The day after my father's tragic death, my siblings and I drove 30 miles east of our home to the Suffolk County Police Impound Facility in Yaphank.  With my older brother at the wheel, me beside him in the passenger seat, and my younger sister in the back, we hurtled through the unfamiliar country roads in a state of shock.

 "Remember that crazy car accident I was in years ago?" my sister asked  us.

"How can I forget?" I replied.  "The image of Daddy, groggy from sleep, running down the stairs and out of the house to pick you up at Harlem hospital. . .it was horrible."

"Maybe I really died that night," she contined.  

"It's possible," my brother offered.  "There could definitely be an alternate reality, coexisting with the one that appears to be ours in this moment."  

When we got to the lot, we parked our car and walked into the small office.   After identifying ourselves we stood in the sterile waiting room, breathing in the stale, air-conditioned air.  Moments later, a man came to the opening in the plexiglass pane and thrust some papers toward us.  My brother picked them up and read through them, shaking his head.

"Cause of death," he recited to us, "Blunt Force Trauma."  My sister and I began to cry silently.

The man walked us outside and pointed.  "The car's down there between rows 2 and 3," he said in a monotone voice. 

We walked past old Camaros with no wheels; shiny BMWs dented beyond repair; police cars with black spray-paint over their words; and unidentifiable vehicles with all the paint stripped.  Eventually we came to my father's black Jeep.  

"Oh Dad!" I wailed upon seeing it.  The driver's side was smashed in to the middle of the car.  It looked like a Matchbox car that someone had squeezed with pliars.  I stuck my head into the car and looked around.  The entire back row was tilted up awkwardly.  The front air bag stuck out like a huge white balloon.  The dashboard was destroyed.   In the intact cup holder was my father's black chap stick.  I opened it up and looked at the worn-in wax, then inhaled the spicy scent with my eyes closed. 

My brother opened the trunk and held up a navy blue zip-up Champion sweatshirt.  I took it from him and held the soft cotton against my cheek, thinking of the blood-stained, short-sleeved button-up and jeans that had been cut up the middle.  They were among my father's possessions, including his wallet, that the police officers had given us the night of the accident.  I peeked into the trunk and saw a cable box and remote.  "He was going to exchange  that on Tuesday--we needed a new one," my mom said to us later that day.

I went back into the car and hovered in the space of the driver's seat.  Looking up, I saw splotches of dried blood on the grey, soft ceiling.  I ran my fingers over the maroon shapes and wondered if anything was going through my dad's mind as his car was rolling over on the pavement.  Did his head begin to bleed immediately or was it not until the final blow?  Did the blood stains come from the cuts that we noticed on his lip as he lay unconscious in the hospital?

We'll never know exactly what happened that rainy, summer night in 1997.  As time passes, the sting of grief lessens and we are left to ponder the questions from a more sane perspective. Life goes on, children are born, others leave this world, we wrestle with every-day stress.  A tragedy is like a picture ripped out from a coloring book:  each neat section gets colored in when it's time.  My maroon crayon will forever be coloring the winding path that led my father to another place.