| Wake Up Barbara! And Help Me Find This Snake! Barbara Watson |
Sideglances column by Sarah Greene, Page 3 In August, Barbara wrote one last letter to her friend. It said in part: "I must write to you even though you can't read it. Or maybe you are reading my heart from heaven. I don't know how heaven works. "I cannot believe you are gone from life here on earth, Sue! I didn't even know about the accident until a week afterwards, after the funeral, when Jolene called to tell me. I immediately called your mother. Bless her heart - she was the reassuring one, the one who could talk without tears. She'd had a week to cry by then, and was probably drained of tears. I don't know when my tears will stop. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and realize I've just had a horrible nightmare. "Why do drunks survive their atrocities?! Jolene said he was driving on your side of the road, close to midnight, with his lights off. He deserves the death penalty. How could he dare take you away from us? "You were, and are, so well loved. All of your school children, and the little boy who named his kitty, 'Miss Dodson.' Oh, how devastated they all must be. You will always be in my heart, Sue." At the time of the wreck Sue and her friend were on their way to visit her family at their lake house. Late last spring Barbara e-mailed The Mirror she would be traveling from South Carolina in June and she planned to stop in Gilmer to visit Sue's gravesite at Sunset Memorial Park. "She frequently visited Gilmer, as her grandparents lived there," Barbara wrote. I notified Sue's Gilmer cousin, Phil Fowler, about Barbara's plans and he and I both hoped to meet her on June 28. Why that didn't happen was disclosed in a July 4 e-mail, expressing her disappointment. It was 7 p. m. before they reached Gilmer, so they took time only to put flowers on the graves of Sue and her father Clark, who survived her by only 10 months. Barbara said she really liked East Texas, where she had never been before, but she couldn't say the same for the Metroplex - a good place to get lost in. For more about her book, visit the web site http://www.wakeupbarbara.com. |