His Dogness

On April 12, a story that I wrote about Dee Luster, who lost her daughter, Sonia, in a traffic accident, ran in the “Winston-Salem Journal.”

In the story, Ms. Luster talked about sleeping with the red shirt that her daughter wore the day before the accident because it still smelled like Sonia.

After reading the story, Donna Martin sent me the following e-mail. I asked Ms. Martin whether it would be OK to post it on His Dogness. She said that would be fine.

Here it is:

Dear Kim,

You don’t know me, but this morning I was reading the article on Dee Luster losing her daughter in a car crash and I started crying for her. You see, in 1995, I also lost my 19-year-old son in a car crash. He was living in Fargo, Georgia at the time with his girlfriend, and they were planning to get married that summer.

He was on his way to work that morning and it was very foggy. He got to an intersection and when he pulled out, a truck hit him twice and knocked him into a bank. I was working at a restaurant in Jonesville when I got the call from a hospital in Fargo. They told me I needed to get to Fargo right away, but he died before I could get there.

When I walked into that funeral home that night and I saw my son laying on that table with a white sheet covering him and a red rose laying on the sheet, I went to the floor.

His girlfriend told me to take anything I wanted that belonged to him and you know what I took. I went straight to her clothes hamper and got his dirty clothes, just so I could smell the scent of him.

To this day I still have his dirty clothes and have never washed them. I would love to talk to Dee and tell her my story. You see, it helps to talk to someone who has been through the same experience.

I know my story won’t mean much to you, but it made me feel so much better just to share it with you. Thanks for listening anyway.

Donna Martin
Hamptonville, NC