On the morning of Sept. 19, 16-year-old Sonia Luster was killed when she turned her car into the path of an oncoming pickup on her way to North Stokes High School.
Later that day, her mother, Dee Luster, had to walk into a room and say, "Yes, that is my child."
It was the hardest thing she has ever done. It's the hardest thing she ever expects to do.
"There is nothing else that could ever go wrong that would be worse," Luster said.
In the months since then, Luster has been dealing with a debilitating grief.
She still sleeps with the red shirt that Sonia wore the day before she died and that held a trace of Sonia's smell.
Luster, 47, has had to deal with other emotions as well.
She would later find out that when the accident happened her daughter was violating three rules that Luster had set for her. No passengers. Keep the proper following distance. Don't use Clyde Amos Road as a shortcut on her way to school. Sonia had a friend in the car (the friend was not seriously hurt), and, because she was following close behind a truck, her line of sight was not as good as it could have been as she turned onto Clyde Amos.
"She did everything wrong that day, and I have no idea why," Luster said.
Although Luster sometimes finds herself getting angry at her daughter, she hasn't spent much energy getting angry at God or wondering why this happened.
"It makes no sense to me," she said. "I'm not going to question it. I will get to a certain point, and I will stop myself. It's not going to bring her back."
Part of Luster still feels like spending her days in the fetal position hugging that red shirt.
She has chosen another path, though.
She honors her daughter's memory through a scholarship fund that she established and by working to close the intersection where her
daughter died so that no other parent has to experience what she has experienced.
After studying the intersection after the accident, officials with the N.C. Department of Transportation decided to make it safer by realigning it at a cost of $18,000. Luster wants more done, and she plans to take the steps necessary to get public officials to hold public hearings about closing Clyde Amos at 89.
"I cannot have another child's injury or death in my heart," she said. "No one should go through what I am going through right now."
An only child
Sonia Renee Luster was born on Dec. 19, 1991.
"She was born on my 30th birthday," Luster said. "It was a great gift."
At the time, Luster was married to Scott Luster. His work took the family to Pittsburgh when Sonia was 9 months old. Sonia, an only child, liked to dance -- she studied jazz, tap and ballet. She was 14 when Luster and her husband decided to go their separate ways, and Luster decided to move to Stokes County with Sonia.
"This is where my family is," Luster said.
For Sonia, leaving behind her friends and the city was hard. By the time a year had passed, she had accepted her fate and was working to make the best of it.
Sonia was tall -- 5-foot-10 -- and she was smart. She was taking honors-level classes and planning to become a physical therapist. She had yet to decide whether she wanted to go to UNC Asheville or the University of Pittsburgh.
She was giving and self-confident.
"She walked like a regal dancer," Luster said.
Sonia was funny, too -- she and her grandfather, Jerry Caruthers, might compare biceps muscles and trade boasts about who was stronger.
"We had fun," Caruthers said. "We kidded each other … I miss her every day."
Sonia was driving the 1996 Pontiac Sunfire that her mother had given her for her 16th birthday when the accident occurred about 7:20 a.m. Luster is a claims adjuster for Universal Insurance Co. in Winston-Salem. Her neighbor and friend, Tina Hudson, also works there, and, later that morning, Hudson's son, Travis, who goes to North Stokes, sent his mother a text message saying that someone had been in an accident.
A long, long wait
Luster knew that something bad had happened to Sonia when she called the school to check on her and was told that someone would call her in a few minutes. When the call came saying that officers with the N.C. Highway Patrol were coming to her office, she knew just how bad it was.
So did everyone else in the office. For much of the hour and a half that Luster sat and waited, co-worker David Carr, who has two daughters of his own, stood by her with his hand on her shoulder.
"It was literally one of the hardest things I have ever had to do knowing what the outcome was going to be," he said. "I was amazed at how well she was able to hold herself together."
The support from Carr and everyone else at work helped a lot, Luster said, To this day, there are times when she gets upset, she said, that she can feel his hand on her shoulder and it helps settle her down.
After Luster heard the news, Hudson drove her up to Stokes County so that she could identify her daughter's body. When she saw Sonia, she looked as if she were asleep. But, inside, the damage to her organs was so severe that only her corneas could be donated for transplant. Luster said she has found some solace in knowing that her daughter's corneas went to help two people.
Luster kept her daughter's cell phone, and the voice people hear when they leave a message is Sonia's. At the school, Sonia's parking space has been blocked off for the remainder of the year.
Luster drives a PT Cruiser with the custom license plate STVNTYLR, as in Steven Tyler, the lead singer of the band Aerosmith. "I have loved him since I was 13 years old," Luster said.
She and Sonia used to ride down the road in that car holding hands.
The North Stokes parking tag that hung from Sonia's mirror now hangs from the PT Cruiser's mirror.
After taking some time off, Luster went back to work. In the weeks that followed, some days were worse than others. Thanksgiving, their shared birthday and Christmas were -- as she expected them to be -- particularly rough. "I barely made it through Thanksgiving," she said.
One day that caught her off guard was March 19 -- the six-month anniversary of her daughter's death. She found herself reliving the day Sonia died.
Luster has gotten some help by talking to a psychiatrist and by going to grief-support groups sponsored by Hospice & Palliative CareCenter.
She took up kickboxing. That helped.
The biggest help, she has found, has come from the three F's -- faith, family, friends.
One positive thing to come out of the tragedy is her already strong connections to her family and friends have become even stronger.
"It has made me closer to them," she said.
She and her ex-husband have become closer, too. "Anything that happened to cause the divorce doesn't matter now," she said.
Living through her loss also has made her more willing to be open about her emotions. It seems to have had the same effect on others in her life as well.
Scholarship fund
The scholarship fund is up to about $2,400 so far -- thanks in large part to her friends at work.
And then there's her work on the road.
Students at North Stokes often use the unpaved Clyde Amos Road as a shortcut between N.C. 89 and Piney Grove Church Road, which leads to the school.
When traveling east on N.C. 89, the intersection with Clyde Amos is a Y, and some drivers don't slow down significantly before turning onto Clyde Amos. And, although there is a stop sign on Clyde Amos at N.C. 89, not all drivers come to a full stop.
Luster knows that her chances of getting the intersection closed are remote. Even so, she thinks it's important for her to work toward that.
"I think that my mission of getting the road closed is part of my healing process," she said.
She said she also thinks that, if getting the word out about the dangers of the intersection keeps other young people from being hurt and if hearing about her loss makes parents more aware of how precious their own children are, she will have accomplished a great deal.
Luster can imagine a day when things seem brighter. On that day, Luster has traded in the PT Cruiser for a Mustang -- Sonia loved Mustangs. It's a convertible, of course, and Luster is behind the wheel. Sonia is there, too.
"I envision myself driving down the road with her riding shotgun as an angel and us holding hands."
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
■ Contributions to the scholarship fund may be sent to: Sonia Luster Memorial Scholarship Fund, North Stokes High School, Attn: Cindy Ziglar, 1350 North Stokes School Road, Danbury, NC 27016. Make the check out to North Stokes High School and put Sonia Luster on the memo line.
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