The Word Cloud

Some of you may remember that a few months ago I wrote a poem about a friend of my daughter who was killed on a bike.  Well, the story didn't end with the accident, and to get a little perspective, I had to write about it.

Crash

The bike snarled up the hills and sang down them, wheels humming on the turns.  The morning was perfect for riding.  A Saturday in late May, the sun was not yet strong, the grass still green, the sky a brilliant blue, and a light breeze blowing.  David and Sam – best mates for two years -- had been off-roading in the open country north-east of the town all morning, and it was time to head back, see some friends, finish some homework, enjoy some food.  David smiled to himself as Sam throttled back before the bend, the second to last bend before the long straight where Sam always cranked up to top speed.  He smiled a little, but had no time to tense when Sam realised that he was going too fast into the bend and hit the brakes.

The hum became a screech as the balding tyres slithered, turned into a crash as the bike went into the concrete guttering, then a grinding as it spun out onto the road.  There was a thump as Dave hit the signpost then tumbled into the gutter, and a thin scream of pain as Sam slid along the road under the remains of the bike and his knee shredded.  Then there was silence, broken only by Sam’s occasional whimper, the creak of a still spinning wheel, and the tick of hot metal, cooling.

***

The first vehicles arrived within minutes – a tow truck heading for a job in one of the upland villages, and a woman on her way to work in town.  They stopped on opposite sides of the road, occupants staring in horror at the site before them – one boy dead in the gutter, the other bleeding on the road.  Seconds later other passers-by stopped, called an ambulance, gathered around to offer what comfort they could.  Thirteen year-old David was beyond comfort – his eyes still open, the smile still touching his lips -- but an English woman shaded Sam with her car’s sun reflector, and talked to him gently, assuring him that help was on the way.

Sam’s mother arrived at the hospital before David’s.  She saw her son into surgery, then went to David.  She spoke to him, closed his eyes, kissed him goodbye, and left.  She did not contact David’s parents.

David’s parents arrived later.  Shocked and trembling, they held their son, asked each other why, how, this had happened to them.  Friends embraced them, supported them, made necessary phone calls to family overseas, made arrangements.  “We were simply numb,” Anne, David’s mother, remembered later.

Sam’s parents arrived at the police station before David’s, as well.  They made their statements first.  And when David’s parents were ushered in, the first question that they heard after the sergeant’s condolences was: “How long has your son had the bike?”

Anne and Tom looked at each other, confused.  “Which bike?” they managed.  “The one in the accident,” the sergeant said.  “The blue and yellow Suzuki 250.”

“But that’s not David’s bike…”  Anne began.  “That’s Sam’s bike, and he said that he never rode it on the road.”

The sergeant breathed silently, deeply.  He closed his eyes and tilted his head back.  Then opened his eyes and looked kindly at the shattered people in front of him.  “I have to tell you that both on, and off the record, Sam’s parents say that this is your son’s bike, that he was the driver, and that their son was breaking family rules by riding pillion and being on an public road.”

“But that’s simply not true!” Anne tried again.  “Who owns the bike – surely the papers will show that it wasn’t Dave’s?”

“The motorcycle is registered to a Costas Ioannou,” Sergeant Andreas consulted his papers.  “He’s a farmer.  When we contacted him, he said that he had sold it last year to an English family with a teenage son.”

Another glance passed between Anne and her husband, and Tom reached out and took his wife’s hand.  “That could be either of us,” he said in a trembling voice.  “Sam’s only just fifteen…”

“But they can’t say that!” Anne’s voice rose shrill.  “They can’t pin the blame on Dave just because he’s dead!”

“So,” Sergeant Andreas said gently.  “You wish to say in your statements that the motorcycle belonged not to your family but to Sam’s… And now, if you could please tell me what you know of your son’s movements yesterday, that will help us with the investigation.”

Several hours later, the sergeant stretched and ran his fingers through his curly dark hair.  He had all the witness statements, but none of them were from people who could verify the owner of the bike, and the position of the casualties on the road did not indicate for sure who had been the rider.  “The English!” he sighed.  “I know that we Cypriots aren’t perfect--”.  His mind turned to the accident that a colleague had dealt with the previous week when two Cypriot teenage boys riding stolen mopeds at night with no lights had collided head on with an overtaking pick-up truck and died instantly.  “But at least no one tried to shift the blame around like this crowd!”

***

The accident burst in on us that evening.  David was one of my daughter Sarah’s best friends.  He sat next to her in English class.  He had been planning to visit, ‘to hang out’ on that perfect afternoon. 

“I can’t believe that I’m never going to see him again,” she whispered.  “That we’ll never speak again, that he’s not going to be at school on Monday… or ever again.”

The next few days blurred together:  on Sunday I woke up thinking of Dave’s parents ‘This is the first day of the rest of the rest of their lives without him’; on Monday morning there was not a dry eye in the school yard; a Tuesday assembly ‘celebrated David’s life’ with his classmates bravely speaking their memories and his parents meeting the young people who had given shape to his last two years; on Wednesday, a few of David’s classmates visited his house, saw his room, handled his belongings, took home a few keepsakes (“I want his jacket,” one girl sobbed.  “It smells of him, but I know my mum would never let me have it!”  I urged her to ask for it: “What else will happen? It will go to a charity shop or be thrown away – I’m sure his parents would rather you took it.”  But she was too shy to ask.) On Friday, hundreds of friends gathered with David’s family on the beach to release balloons bearing messages, photographs, and a teddy bear into the evening sky.

David’s parents took him back to England.  I didn’t understand that, particularly when his mother told me that they would be coming back to Cyprus to pick up the threads of their life:  “He’ll always be here with us, even if he’s buried over there…”  But her grief was too raw for me to ask anything else, and with only platitudes to offer, I preferred to stay silent and help where I saw that it was needed.

Several weeks after the funeral, Sarah received a text message from Anne: “Do you know the location of the crash?”  I knew roughly, and knew how to find out.  The woman who had comforted Sam had left her number with a paramedic that I knew.  I called her, and she told me what she had seen and done, and where.

Eventually I didn’t take Anne to the site, another classmate’s mother did.  But we spoke later after we had also laid flowers where David died.  “There was nothing at the spot,” she said.  “I thought that Sam’s mother might have at least left something – even unsigned, in case she thought that we might see it and be angry.  But there was nothing there except the skid marks and a few pieces of the bike…”  Her voice trailed off.  Then:  “I wish I knew how he died.  I wish I knew what happened.  Did he suffer?  Did he ask for me?”

I felt a chill because I knew that I could find out, and I knew that I, as a mother, would want to know as well.  “Did you not talk to Sam’s mother?”

“We haven’t spoken,” she replied.  “She never called – it was the hospital that told us, hours after it happened.  Valerie had my number, but we’ve heard nothing except that she’s said that it was David’s bike.”  She spoke on, repeating herself often, wandering through thoughts and memories, regrets and recollections.  “David was irresponsible,” she said.  “There’s no getting away from that.  He got on the bike and that’s what killed him.  But if Sam’s parents hadn’t bought the bike for Sam in the first place, there’d a been no temptation, and my boy might be alive today.”  We agreed that eighteen was the age for biking – not fourteen.  “What were they thinking of?  I dunno…” she said.

But “I want to know.  I need to know how he died,” Her voice was suddenly strong, focussed.  “Did he go instantly?  Did he suffer?  Did he say anything?  Tom won’t talk about it.  He says that it doesn’t matter and why should I hurt myself worrying, but nothing can hurt me more than this.  I brought that boy into the world, and I want to know how he left it.  I know that people are only trying to protect me, but I can’t stand it anymore!”

“I can probably tell you,” I said slowly, thinking ‘I know that I can find out, but should I?’ 

“Yes,” she answered my unspoken question.  “If you could find out, if I could know, things would be better, somehow.”

I was pretty sure from something that I had heard, that David had died instantly, but what if he hadn’t?  Could I tell this woman that her son had lingered there on the hot tarmac and died fearful and crying for her?  I thought of a friend who had been an army officer in Vietnam.  Could he advise me?  Had he written letters to parents about their sons’ deaths?  And if so, had he told the truth – or had he always said ‘he felt nothing’, sparing, he believed, the feelings of those at home?  But my friend was a man, and a soldier.  Not a mother.  I was on my own. And as a mother, who would have wanted the truth no matter how painful, I knew that I had to honour another mother.

I promised to find out if I could.  And I promised to tell her the truth.

I asked a contact in the police who was a friend of the ambulance driver who took the call, and he said that David had not suffered.  “Massive head injury”, he assured me.  “Instant death.  He probably knew nothing about it.”  I remembered the smile.  And with relief I called Anne.

“Thank-you,” she said.  “Thank you so much.  It was torturing me, thinking that he suffered, but I can lay it down now.”  We spoke for another twenty minutes and she said that she and Tom were returning to the UK for a while where their daughter was about to give birth.  “You know,” she mused, just before hanging up.  “We worked it out:  Dave hadn’t ever been in the hospital since being born.  Last time he saw a doctor was when he had his MMR jab, years ago.  He was always healthy, always laughing…”

We didn’t speak again.  But two weeks ago, Sarah got another text:  “We’re leaving at four tomorrow morning, but if possible can you go and make a statement to the police that the bike was not Dave’s?”

I took her the next day.  Sergeant Andreas took Sarah gently through her relationship with David, what she knew of David and Sam’s friendship, how often she had seen the bike and who was riding it, and her last conversation with David that fateful Saturday morning.  “Sam always rode the bike,” she insisted.  “Dave had to beg to be allowed on it on his own, and even then Sam rarely let him.”  I told her to relate the conversation she had had with Sam about his brakes – when he’d said that they weren’t working properly, but were too expensive to fix – and about the tyres; how she had heard him say that they weren’t the right kind for the road.  And I reminded her of the time that Sam had paid for petrol with his mother’s credit card.  Sergeant Andreas took meticulous notes.

We had to look at the bike, and at the tyres -- worn almost smooth on the front, lumpy smooth behind.  We had to look at the helmet, and neither of us could say for sure that it was Dave’s.  And Sergeant Andreas confirmed Sam’s parents’ statements that they ‘knew nothing at all about the bike’.

“And Sam?” I asked, incredulous. 

“He ‘can’t remember’” said the sergeant, leaving me with little doubt as to his thoughts.

So now we wait for the inquest.  At some point the police will decide that they have enough evidence to present to the judge, and the judge will rule as to cause of death.  Then the police will decide whether to prosecute Sam or his parents, and on what grounds.

Meanwhile, we just miss him.  I know Sarah thinks about him very often.  I still do several times a day, and sometimes I still cry for him.  Every time I pass the bent signpost on that turn, and see our now-withered blooms still tied there, I think of him, and while I wish Sam a speedy and complete recovery, I pray that his parents will come to their senses because moving forward will be difficult for us all until they do.