p.m. and stayed there all night. The next few days Alicia was kept in a drug-induced coma, necessary to help stop the swelling and bleeding. A week later, doctors were finally able to do the surgery to repair her arm and femur fracture. Even so, after surgery, Alicia was still not able to speak or communicate.

Meanwhile, details from the wreck trickled in. Turns out the kids were involved in a drag race in front of Vanguard High School. Karen’s voice quivers, “There was a car coming head on, so the driver tried to get back into his lane but the car fishtailed… he lost control and hit the tree.” The driver of the car Alicia rode had a blood alcohol level of .104.

Thankfully, Alicia awoke after her fourth surgery, this one for the pelvic facture, and began talking. She spent two months at the Sam Lake Brain Injury Rehab Center in Orlando and another five months in outpatient therapy. As successful as the rehabilitation has been, the Calloway’s lives have been forever altered.

“Alicia was only 18 years old. She was building her independence, and all that was ripped away from her,” says Karen. “Today, Alicia has memory difficulties, both in long term and short term. She also has issues with seizures… she is independent at home, but she is dependant out in the world.”

Karen copes by devoting herself to her advocate work with MADD. She co-founded the local MADD chapter serving as president, and she is currently vice president. She, like Anna, is a member of the Victim Impact Panel. Together, Alicia and Karen work as a team, talking to the high schools.

Karen shares proudly, “We knew God had a plan for Alicia and we just had to find those doors. MADD was one of them. We just did what we needed to do to help others — be that share our story helping a family go through something similar to our journey.”

Karen, Alicia and Anna are joined by hundreds of other volunteers with similar stories, all hoping that their stories may save future lives.

ALCOHOLISM IS A PROGRESSION of the obsessive-compulsive disease of addiction. Legal fines and time served will not stop it. Alcoholics and addicts are not deterred by confinement, penalties or by loss of freedom, nor does the loss of health, employment, relationships, marriage, children or families act as a deterrent. Certainly, studies have shown that Victims Impact Panel is somewhat effective, but the best tool thus far in changing the course of alcoholism is Alcoholics Anonymous. Here is how it works, as one mother tells it…

Jane Doe* will be 49 years old this year. Alcoholism and motherhood impacted her on many levels. Her paternal grandmother raised her while her father pursued a life in California as an entertainer. She never met her mother until 15 years ago and was never raised by her father, although both were alcoholics.

Jane recalls, “My earliest memory of my father… I hated his breath, I hated how he slurred his words and I hated his empty promises. I was determined not to be like him. The irony was I turned out to be exactly like him.”

A product of the hippie generation, Jane dabbled with social drinking when she was 12 years old. Like her father, she was a pretty good singer, and her fantasy was to become a rock-n-roll star. At a very young age she began hanging out with The Allman Brothers Band; her first serious boyfriend, at age 15, was Mike Campbell, the lead guitar player for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (Mudcrutch back then). She wasn’t a rock star herself, but she was living the lifestyle. Social-recreational drug use became drug dealing, then drug smuggling. Her drug obsession progressed from pot to cocaine to a smokeable form of heroine. “Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll was who I was. And I couldn’t change, because Lynard Skynard said so.”

The glamorous drug dealing lifestyle lasted only two years. Due to her involvement in the Florida drug trade, she fled to California. When the dope wasn’t available — and the pain unbearable — Jane says, she finally turned to alcohol. “I didn’t want to consider it. Again, I didn’t want to be my father, but to get off the junk I learned how to drink.” In 1981 she returned to Gainesville an alcoholic, on probation for a felony drug offense (sale of cocaine).

Eventually she got busted for possession of marijuana, after which she entered rehab at Old Bridgehouse in Porter’s Quarters in Gainesville. She went to her first AA meeting, got a white chip, had to wear paper pajamas and drink Antabuse.

Sobriety was brief; she resumed the sick lifestyle. During the next 10 years, from 1994 to 2004, she was unable to keep a job, suffered from chronic depression, cirrhosis and Hepatitis C, and two of her sons were taken by DCF. She had two other daughters and another son, but honestly can’t recall raising them.

“The choice was my kids, or drugs and alcohol,” Jane freely admits. “I chose drugs and alcohol, and I gave my children away.”

By 2004, Jane had squandered everything. “There was no hope, no hope at all,” she says. “’Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’ That’s what Janis Joplin said.”

When she landed in the hospital yet again, her doctor took one look at her chart and said, “You’re dying. I don’t think you will last another two weeks.” She went home thinking, “Well, it finally happened. I have killed myself. It is just a matter of waiting for the body to finish dying. I am going out, not in a ‘Blaze of Glory’ but in the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization that the Big Book talks about. I am going out just like my father did.” Jane had an epiphany. “It wasn’t everyone else’s fault. I did this to myself. I HATE ME!”

So she got on her knees and prayed. She says, “The most insane thing that I have ever done is to believe that I could live any kind of meaningful life without God’s help.” Today she realizes that if you want something different, you have to do something different. Reading about it, talking about it, knowing about it, didn’t change her life … didn’t keep her sober. “It was when I started doing the program — working the Steps with a sponsor who had worked the Steps with a sponsor — that my life began to change. That I began to change. When first came to AA I was afraid of changing. When I last came to AA I was afraid that I would stay the same.”

Stacy*, her 20 year old daughter, recalls her mother dropping by the house unexpected asking for money from her three teenage children. She was the only one with a job so her brother and younger sister turned to her to provide their strung out mother with what she needed. This was a major resentment for young Stacy who learned to cope by distancing herself from Jane eerily similar to how Jane distanced herself from her own demoralizing father.

Stacy was like Jane, a frightening testimony of the power of recycled abuse. Stacy shared that she was a party girl at 15. Not wild partiers, just loud and fun. And alcohol was always present. She stood perilously at the threshold of her mother’s path, despite the fact that she was raised in AA. Thankfully, she recognized that she was a child of drinking and joined SADD while a freshman in high school.

Certainly, Stacy is resentful of her mother, but these days she sees Jane as a role model — as someone who has turned her life around and overcome insurmountable odds. “She is no Gandhi over here, but…” Stacy quips with a smile.

Jane shares; “It used to amaze me before I tried crack cocaine that using it would overpower the strongest natural urge imaginable — the instinct to mother. I’m just thankful I got a second chance.”