On June 2nd, On Ashley Grimm's worst nightmare happened.
The mum-of-eight from Idaho was in a horrific car accident with five of her kids in the car. Tragically, the accident took her four-year-old son, Titus. Devastated, Ashley decided to share her heartbreak to remind others to make the most of their time with their kids.
The post begins with Ashley admitting that Titus wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. The little boy often unbuckled himself, and no matter what she tried, Ashley couldn’t get him to stay strapped in.
“We tried five point harness seats, boosters, I believe even zip ties at one point…but he always viewed it as a superhero challenge…on average, I would usually pull over three or four times on any given trip to firmly make him buckle up again.”
On the night that the accident occurred, Ashley failed to notice that Titus had decided to switch seats with his eight-year-old brother, so once again he had unbuckled himself.
Driving along the mountainous road up towards their house, Ashley was horrified to see a large rock rolling into her lane. She had to make a quick decision, saying she had three choices.
“I could try to straddle the rock, move to the oncoming lane which was a double line large curve with an angry river at the other side. Rock, head on collision, river. I chose the rock. I chose wrong."
The rock hit their van's axle, sending the van into the side of a cliff. Titus was killed straight away. Ashley said that her life was “ripped apart” instantly. While she and her eight-year-old son tried to lift the heavy van off Titus’ tiny body, he was already gone.
As if her grief wasn’t bad enough, she was horrified when just days later, news reports started doing the rounds of the crash – and commenters started calling her a bad mother.
They said “how I deserved it. How my children should be taken from me. I wanted to punch them, shake them,” she wrote. “Tell them how close we were, how hard I fought to keep him safe.”
She didn’t, though.
She chose to focus her post on urging parents to appreciate their kids whilst they’ve got them.
Describing how she has kissed her dead son’s face repeatedly, and picked out a superhero outfit for Titus to be buried in, she then told readers to “hold your babies tight.”
“Soak in their smell, look at the innocent sparkle in their eyes that is lost somewhere between childhood and adulthood,” she wrote. “Set down your phone and see them through the lens of your eyes not only the lens of your camera.”
She finished the piece reminding us how “blessed” we are to have “been entrusted with such unique, beautiful, tiny humans.” You can read Ashley's heartbreaking post in full below.
