EDITOR'S NOTE: Highway memorials are prevalent along the highways of Newfoundland and Labrador. This four-part series aims to tell the stories behind the people some of them represent.
There are times as night sets in and snow begins to fall when Crystal Adams finds herself looking out her living room window in Shoal Harbour.
Her thoughts will drift to her youngest daughter, Denika, who is out with the family car. Crystal instinctively wants to call her daughter’s number to tell her it is time to come home.
Snapping out of her reverie, she remembers Denika isn’t coming home. Denika died when the vehicle she was a passenger in struck a moose on the evening of April 29, 2010.
Her boyfriend was driving the pair to St. John’s when the animal jumped on the highway in front of them.
Denika was just 18 years old. He had cuts to his head, shoulders and back. Denika died on the way to the hospital, somewhere between the crash site near Avondale and the Health Science Centre in St. John’s.
When a parent buries a child, it is never easy. Crystal will sometimes drop things repeatedly.
When she does, she’ll whisper under her breath for Denika to 'give it up'. Usually, the clumsiness will then stop.
"If I didn’t believe she was an angel and was there with us, I think it would be harder to get through,” said Crystal. “But, now you feel like you have a guardian angel and she is going to look after you.”
In memorial
Denika’s memorial is on a clearing just off the Trans-Canada Highway, a couple of minutes west of the Avondale access road, off the westbound lane. It has a garden, white cross, an angel statue and a wood cutout of Winnie the Pooh.
Crystal planted a pair of rose bushes and a burning bush whose bright red foliage would stand out in the fall. The burning bush was later eaten by a moose.
The memorial isn’t in the place where Denika died, but she’s still remembered there.
Her sister Melanie will drive past on the rare occasion she goes to St. John’s. She’ll see the familiar images from the highway and her thoughts immediately drift to Denika.
That’s when Melanie will talk to her sister.
“I tell her that I miss her and that I wish she was still here,” she said.
Crystal wants people who see the memorial from the highway to think of who it represents and how she died.
It's a call to the provincial government to do something about the moose population and try to keep them off the highways.
The moose that hit the car in which Denika was travelling had been seen in the area of the crash site three days prior. It broke Melanie’s heart to hear.
“I think half the reason I put (the memorial) there is to make people realize about the moose on the highways,” said Crystal.
If it saves one person from striking a moose on the highway, she will consider it a positive.
A prankster
Denika wasn’t the perfect student. She didn't bring home 100 per cent test marks and there were times she skipped school.
She loved the outdoors, a game of hockey and playing pranks. Her mother wasn’t sure if she loved hockey or the road trips to cheer on her team. Later, the local hockey association would name a most spirited award in her honour.
A young Denika could be mischievous.
When the town was doing some road work near the family home she once swiped one of the bright orange traffic cones.
The family was having a get-together when Denika approached with her prize.
She didn’t know an immediate family member would be attending, who was also an employee of the town. She saw him before he saw her. Denika quickly backtracked and put the cone back.
“There wasn’t a bad bone in her body,” said Crystal. “She would do something to make people laugh.”
“She isn’t always the main focus (of the dream), but she is there as she should be. She’s just there in my life as she should be. It's bittersweet. I like having the dream but it also makes me sad because she should still be here.”
A protector
Denika didn’t take kindly to any form of bullying. She was the type to step in and bring it to an end.
“Denika was one to pick up for the underdog,” said Crystal. “She was very outgoing. Those who knew her, knew her well.”
Crystal remembers talking to a woman she worked with about her daughter. The woman's granddaughter knew Denika.
The granddaughter was being bullied in high school and Denika served as her protector.
“(The granddaughter) said, ‘Nan, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have made it through high school,’” said Crystal. “It makes us very proud.”
Denika resonated with her classmates and an award presented at graduation every year was named by the school for Denika.
Crystal’s youngest daughter wanted to be a paramedic, although her mother doesn’t think she had the heart.
Still, she often thinks of her daughter and wonders what might have been. Dreams allow Denika to visit her mother and her older sister.
For Melanie, it happens often. In a recent dream, they’re squabbling over sharing a bedroom as sisters do, when an empty one sits at the end of the hallway.
“She isn’t always the main focus (of the dream), but she is there as she should be,” said Melanie. “She’s just there in my life as she should be.
“It's bittersweet. I like having the dream but it also makes me sad because she should still be here.”
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