When I was 12, my father died. I was responsible for his death. We lived in north Jersey up until the time I was 11 when my family moved to the Jersey Shore. Our old house was near the Jersey Meadows, a breeding ground for mosquitoes during the summer months. According to my mother, Dad was worried about my reaction to being eaten alive each year by these marauders and thought that moving closer to the beach would alleviate the situation. Our family was about to grow to six in number with the anticipated birth of my baby sister, and the search for a larger home in another part of the state began. They found a new house to accommodate the growing brood in the subdivision of a little town called Shrewsbury. We settled in nicely that summer, sized up and made friends with the kids in the neighborhood, and seemed to adapt easily to our new environment. We entered our new school in the fall and I was relieved to find the nuns warm and friendly, quite unlike the ones I had up north. My little sister arrived on time, and since I was the oldest was told that I had more responsibility to help my mother around the house more and look after the boys. My dad commuted to Newark by train everyday where he worked as an engineer for Dupont. My mother seemed to be crying all the time. Later I came to realize that pregnant women do that. I thought I wasn’t helping her enough and tried to help her more.

On February 6, 1951, my mother took a bucket of water and a scrub brush to wash down the mud on the garage door hurled there by my brothers and their friends. She wanted to clean if off before my father came home. One of our neighbors came by and asked my mother if she had heard anything on the radio about a train wreck that just happened in Woodbridge on a shore bound commuter line. I could tell by the look on the neighbor’s face that something was wrong, terribly wrong. Each time the phone rang, my mother chanted… no, I haven’t heard anything, he should be home any minute, no I‘m fine, Carol’s feeding the baby, boys are across the street with a neighbor. It was already dark out. He was normally home by 6:30. Each time there was a sound outside, I prayed it was his car coming up the driveway. The night moved on. Neighbors came, the parish priest arrived, the phone continued to ring. Uncle Ed, my father’s only brother, called to tell my mother that he was going to the crash site. It was almost 11 o’clock when my uncle came through the door with the news we had braced ourselves for. My father was dead and it was all my fault. He was 35 years old.

Years later, I am in my early 30’s, married with two children living in Tampa, Florida. My husband had taken a transfer with his New York based company for a new position in the retail industry. I was a stay at home wife and mother, we had a lovely new home, active social life, and membership at a local country club where the children took swimming lessons and my husband and I played golf and tennis. On the outside we looked like the perfect family. Inside, I was miserable. I began having what were later diagnosed as anxiety attacks, also known as agoraphobia, fear of open spaces. I would have to leave a grocery store with a full basket behind and two confused children in tow. I could not be the second car in a line-up at a red light with another car behind me. I felt trapped in that position. Going out to dinner with my husband and friends became the next vehicle for the attacks. The panic would set in the minute we were seated in a restaurant. My left arm would go numb, my heart beat as if it were trying to break out of my chest. I would start to sweat, feel nauseated and dizzy. Once I got home I’d be fine, a bit shaken, but the symptoms miraculously disappeared. I found my husband becoming increasingly exasperated with me as these episodes continued. The incident that triggered my seeking help for this occurred when I was driving across the Howard Frankland bridge with a good friend and neighbor in a station wagon full of children. The bridge seemed to begin swaying, I had black spots dancing in front of my eyes and I felt like I was about to pass out. Fortunately, my quick-thinking friend just kept talking to me in an attempt to distract me from plunging all of us into Tampa Bay. Once over the bridge, I was able to relax and continue driving to the beach where we had planned to spend the weekend. Our husbands would join us that evening. My husband shrugged off the incident as one of my "moods."

I went to our family doctor, went through a battery of tests and was told there was nothing physically wrong with me. He suggested I see a psychiatrist and gave me a recommendation. My husband’s reaction was anything but supportive. I always thought you were crazy, Carol, he smugly announced, and now I’m sure of it. Convinced myself at this point that I was bordering on the stark raving mad, I resisted seeking that "kind" of help. God forbid anyone found out or even suspected I was crazy. I told myself that I could overcome this by myself and for awhile was able to go to the grocery store without incident and going out to social events became a little easier. I still could not cross a bridge as a driver or as a passenger without totally freezing up. My husband’s normal reserve became aloofness and distance. It soon became apparent that my marriage was coming apart at the seams. I had been taking diet pills prescribed by the family doctor, lost a great deal of weight, and seemed to be morphing into another person. My husband was working an inordinate amount of hours at the office, traveling out of town regularly, and I was left to my own devices and care of the children. I was anxious all the time, could not sit still, cried at the drop of a hat, had to constantly keep cleaning, and had trouble sleeping. Diet pills will do that, I soon realized. I became more vocal in expressing my needs that peeled away the veneer of this so-called perfect marriage. We had little or no communication, with each of us accusing the other of deeds comparable to war crimes. Each confrontation escalated into a major brawl. Feeling totally defeated at this point, my self-esteem at an all time low with guilt attacking me from all sides, I called to make an appointment with the psychiatrist.

The first session gave me reassurance that I was indeed not crazy and the doctor suggested joint counseling for the marriage. My husband went reluctantly to a session alone and the next three we attended together. After the last session, he announced that he did not need to go any more as there was nothing wrong with him, I was the one with all the problems. I continued with the sessions and noticed a remarkable improvement in my spirits. Still couldn’t drive over a bridge, but progress was being made. When my 35^th birthday drew near the anxiety attacks returned, but by now I had developed a host of coping skills to meet them head on. One evening, after getting the children in bed, I decided to take a long, hot bath to soak away the day’s events. I had a particularly heavy session with the doctor that morning and was feeling very edgy. The words, "if it weren’t for you we never would have moved here" resonated over and over in my head. I felt myself slipping into another high anxiety zone and as the water drained out of the tub, I wanted to go down the drain with it. My mother’s words came echoing back, this time louder and heavier. "If it weren’t for you we never would have moved here." This translated into "If it weren’t for me we never would have moved and my father would not have died." Emotionally, I was still 12 years old and reliving that awful night 23 years ago. Ironically, as I wrapped myself in a robe, my brother in Miami called and I dissolved in tears telling him what had just happened. I will always be grateful to him for being there when I needed that kind of support. He just listened to me, didn’t minimize my reaction to the situation, and assured me that everything would look better in the morning.

I called the doctor the next morning and got a 10 o’clock appointment with him. After getting the children off to school, I made my way to his office. I recanted the events of last evening and the pieces of the puzzle started to fit. We got to the bottom of my feeling responsible for my father’s death and my ever-present, long-standing feelings of guilt. I had never fully grieved my father’s death, had buried my feelings of responsibility for it, and the impending breakup of my marriage was bringing it all back. The move to Florida was evidently the catalyst that opened the Pandora’s box of my perceptions and feelings. Intellectually, I knew I was not responsible for my father’s death, but the 12 year-old in me, was sure of it. There was never any malice in my mother’s accusation; it was merely her way of rationalizing a terrible tragedy. She was dependent on my father for just about everything and was left with four children to raise on her own. My upcoming 35^th birthday brought about the fear that I was about to outlive my father or worse yet, about to die myself. As for the bridge thing, the train my father was riding in went over a temporary trestle at a high rate of speed causing the bridge to collapse, sending the first three cars onto the street.

My marriage ultimately came to an end after a two-year separation. I continued to see the doctor during most of this time and worked through most of my long-standing issues. I knew at one point that I would have to set out on my own in more ways than one. I no longer have anxiety attacks, crossing a bridge is now a walk in the park, and I’ve been on my own for almost 25 years now. Each year as February 6^th approaches I wonder what happened to those other children whose parents were lost in that accident. My life was one big train wreck there for awhile, and keeping that train on track has turned into an ongoing challenge.