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Grief over "invincible' girl frayed family bond

By Carrie Seidman
Wednesday, October 1, 2003

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It was early in 2001 when Marlene McDargh, on her way home from work, caught her two younger daughters Jennifer, then 11, and Heather, then 13 crossing Tramway Boulevard at an intersection, but against the light, on their way home from school.

She sat both girls down on the couch at home and talked to them about the dangers of crossing Tramway, the high-speed arterial that runs along the foothills of the Sandia Mountains on Albuquerque's east side, rather than using the pedestrian bridge that passes above the street.

"I made them stay on that couch until they promised they would use the overpass," says McDargh, a nursing administrator with an instructive yet nurturing air. "And they sat on that couch a good long time."

But only a few months later on April 16, 2001, just after 4 p.m. McDargh received a phone call informing her that her youngest daughter was being transported to a trauma hospital after a crash.

"My first thought was, 'Oh, my gosh, what was she doing in someone's car?'" McDargh says. "It never dawned on me that she was on foot."

In fact, Jennifer McDargh walking home from school without Heather because her sister had decided to take the bus to her mother's workplace had been struck while attempting to cross Tramway at Copper Avenue, just beneath the pedestrian overpass.

Seth Stoddard, an 18-year-old driving a red Jeep and traveling at the posted speed, couldn't avoid hitting Jennifer, said authorities, who believe the young girl was crossing against the light.

While open containers of beer were noted to be in the Jeep, according to police reports, Stoddard did not show an elevated alcohol level and was not cited in the incident.

Later that day, Jennifer McDargh became the youngest pedestrian fatality of 2001.

For those who read the statistics showing New Mexico and Albuquerque in particular to be one of the most dangerous places in the nation to walk, Jennifer's death might just be another number.

For Marlene McDargh, 43, her husband, Bill, 50, and daughter Heather, now 15, it has been a life-shattering tragedy with repercussions that never seem to cease.

Jennifer McDargh was the only biological child of the McDarghs who each brought older children to this second marriage for both.

Jennifer was an Apache Elementary school student renowned for her artwork. And she was Heather's constant companion, the only one of the family's six children close to her in age and temperament.

The four adult children no longer live at home and have "focused on other things," since the incident, says Marlene McDargh, who now works at Sandia Manor Care as an assessment specialist. But for Marlene, Bill and Heather McDargh, the effect of Jennifer's death came close to shattering their world.

"It was a truly life-changing experience, and you don't see life the same way you did before," Marlene McDargh says. "What was important before, isn't now."

After the initial shock, she buried herself in her work, sometimes spending more than 60 hours a week on the job, and devoted any remaining time to a heartbroken and confused Heather.

In counseling from the start, Marlene McDargh was, in time, able to talk about her loss and find the will to continue on.

Bill McDargh, however, found it more difficult.

He spent hours looking at the photographs from Jennifer's funeral, visiting her grave and gazing at a "little shrine to Jenny" his wife says he had set up at home for two years after Jennifer's death.

Earlier this year, Bill McDargh, who had refused to go into counseling, admitted in a telephone interview that his daughter's death was "a big void nothing can fill" and that he often felt he was "just living out his time until I can be with her again."

In May, that perspective became untenable for Marlene McDargh. Reluctantly but resolutely, she made plans to move out of the family's home with Heather.

"I asked him, 'How do you put yourself through this?'" Marlene McDargh says. "And he said, 'I don't ever want to forget.' Well, I don't want to forget, either but I don't want to live in it."

The McDarghs teetered on the brink of becoming another statistic in the ranks of the many couples whose marriages fall apart after the death of a child. The paths they had chosen to deal with the crisis seemed too divergent.

"With a tragedy like this, it goes one of two ways," Marlene McDargh says. "You either find a way to move on, or you dwell in it and it eats you up. There's no middle ground."

But the threat of his wife and daughter's departure and concerned comments from friends spurred Bill McDargh to get some help and to take the first cautious steps in moving on. The past five months have seen the couple's relationship begin to mend and heal.

"It was a wake-up call, and he's starting to look at life from a different perspective," a grateful Marlene McDargh says. "To not look at just the losses but to look at what's left."

On July 7, the McDarghs quietly celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary. They've turned their attention to Heather, who misses the buddy who used to write songs and choreograph routines with her. Now she performs solo regularly at her church and school.

Marlene McDargh says Heather has chosen not to see a counselor but talks openly with her about Jennifer.

The McDarghs have also tried to resolve their feelings of anger toward the city for the confusing design of the intersection Jennifer was crossing, which they say offered a young child too many options.

"It's a mixed message with both a bridge and a crosswalk," Marlene McDargh says. "When you're dealing with children, they can't reason that out. Kids think they're invincible."

She says that, in their grief, they missed the 90-day deadline for notifying the city that they intended to file a lawsuit, or they would have pursued legal action.

"They need to do something about pedestrian safety here," she says. "When will it change? When the mayor's kid or a traffic engineer's kid gets killed? I don't feel they're really all that concerned."

Dave Harmon, manager of the Traffic Engineering Division for the city, admits overpasses have proved to be a poor solution for pedestrian safety in Albuquerque.

"They're expensive, and people just don't like to use them," Harmon says. "People want to just go directly from here to there."

There are still difficult days for the McDargh family. Marlene gets a painful reminder every time she sees her daughter's friends reaching a new milestone buying their first bra, for example, or going to a dance.

And though the shrine he once created has given way to a simple picture of Jennifer on his office wall, Bill McDargh still visits his daughter's grave once a week.

"We talk about memories, but we don't talk about the experience of the pain," Marlene McDargh says. "But there will always be those moments when you are just overwhelmed with tears.

"That will never go away."