i'd like to place a gentle warning here. if you have googled ashana's name and found this blog, my hope is that you can read it knowing that it is written with love. however, this blog may be very painful to read if you knew her, as it recounts the last moments of her life in detail from my perspective.
11 years ago, on january 2 2003, i killed a young girl named ashana chenoa.
there. i said it.
ashana chenoa. young. beautiful. graduate of lewis and clark college magna cum laude. yogi.
it was the day after new years day. i'd spent new years day with friends visiting and eating black eyed peas. i learned that day that eating black eyed peas on new years day was supposed to bring good luck.
i call total bullshit on that.
it was a typical january day in the pacific northwest. cold, but not rainy. i had received a beautiful coat for xmas from husband, but he'd gotten the wrong size. days earlier i'd returned it to the store and they were locating the correct size for me. i'd gotten a call from the bebe store that morning that my coat had finally arrived. i got ready for work that morning, allowing enough time to first go downtown to pick up my new coat. i left my house early and i hadn't gotten but four blocks away when suddenly a little white car crossed the intersection in front of me. i slammed on the brakes and in the moments before the impact, ashana's eyes met mine. we stared at each other for what feels now like an eternity. her eyes were dark and wide and i could tell she was scared. those moments stretched out like a movie playing in slow-mo. we collided. so hard, in fact, that both our vehicles did 180's and every window in her car blew out.
it took me a minute to get my bearings. i was frozen. my horn was blaring and i couldn't make it stop. i pulled down my visor to look at myself in the mirror. maybe i was looking for facial injuries. maybe i was just checking to make sure it was really me in that car. i'm not sure which. i patted my torso down, checking for injuries. physically, i felt ok. it was then that i glanced out my front windshield to look for the other car. spotting it, i couldn't see anyone inside. i scanned the street for her. had she already gotten out? i tried opening my door and it wouldn't budge. neither would my passenger door. i searched the floor of the passenger side for my phone in my purse, the contents of which were scattered all over the car. i couldn't find it and was beginning to panic. making my way to the back seat, i climbed out the rear door and ran over to her car. she was slumped over the middle console onto the passenger seat. i reached my hand in and called to her. "hey!! wake up! are you ok?"
no response. no movement.
i remember getting agitated. "HEY!! YOU NEED TO WAKE UP!!" when i saw blood pooling on her passenger floor under her head, i realized that this probably was not going to end well. i backed away from her car and stood motionless in the intersection, staring at the glass in the street. suddenly, it was as though i'd gone deaf. i heard no noise. total silence. i stood there like a fucking zombie for i don't know how long, just staring at the ground. the silence in my head was so loud and getting louder with each passing second. it was deafening. it wasn't until i heard a man on the sidewalk yelling at me that i snapped back to reality.
"i called 911" he was saying. "please come sit down!!"
i heard the sirens. ironically, we were right next to emanuel hospital. not that it would have helped. i ran back over to her car, the glass from her windows crunching under my shoes. i reached in again and stroked her left arm. "help is on the way."
the police and a firetruck arrived at the same time. a woman police officer approached me and asked me to step away from ashana's car. she led me back to my suv and opened up the tailgate. "sit here" she said. i kept turning around to see what the firemen were doing and the officer kept redirecting my eyes back to her. she spoke to me in a really calm voice. i have no recollection of what she said other than "don't look" and i kept disobeying her requests by turning my view back to ashana's car and the firemen. eventually i noticed they were all just standing around and i leapt off my tailgate and angrily walked toward them. i was yelling. "why aren't you helping her?? get her out of that car, she needs help!!!" the woman officer grabbed my arm gently and pulled me back. i asked her why they were just standing around doing nothing and she looked away. i asked her if the driver was dead. she said yes. ashana was only 24.
i cried so hard that i almost threw up. how do you live with yourself after something like that? she called jack who ran across the street to our neighbors house for a ride. he showed up with our jaymes who was just shy of her 2nd birthday. while i was vacillating between some crazy dream state and reality, the police were doing their jobs, measuring skid marks and talking to witnesses. apparently, as ashana waited at the stop sign before crossing the intersection, a tall truck was making a turn next to me, blocking her view. she pulled out to cross, unaware that my truck was tucked slightly behind that tall truck in the next lane. i was told that she didn't suffer, it happened so quickly. i am so grateful for that.
her mother reached out to me in the following days. she was calm during our phone conversations. she was loving and sweet and said that the family held no ill feelings. i don't know that i could have been so kind to someone who took my daughter's life. even though the police reassured me that the accident wasn't my fault, i couldn't shake the feeling that it most certainly was. did i really need to go pick up my coat that morning? i mean really? i could have easily waited until after work, but noooo! i just had to have it now. i've never been very patient.
ashana's memorial was awkward. i'd been invited by a handful of her friends. should i go? would it be too weird? did i have any business being there? at the last minute i decided to go because the thought of NOT going seemed weirder to me than actually going. maybe it was my imagination or maybe they all knew, but in the sea of her many, many friends, i felt like the elephant in the room that no one was acknowledging. i felt judged, stared at, whispered about. maybe it was all in my head, i don't know. i'd brought baguettes and brie. i wanted to contribute something but it felt contrived, as if to say, "sorry i killed your friend, but, look! i have delicious french cheese!" it became too much and i asked jack to take me home.
months later, ashana's mother, brother and aunt came to portland and asked to come meet me. they showed up at my house and as soon as i met them, they felt like family to me. we had a bottle of wine and walked the few blocks to the scene of the accident. we cried and hugged and after returning to my house, we vowed to keep in touch. we did for a little while, but eventually we lost touch.
flash forward seven years...
so there i was in my yoga teachers training and we were almost at the end of our 200 hour, months long training. one of my fellow students, krystyn, asked me out for brunch. we met to eat and after an hour of chatting, she asked me if i'd been in a bad accident in 2003. i was taken aback and asked her why she would ask me that. she told me ashana was her best friend. she'd recently figured this out because the anniversary had just passed and she had googled ashana's name, like she did every year on the anniversary of her death. only this time, the name of the other driver was now familiar to her.
no joke. too fucking weird, right?!
and if that wasn't strange enough, she told me that ashana was a yogi and getting ready to do her teachers training. at the time of the accident, i'd heard through the grapevine that ashana did yoga, but i was not even close to starting my yoga journey, so it didn't resonate with me. but now, here i was, years later, sitting in a cafe with ashana's best friend, my friend, and my and ashana's paths were crossing again. it was at that moment that i knew i'd made the right choice to become a yoga teacher. i wasn't doing it just for me, i was continuing ashana's journey. and every single class i teach, i think of that beautiful, young girl and wonder what her life may have been like if she'd lived. maybe she would have been one of my teachers. who knows. as it turns out, krystyn is one of my favorite yoga teachers and one of my favorite people. i've gotten past the feeling of guilt every time i see krystyn and finally gotten to a place where i can just enjoy our friendship. it has an extra sweetness because there's a little part of ashana that we both have in us, that we can share without talking about it. it's our bond, no matter how ironic or crazy it happened, and i am grateful for it.
it's gotten easier over the years to think about ashana. i don't cry as often as i used to. i don't wake up screaming in the middle of the night anymore. i don't stare at the bubbly dishwater in the sink and see blood like i did for so long after. and while i try not to think about the fact that she would be 35 now and maybe she would have kids, i instead, try to think about our yoga bond, me and ashana. i think was she probably just as in love with yoga as i am, and that is a pretty awesome thing!
Yoga (योग),
a Sanskrit word with a general meaning of "connection, conjunction,
attachment, union"
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Sunday, May 12, 2013
mother's day....ugh!
mom's day. seems like an appropriate enough day to return to this blog. i've missed blogging and have really lost my way since losing my mom a year and a half ago which was immediately followed by losing my marriage. yep...that's what i've been doing for the last year while not blogging...getting divorced. wandering through life trying to reconcile both of these losses in my head and in my heart has been the most challenging thing i've ever had to do. but i'm doing it. and i'm trying so hard to do it without going too insane.
sadly, since becoming a mama, mother's days have been kinda stressful for me. i got used to the fact that mother's day, for me, was not the blissful day of celebration that it was for other moms. i had the best mom and awesome kids, but there was this pattern that happened every year, every holiday. jack is in the restaurant business and every year he works on holidays, including mother's day. these are some of his most profitable days. i signed on for this, knowing when i started a relationship with him that he would not be around on holidays, but we would always celebrate the holiday the next day. his working holidays was not the problem. the problem would begin when he'd go out AFTER work for several hours, drinking with these samecreeps people that he'd just spent ALL FUCKING DAY with. that's just the way it was, year after year and i was used to it. this is a pattern that was set in place before he and i were ever a couple and i noticed it as a problem on mother's day back in may 2000 when i thought i might be pregnant. thinking that mother's day would be the perfect day to pee on a plastic stick and confirm my suspicions, i reminded jack to rush home right away so that together we could wait for that 2nd pink line to show up. in my head, i imagined us holding hands, giddy with excitement.
but he didn't come home after work. well, he did eventually, but i was toes up at 2:30 am.
i took the test at my friend's house the next day. 2 pink lines. +. i cried with joy, i cried with frustration, i was delighted, i was scared. i called my mom. i didn't let on too much about jack's shenanigans the night before because i didn't want her to be disappointed in him. eventually she recognized for herself those nuances in my marriage, perhaps subtleties she remembered from her own failed marriage to an addict. she never pried too much, but i knew that she knew and i felt ashamed for it.
for a fleeting moment, i thought of not having that baby. but i was 33 and in love and jack always made it up to me, showering me with attention and affection and wonderfulness that, for a long time, blinded me to the imbalance of our relationship. hearts flew out of my eyes for that man! he swept me off my feet and loved me so deeply and sometimes i think that no one will ever love me like that ever again! i discovered that having a life with jack would not only be magical, but heartbreaking at times. mother's days since that day in may 2000 have been spent not only without my husband, but have usually ended up with me being so pissed because he never came home after work before 2 am. he always made it up to me the next day with dinner and flowers and surprises, but there was always something that stayed with me...and the utter sadness that he never wanted to rush home to me after being gone for so many hours. in the beginning, i really thought that parenthood would make him want to come home sooner. for years, he accused me of wanting to "change" him. i never wanted to change him, i loved him so much. i just wanted him to want to be a husband and father more than he wanted to be a frat boy. unless i legally changed my name to captain morgan, he was never going to come home to me first!
so mother's day 2012 rolled around and it was my first mother's day without my mom. i'd had a real 'fuck you' attitude all week about mother's day. seriously, mother's day could totally suck it!! i'd lost my mom a few months earlier and i really couldn't give a shit about the day. jack told me to suck it up, that the girls were excited about their gifts they'd made for me and they wanted to make me happy, so i put on my game face and feigned glee. i'm glad i did and i had a wonderful day with my girls, knowing how important it was to them. but i was dying inside and missed my mom so much! that night after i got the girls in bed and settled down onto the couch, that same feeling crept in that i'd felt every year before. every mother's day. every easter. every christmas eve. i'd sit on that couch fretting, looking out the window, sick to my stomach with worry that he wasn't home and he wasn't answering his cell phone. was he still in a bar? did he get pulled over? was there an accident? why wouldn't he come home to me? and last year, knowing it was my first motherless mother's day, he made no effort to come home and spend the last minutes of the day with me when he got off work at 10:30 and when he staggered into our bedroom at nearly 3 am, i knew i was done. i asked him to move out the next day. he dug in his heels for another six months before he finally left. bless his heart, he really tried his best to win back my love, but it was too late. he would never stop drinking, even at the expense of losing our family. so sad.
teaching my girls that staying married is the only thing that matters, even if it means being eternally disrespected, is not my idea of good parenting. teaching my girls that getting divorced for no solid reason is not good parenting. pushing a good father out of my girls lives because of anger or pride is not good parenting.
freeing myself from constant worry and teaching my girls that it's never ok to be disrespected in a relationship is my idea of good parenting. realizing that my situation was not healthy for any of us and would surely have some negative consequences for my girls and then doing something about it is my idea of good parenting. understanding that people are human and that they make mistakes, then teaching that to my girls is my idea of good parenting.
jack harryhill was the love of my life and i will always wonder how things might have been if he'd chosen to not drink to keep us together. i did not sign on for single mom-ness!! as hard as this last year has been, it has also been a year of extraordinary growth. there is peace and calmness in my life and in my house. my relationship with my girls is different...better, more grounded. i know my mom would be proud of me. she traveled this same road, raising a child on her own, scared to death of the future. i often feel the pangs of loneliness that obviously accompany a divorce, but i welcome that feeling ANY DAY over the feeling of worrying about the safety of my husband and the security of our family. the fretting became too much, too often! i never slept well and i could see the constant worrying starting to age me and ain't nobody got time for that!
my girls are my little loves and they are what keep me blissful and looking forward to whatever life wants to throw my way. i am excited to see what the future brings. i'm keeping my house that i've worked so hard for 12 years to beautify, the only home my girls have over known. i have such awesome friends who are always there for me, a job that i love and i have yoga! oh yoga! yoga has really saved me from going nuts! i'm starting to teach more, which is so awesome! and i get to teach at yoga pearl, my 2nd home, a sacred space where i have not only changed so much physically, but i have learned to get out of my head and into my body. i have experienced such profound growth on my mat and gained a beautiful family within my yoga community. i am grateful for all that i have and excited for my future and for the first time ever, at a time when i would normally be totally freaking out, i feel calmness and peace and no regret.
happy mother's day indeed!
sadly, since becoming a mama, mother's days have been kinda stressful for me. i got used to the fact that mother's day, for me, was not the blissful day of celebration that it was for other moms. i had the best mom and awesome kids, but there was this pattern that happened every year, every holiday. jack is in the restaurant business and every year he works on holidays, including mother's day. these are some of his most profitable days. i signed on for this, knowing when i started a relationship with him that he would not be around on holidays, but we would always celebrate the holiday the next day. his working holidays was not the problem. the problem would begin when he'd go out AFTER work for several hours, drinking with these same
but he didn't come home after work. well, he did eventually, but i was toes up at 2:30 am.
i took the test at my friend's house the next day. 2 pink lines. +. i cried with joy, i cried with frustration, i was delighted, i was scared. i called my mom. i didn't let on too much about jack's shenanigans the night before because i didn't want her to be disappointed in him. eventually she recognized for herself those nuances in my marriage, perhaps subtleties she remembered from her own failed marriage to an addict. she never pried too much, but i knew that she knew and i felt ashamed for it.
for a fleeting moment, i thought of not having that baby. but i was 33 and in love and jack always made it up to me, showering me with attention and affection and wonderfulness that, for a long time, blinded me to the imbalance of our relationship. hearts flew out of my eyes for that man! he swept me off my feet and loved me so deeply and sometimes i think that no one will ever love me like that ever again! i discovered that having a life with jack would not only be magical, but heartbreaking at times. mother's days since that day in may 2000 have been spent not only without my husband, but have usually ended up with me being so pissed because he never came home after work before 2 am. he always made it up to me the next day with dinner and flowers and surprises, but there was always something that stayed with me...and the utter sadness that he never wanted to rush home to me after being gone for so many hours. in the beginning, i really thought that parenthood would make him want to come home sooner. for years, he accused me of wanting to "change" him. i never wanted to change him, i loved him so much. i just wanted him to want to be a husband and father more than he wanted to be a frat boy. unless i legally changed my name to captain morgan, he was never going to come home to me first!
so mother's day 2012 rolled around and it was my first mother's day without my mom. i'd had a real 'fuck you' attitude all week about mother's day. seriously, mother's day could totally suck it!! i'd lost my mom a few months earlier and i really couldn't give a shit about the day. jack told me to suck it up, that the girls were excited about their gifts they'd made for me and they wanted to make me happy, so i put on my game face and feigned glee. i'm glad i did and i had a wonderful day with my girls, knowing how important it was to them. but i was dying inside and missed my mom so much! that night after i got the girls in bed and settled down onto the couch, that same feeling crept in that i'd felt every year before. every mother's day. every easter. every christmas eve. i'd sit on that couch fretting, looking out the window, sick to my stomach with worry that he wasn't home and he wasn't answering his cell phone. was he still in a bar? did he get pulled over? was there an accident? why wouldn't he come home to me? and last year, knowing it was my first motherless mother's day, he made no effort to come home and spend the last minutes of the day with me when he got off work at 10:30 and when he staggered into our bedroom at nearly 3 am, i knew i was done. i asked him to move out the next day. he dug in his heels for another six months before he finally left. bless his heart, he really tried his best to win back my love, but it was too late. he would never stop drinking, even at the expense of losing our family. so sad.
teaching my girls that staying married is the only thing that matters, even if it means being eternally disrespected, is not my idea of good parenting. teaching my girls that getting divorced for no solid reason is not good parenting. pushing a good father out of my girls lives because of anger or pride is not good parenting.
freeing myself from constant worry and teaching my girls that it's never ok to be disrespected in a relationship is my idea of good parenting. realizing that my situation was not healthy for any of us and would surely have some negative consequences for my girls and then doing something about it is my idea of good parenting. understanding that people are human and that they make mistakes, then teaching that to my girls is my idea of good parenting.
jack harryhill was the love of my life and i will always wonder how things might have been if he'd chosen to not drink to keep us together. i did not sign on for single mom-ness!! as hard as this last year has been, it has also been a year of extraordinary growth. there is peace and calmness in my life and in my house. my relationship with my girls is different...better, more grounded. i know my mom would be proud of me. she traveled this same road, raising a child on her own, scared to death of the future. i often feel the pangs of loneliness that obviously accompany a divorce, but i welcome that feeling ANY DAY over the feeling of worrying about the safety of my husband and the security of our family. the fretting became too much, too often! i never slept well and i could see the constant worrying starting to age me and ain't nobody got time for that!
my girls are my little loves and they are what keep me blissful and looking forward to whatever life wants to throw my way. i am excited to see what the future brings. i'm keeping my house that i've worked so hard for 12 years to beautify, the only home my girls have over known. i have such awesome friends who are always there for me, a job that i love and i have yoga! oh yoga! yoga has really saved me from going nuts! i'm starting to teach more, which is so awesome! and i get to teach at yoga pearl, my 2nd home, a sacred space where i have not only changed so much physically, but i have learned to get out of my head and into my body. i have experienced such profound growth on my mat and gained a beautiful family within my yoga community. i am grateful for all that i have and excited for my future and for the first time ever, at a time when i would normally be totally freaking out, i feel calmness and peace and no regret.
happy mother's day indeed!
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