Its about out way of life, remember? From Newsday, May 15:
Fatal accident leaves grief on Mother’s Day
It was a simple Mother’s Day gift: Alvin Johnson was going to surprise his girlfriend of 20 years, Emma Liverman, with a homemade cake and a meal fit for such a celebration.
Not knowing his plans, she had picked him up at his Springfield Gardens home Saturday afternoon, and was making a U-turn out of a parking spot on Farmers Boulevard at 132nd Street, police said, when a passenger van carrying eight people collided with Liverman’s Toyota Camry.
“It happened so fast, I don’t know where the van came from,” Johnson, who was injured in the crash, said from his hospital bed at Mary Immaculate Hospital Center. “Next thing I know, I woke up and I was in the hospital.”
Liverman, 64, of Ozone Park, a mother of four and grandmother of six, died instantly in the 5 p.m. crash, police and witnesses said.
Johnson was in stable condition at the hospital Sunday, bruises and lacerations over his torso and face, he said.
The other victims, some of them children, were passengers of a charter van that makes trips between New York City and a state correctional facility in Fishkill, N.Y., according to witnesses on the scene and decals on the white Ford van. The van’s decals also listed Yankee Stadium as a destination.
The driver of the van and the passengers were all in stable condition at Mary Immaculate Hospital on Saturday, but it was unclear if any were released from the hospital Sunday, police said.
Also in the Camry was Liverman’s daughter’s dog, a shih tzu named Sky, who was cut by windshield glass. The black-and-white dog rested at Liverman’s house Sunday.
“He was like another child to her,” said Liverman’s daughter, Jaqueline Gibbs, of the Bronx, at her mother’s home Sunday. “She was the type who knew all of her grandchildren’s birthdays. She knew how to make them all smile.”
In Liverman’s living room, a dozen photos of her children and grandchildren sat on a table, along with a bag of peppermints, which Liverman gave to everyone she met, said Gibbs.
The grandchildren were expected Sunday, but the kitchen was quiet, the meal canceled. Johnson said he had planned to make spare ribs and other favorites. Instead, Gibbs said she and her family would begin making funeral arrangements.
Gibbs gave her mother, a retired nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children in Bayside, a Mother’s Day gift on Friday: money for her car to be inspected, she said.
On that day, Gibbs deleted several phone messages her mother had left on Gibbs’ answering machine, she said. It was something she regretted.
“She was like my best friend,” said Gibbs. “I called her every single night. Now I just miss her voice.”
See other reasons WHY WE FIGHT.
