Written from the bedroom of the Torres residence at 14264 Haskell St., Nashville, Tennessee, on August 13, 2009, at 7:22 a.m., D.S.T.~

Dear Journal~

Julie here.  Julie Jasmine Torres.  Hope this finds y'all well!  As for me, I am doing great!!

On Monday (in just four more days), my mami is coming home from the hospital!!  She went in back in June after being injured by a drunken driver (she was struck by a car while getting the mail for an elderly, homebound neighbor); she spent weeks recovering. 

And now she's about ready to come home!!!!

Mami has been making improvements that have been nothing but extraordinary.  While she isn't walking yet, she is about healed from her broken bones, and she is eating/talking/laughing again; the old mami is starting to come out!  It's been nothing short of miraculous!!

Her doctors, therapists are very pleased at how far she's come along in her recovery.  They think she is going to be okay after weeks of uncertainty. 

Mami will probably come home in a wheelchair.  That's okay.  We will make things easier for her.  I will make sure that Trevino, Tray, and Torencio pick up after themselves and try to help me and their papi whenever mami needs anything.  I will also tell them to be gentle with mami as she isn't better yet, but that day will surely come; they will just have to learn to be patient.

I have gone and visited mami at the rehab place several times; it's a nice facility:  all roomy and open, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows, so the residents/patients can look out and see life that goes on about them.  The staff is friendly and very knowledgable in how to get their patients moving again, and the patients benefit from the genuine love, concern, and compassion they show them.

It is hard not having mami home because since I am the eldest child, I am the one who has to take her place.  With school being out for the summer and having to fill mami's shoes while she is in the hospital, I haven't had really much time for anything, especially when she was so critical back in June and July. 

I barely left the hospital; I was practically living there.  I didn't want to leave my mami, in case she had gotten worse or died; I wanted to be there for her.  Then she started getting better, and now I am back home for good, where I have been trying to hold the house/family together.

The stress I have been under has been monumental.  I've spent a lot of time crying or gnashing my teeth; I felt trapped.  Which is one reason why I have been writing in my journal, to help sort out my feelings, to let them out, so they don't eat me alive.

Since I've took up writing about the accident, about mami, I feel so much better.  I do know that things aren't over yet, as mami still recuperates, but things are definitely much improved than they were just a few short months back.

Well, I hear the boys stirring, so I will get them their breakfast, and get Tray's heart pills ready so he can take 'em.  I will then try to entertain my brothers until papi gets up.  I will write in here again soon; by then mami should be home!!  I can't wait!!  I have missed my mommy so much!!!!

Take care and may God bless you!  Just keep us in your prayers as we take care of my mami!  We could really use them!  Thanks in advance!

~Luv, your friend, Julie Jasmine.  :D

*To be continued.*