Wreath of Death

In the early 1950s my mother was a teenager completing her senior year of high school. At the time she was dating my father. They had had an argument one day and my mother was not talking to my fater. At some point later, my fater slipped my mother a note saying that he would like to meet her after rehearsal--a play in which my mother was participating with a number of close friends. My mother had every intention on getting a ride home that evening with these friends(4 or 5 of them) in the one friend's pickup truck. She decided that she would meet my father instead. They went to a small restaurant and had sodas and conversation. At some point they noticed their friends racing by in the pickup truck. Ten or fifteen minutes later a police car and ambulance raced by. On the way home, my mother and father came upon the accident--their friends had been dragging and had run head- on into a steem roller, instantly killing 2 or 3 of the friends. My father helped load the bodies into an ambulance. Upon reaching my mother's house, my father went in with her to wash his hands. As they entered the door they were greeted by my frantic anut. Terrified, she exclaimed that she had seen a funeral wreath at the top of the staircase.

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