Mini Brain Dumps

Before you dive into this story, I want to share something deeply personal: this is not just a story—it’s my story. The events you’re about to read are based on a tragic moment that shaped my life when I was only two years old. It’s a story of loss, survival, and the lasting impact of a single day that changed everything.

Revisiting this part of my life wasn’t easy, but it felt important to put it into words—not just as a way to honor the past but also to remind us all of the strength and resilience we carry, even in the face of unimaginable pain.

While I’ve done my best to recount what happened, some details come from the pieces I’ve gathered over the years. It’s a mix of memory, family accounts, and the emotions that still linger.

This story contains themes and descriptions of a fatal car accident, grief, childhood trauma, survivor’s guilt, complex emotional experiences, and mental health struggles, including PTSD and abandonment issues. It also explores the aftermath of loss on a family and the emotional impact of harsh words spoken in childhood. Please proceed with caution if these topics may be upsetting or triggering for you.

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I hate you.

You wouldn’t think that three words would have the ability to tear you apart. That three little words, eight letters and three syllables, would pack such a mean punch. I hate you is a powerful statement. Yet, sometimes, we don’t realize, or simply forget, that our words have an impact on those around us. There are the lucky ones of us. The ones who have the chance to right the wrongs that our words have unleashed. Then there are the others, the ones who speak untruthful words in the heat of the moment and don’t have the chance to apologize. I am one of the lucky ones. My sister was not.

I’m lucky in the sense that I never had to learn this lesson myself. I got to see firsthand the consequences of saying those three words. Saw the guilt wrack my sister. To wish that she could go back in time and change the last words she ever spoke to our mother.

All because she wanted to sit in the front seat. Of course, my mom said no.

The front seat is no place for a child. She was just trying to keep her safe. Unfortunately, when you are five years old, we don’t really understand the dangers that are posed to us if we do sit in the front. To us, the front seat is about respect, authority, to showcase our maturity. I’m a grown up, so why can’t I sit there?

And because we’re not allowed, we only seem to want it. That. Much More.

“I hate you,” she shouted, crossing her arms and puffing out her bottom lip for a little dramatic flair, as she sat in the middle of the backseat of the dark blue Chevrolet Blazer.

I imagine my mom rolled her eyes and told her that she loved her as a response. But inside, a little piece of her heart died at hearing those words uttered from her eldest daughter’s mouth. Oh, to be a child… where the worst thing that has possibly happened to you is not sitting in the front seat.

There is speculation in my family regarding what happened that day. If you ask my maternal grandmother, she will insist that my mother and father had a fight the day before and that my mom was heading to visit my dad at work in order to “settle the score”.

If I ask my dad what happened, he said that there wasn’t a fight the day before and that he had no idea why she was heading towards Randill that day.

My sister recalls that we were heading to my dad’s workplace to pick him up for a surprise lunch. She also doesn’t recall an argument.

And then there is me.

I was there. I heard everything that happened. Saw it with my own two eyes. But I don’t remember anything.

And whatever really happened that day died with my mother.

Using what I have been told throughout my life, I think that there was an argument or some sort of disagreement that took place before the accident, but not necessarily the day before.

No, I’m referring to one that took place a couple of weeks before. It was regarding a job offer that my dad got from a trade school in Reolle.

My dad had been a student there in the past and the current professor was retiring and looking for someone to take over for him. He thought my dad would be a good fit for the role. My mom, who was on maternity leave at the time, did not want to move to Reolle. My mother worked in Daudrie, even going so far as to rent a place that she lived out of during the weeks she was on out there. She was working towards being a scrub nurse, the ones that work within the surgical room with the doctors and was on track to become one and didn’t want to jeopardize what she had been working so hard towards. They never did come to a decision as to what to do.

Perhaps the day before this topic was broached again, and still no resolution had been found.

Perhaps, my mother confided in her mom and that was why my grandma believed wholeheartedly that my father was to blame for the accident. That she truly was heading to town in order to “settle the score”.

I don’t think that was what happened.

Or, what I believe, is that it was just a lunch. Nothing special. Just. Lunch.

I’ll never know though. And perhaps that is for the best. What I do know though is that on February 2nd, 2000, my life’s course was altered forever.

As my mom was driving down the highway, as she had countless times before, she came across a familiar stop sign at around eleven o’clock in the morning. Did she stop? Did she look both ways? These are ingrained in us when we learn to drive so I think that she did. But maybe she didn’t.

My dad has told me that at the time of the accident there was a large sign that had been placed very close to the road and made the corner relatively blind, that it could easily hide a vehicle. He had driven the road for many years as well, loading many complaints about it, but nothing came of it. And I am sure we are all aware that having children and driving can be distracting. I imagine I was probably asking a million questions. as I was so inclined to do as a child. so perhaps she was distracted answering me. or maybe my brother began crying, as three months old tend to do, and her attention was pulled away from the road. And, perhaps as she looked both ways before determining that it was safe to proceed, she had not paid enough attention to see the approaching vehicle. And, when she proceeded from the stop sign, turning right onto the highway, our vehicle was hit broadside by a semi-trailer truck

Upon impact, my brother, my sister and me were all knocked unconscious. Every piece of glass in the vehicle shattered into a million pieces, scattering through the air, cutting our hands and faces, the small crystals getting stuck in our eyes. Our car seats crumbled into themselves, creating a cocoon of metal and plastic to cushion us from the impact.

My brother’s car seat, which was the closest to the impact, pushed into my sister as the metal contorted to the semi, effectively pinning Cate between our two car seats and creating a shield around her. While we were protected from the outside world, my mother did not. Crumple zones of a vehicle can only do so much against thousands of pounds traveling at, approximately, a hundred kilometers. Upon impact with the trailer, my mother’s neck snapped. She died instantly.

And as the screeching of metal on metal came to a halt, and the last shards of glass hit the ground, the world came to a complete halt for a few moments. The driver of the semi looking in horror at the scene that laid before him, of the effectively flattened piece of that lay before him, and I imagine he thought that there was no way there were any survivors in that wreckage. I wouldn’t blame him for thinking it either. I saw the pictures of the vehicle in the news article. His hands shook as he grabbed the phone from his pocket, fumbling to dial the three numbers – 911. As he lifted the phone to his ear, waiting for the call to connect his heartbeat like a hammer against his ribcage. It felt like an eternity before he heard the words on the other side – “911, what’s your emergency?”

As he spoke to the operator in his truck, inside the wreckage my sister woke up. She was the first of us to wake up that day. In a daze of confusion, she tried to make sense of what was going on around her. She unbuckled her seatbelt, pushing my brother’s car seat off her, and emerged from the cocoon of metal and plastic. The first thing she saw was my mother, her neck bent at an odd angle, her eyes staring blankly forward.

“Mom”, Cate said, approaching her cautiously. She put her hand on her shoulder and shook gently. “Mom?” She continued to shake her. “Please wake up!” Repeatedly she cried, pleaded and begged, but my mom didn’t move.

After a couple of moments Cate knew that it was useless to continue screaming into the void, she needed to go get help. The roof had caved in slightly, making the gap between the roof and the seat narrow. With her small frame however, she was able to easily slide into the opening and crawl her way to the back window. Glass had been strewn across the entirely of the backseat and the glass punctured her skin as she crawled. When she got to the back window she began to scream for help.

The other driver, seeing movement in the wreckage, barreled his way out of his truck. He hurled himself towards the vehicle, if you could even call it that anymore, and grabbed Cate. He pulled her tightly against his chest as he moved her away from the crash site.
“My sister and brother,” she cried as he placed her in the ditch along the side of the vehicle.

”Don’t move,” he said to Cate before running back.

He pulled open the door on my side, released my car seat from the buckle and pulled me from the vehicle. He looked back to see my brother, tears welling in his eyes as he saw him there among the wreckage, his car seat crumbled to pieces. The baby looked like he was dead. He shook his head, trying to displace the guilt he felt over causing the death of an infant. and ran my car seat over to my sister

“Daniel! Get Daniel,” she continued to scream like a banshee.

The driver hesitated. Daniel was dead. He couldn’t possibly bring a corpse to this little girl. But her screams were becoming pleading, desperate. So, despite his initial instincts, he returned and pulled my brother from the vehicle. He looked down at the boy’s face, the chubby cheeks, the wisps of black hair. The baby, Daniel, looked so peaceful. He lowered his face, bringing his cheek to Daniel’s mouth, holding his breath as he listened.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

The boy was breathing. He was breathing! So softly you could barely tell, but he was alive. A wave relief flooded the driver’s system as tears of joy sprung to his eyes.
With a smile on his face, he approached my sister. He gently placed Daniel in her lap, forming her arms to ensure his head was supported and stepped back. And, almost as if it were a movie, the moment he stepped back Daniel’s eyes opened.

Throughout my childhood, I have seen the driver of the semi on many occasions. However, much like a fuzzy dream, he is recalled as no more than the back of a jean jacket and a hat as he moved swiftly in the opposite direction. A faceless stranger. A silhouette.

I was told by my dad that the driver knew my mother. That they had been friends in high school. Not completely unexpected when you come from a small town since everyone knows everyone. A stranger is a stranger. Still awful but you didn’t know them personally.

But an old friend.

That was worse.

There are only a few occasions that I can recall where I “saw” him. Most of the time it was at a fair in a nearby town, on the odd occasion it would be at restaurants. Whenever our paths crossed, he would bow his head, shove his hands in his pocket, turn on his heel and move in the opposite direction. I imagine, to him, we were a ghost of his past. A constant reminder of what had happened. And I don’t blame him for not wanting to be reminded of what was probably one of the worst days of his life.

And I don’t even know his name!

But, I don’t think of him in terms of a murderer. I don’t blame him at all for what happened to my mom.

I blame myself.

I think that I am the reason that she died.

I was the distraction that caused her to not pay enough attention.

I was likely asking my thousand and one questions, likely annoying the crap out of her, when she pulled up to the stop sign.

He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When the ambulance showed up, we were all taken to the hospital, including the driver of the semi. All our eyes needed to be flushed to remove the glass from them. My brother and I both had minor cuts and bruising but for the most part we were fine. My sister was cleared with the same diagnosis as us but was later determined that she suffered a greenstick fracture to her left arm. It was determined that Daniel’s car seat, when it was crushed into her, had caused her bone to visibly bend resulting in a small fracture. The driver was also cleared to any physical injuries. As for mental injuries, those would emerge as we grew older. In my sister it resulted in a cocktail of mental illnesses including complex post traumatic stress disorder and abandonment issues. I cannot speak for what happened to the driver of the other vehicle mentally afterwards, but I imagine his days of having a clear conscious were well and truly over.

As we were transported to the hospital via ambulance, my dad was still blissfully unaware of how horrible his day was about to become. He had been working, probably doing an oil change or rotating tires or whatever mechanics do. Reception would have answered the phone from the police and used the intercom system to call him to the front of the building. My dad would walk to the reception desk through the loud shop and ask, “Who is it?” as he reached for the phone. The receptionist would simply shrug her shoulders as he lifted the phone to his ear.

“Good morning, this is Jason. How can I help you?” he would say.

‘Hello Jason, this is Jeremy with the Randill RCMP. Your wife and kids have been in an accident and have been transported to the Randill hospital,” the voice on the other line would say.

“What happened?” he would ask, the blood draining from his face as he immediately felt the swell of nausea in his stomach.

“An investigation is still being done to figure out what exactly happened. We can tell you more when you get to the hospital,” the voice answered.

“Thank you, my dad would respond before hanging up the phone.

Thank you. How could I say thank you to the man who just told me that my family has been in an accident? How could I say thank you when I don’t know what happened?

“What’s going on?” the receptionist asked.

“I have to go. Now,” he would say, his body numb as he grabbed his keys and ran out the door without another word.

My dad met us at the hospital. He expected the worse, that his whole family was gone or seriously injured. I imagine he must have felt a wave of relief as he saw all three of us sitting there with the nurses as we played with the toys, they provided for us. And then the immediate realization as he noticed that his wife was not with us.

“What happened?” he asked, frantically, as he picked up Cate and pulled her in to a tight embrace before repeating the process with each of his children.

“The doctor will be here shortly to explain,” the nurse said as she left the room hastily.

He fussed over us, ensuring that we were okay as he waited for the doctor to come. When the doctor told him what had happened, silent tears slipped down his cheeks as they confirmed his worse suspicions. He wiped his tears away, thinking that they made him look weak, that he needed to appear strong for his family.

My dad has told me a bit about his experience in the years following the accident, but he has never gone into too much detail about it. Probably to protect us. Or, as I suspect, to protect himself. To maintain the strong father figure image that he projected. To be the lighthouse that would guide us through the dark and stormy nights that had become our lives.

And so, those three words still linger. Not just in memory, but in the weight of everything that followed. In the weight of never having said I hate you to anyone, even to this day. In the weight that constantly sits on our shoulder’s, even when we don’t know it’s there.

Because words matter.

Even when we think they don’t.

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My Reflection

A 37-year-old woman died following a collision with a semi at the junction of Highway 83 and Chelsea Road late Wednesday morning. Elizabeth Jeanine Buchanan, the driver of the east bound sport utility vehicle, pulled on to the highway and was hit broadside by the south bound semi. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Buchanan and her three children, aged three months, three years, and five years, were all buckled in and car seated. The children and the driver of the semi were transported to the nearest hospital for examination and suffered no injuries. The accident is still under investigation by the RCMP office. No charges have been laid to date. Police are reminding motorists that with the increase in local truck traffic to exercise extra caution.

As I read that article for the first time, I couldn’t help myself as I sobbed. Seeing the vehicle that I was pulled out of, even in black and white, invoked a raw reaction from me. I cried. Not just tears. I mean full on ugly crying. Red face, snot dripping from my nostrils, gulping air into my lungs in small hiccups. And I don’t know why.

Perhaps I wept because of lasting effects that day had caused throughout my life. For the childhood that had been lost. For the chance to have a mother. To not feel like I needed to struggle through every aspect of womanhood alone.

Or, perhaps, it was the realization that I was alive and that it truly was a miracle.

It was probably both.

I think back on this moment in my life a lot, to what may have happened. My dad had to become both a father and a mother to three young children who didn’t even have the vocabulary to understand what had been taken from them. And in that moment, at the hospital, he must’ve realized that the weight of our collective grief would fall squarely on his shoulders. And to top it all off, he had to carry his own grief while ensuring we wouldn’t drown in ours.

For Cate, the healing was slow and complicated. The greenstick fracture in her arm healed in time, but the emotional scars festered. At just five years old, she had been old enough to understand loss, but not old enough to process it. She carried the memory of my mom’s lifeless body in the wreckage—a haunting image that became the cornerstone of her trauma. And then there were her last words to our mother: I hate you.

Cate has always been hard on herself. It’s her way. As children, I remember her trying to be perfect all the time—perfect grades, perfect behavior, perfect smiles for strangers who pitied the “motherless Buchanan kids.” She carried guilt like it was her only inheritance, a penance for what she believed was her fault. And though I’ve tried countless times to tell her otherwise, to tell her that she was just a child, she’s always said, “You didn’t see her face when I said it. You didn’t see her flinch. I did.”

For years, Cate sought control in the aftermath of chaos. She clung to perfection and routine as a way of coping, but control is a slippery thing. And when cracks inevitably appeared in her carefully constructed life—when she couldn’t always maintain the straight A’s or the perfect friendships—the old guilt came roaring back. It whispered in her ear, telling her that she didn’t deserve good things, that she hadn’t earned forgiveness. She would crumble momentarily, then rebuild herself again, always striving to hold together a life that felt perpetually fragile.

For me, healing was quieter. I was too young to remember the accident—the chaos, the impact, the aftermath. It’s as if my brain wrapped that day in tissue paper and shoved it into a box marked Do Not Open. And, because of that, my grief has always felt more abstract, more shapeless.

I missed my mom in the small moments—when I needed advice about middle school bullies or wanted someone to teach me how to apply eyeliner. My loss didn’t have sharp edges like Cate’s; it was softer, easier to hold. But it was still there, lingering like a shadow I couldn’t quite shake.

My dad doesn’t talk about his grief, but I see it in the way he paused at family gatherings, as if someone was missing from the table. He carried us through those early years, and though he never let us see him cry, I know he must have. His grief is quiet, like mine, but I think it lingers just the same. There was one Christmas when I caught him staring at an old photo of Mom, his expression unreadable but heavy. He’d put the picture back on the mantle without a word, but I’d noticed the redness in his eyes. I think that’s how he processes—in private moments, in silence.

What I’ve realized as I’ve grown older is that grief doesn’t follow a straight path. It’s not something you get over or even through; it’s something you learn to carry. For Cate, it’s like a storm she can never quite outrun. For me, it’s like a fog, sometimes lifting, sometimes settling back in. And for my dad, it’s a quiet ache that he’s learned to live alongside.

The accident left its mark on all of us in different ways.

Cate’s journey has been one of untangling herself from guilt, trying to forgive a five-year-old version of herself.

My dad’s journey has been about strength—not the absence of vulnerability, but the determination to keep going, to keep loving, even when it hurts.

My journey has been about stepping into the void left behind, learning resilience in the face of loss.

I’ve decided it is better for me not to know about that day, about what happened. My sister carries that memory for both of us, whether she wants to or not. And, unfortunately, that’s her weight to bear.

And mine is knowing I can’t carry it with her.