Mom with a message: stay focused, go home

February 27, 2008 05:39 pm

— By Libby Cluett
lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com
When she last spoke to her son, Cody Green, Sharon Southern said he was happy.
He had a fiancé who had moved to Lubbock, Texas, from Colorado four months earlier and he was helping put her through nursing school and looking toward the future. Green was in the process of furnishing his apartment and asked his mother for a landscape print he admired growing up. When her son was 5 years old, he would say, “I love you bigger than Houston” and at 21, he still ended his call with, “I love you.”
That Sunday was her last communication with her son. Two days later, on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006, while working for Granite Construction Company on the Marsha Sharp Freeway in Lubbock – a job his uncle helped him get nine months earlier – Green reached for something on the road and was struck and killed instantly by an 18-wheeler.
His mistake cost him his life and had a ripple effect among all who loved him.
With two main goals emerging from her son’s untimely death, Southern has begun a crusade – a focus on safety and helping other grieving parents.
Stay focused
On the safety side of her mission, Southern hopes sharing the story of her son’s death may save the lives of other road workers.
She started presenting to area Texas Department of Transportation workers about what it is like to lose a son who was unfocused for a split second.
“We all do it. We get in our own little world,” she said, whether from a personal problem or any number of causes. “I’ve done it. Cody thought he was invincible.”
Her message – “Stop, think and stay focused.”
“Stay Focused, Go Home Tonight” is a slogan Granite Construction put above the entrance to their site headquarters for the Lubbock freeway project. They added a shamrock to the sign – a symbol of Green’s heritage, which he wore in a tattoo on his arm.
Southern gave her first presentation to TxDOT workers in Weatherford on Monday. She said several workers stayed after the meeting to talk to her.
On Wednesday, she received a call from the woman who arranged Monday’s TxDOT program, telling Southern about a nearly fatal accident on Tuesday. According to the woman, one of the men who stayed to talk to Southern was at a job site on Interstate 20 in Hudson Oaks.
The woman said this crewmember never leaves his truck, but was out of it at this moment, when he suddenly felt a sense of danger. The woman said the worker turned and saw an 18-wheeler bearing down on him and ran for the ditch as fast as he could, barely missing the impact of the oncoming vehicle, which crushed his truck.
Southern said the woman told her, “Maybe what you said was at the front of his mind.” She said he told people he was thinking of Southern when he ran for safety.
“He told me I was his guardian angel,” Southern said of a phone call she had with the worker later on Wednesday. “I don’t think I can take credit for that, maybe my son was.”
“My main goal is to reach road crews and contractors as well as the public,” she said of her goal to help people be more aware in work zones.
“I had to bury my son on my proposed wedding date [in 2006],” she added. “I have to turn the negative of my son’s dying untimely into a positive by maybe helping someone else’s awareness.”
She said she wants to extend her campaign eventually to drivers and hopes people can “put my son’s face in their heart. It takes the public a minute to slow down [in a work zone].”
Grieving
“I sure miss him,” Southern said Thursday.
At the time of her son’s death, she worked in Wichita Falls, Texas. She recalls thinking of calling him at 11:30 a.m. on the day he died. According to his coworkers, Green died at 11:55 a.m.
“The one thankful thing is he died instantly,” she said.
When her office manager called her into a room at work later in the day, she wondered what was up. When she heard the words, “Cody’s been killed,” she said she thought, “No,” it couldn’t be.
Everything after that became a blur. “It’s amazing having to pick out your son’s casket and what he’s going to wear,” she said. She credits her new husband, Gary Southern, with helping her during this time before their wedding.
“I had Gary to lean on. He got me through planning the funeral – he took me to Eastland to get a monument and got me through all the things I had to do,” she recalled.
They had to postpone their Nov. 4, 2006, wedding date so Sharon Southern could bury her only child that day. Instead of the Las Vegas wedding they had planned, the Southerns married the following month in a small service in Wichita Falls by the same two preachers who delivered Cody’s eulogy. She remained at her job in Wichita Falls for another month then moved to Mineral Wells in January of 2007.
The newly grieving mother found herself in a new place with a new family and with relatively few around her who seemed to fully comprehend her situation.
“When I moved here, I didn’t know hardly anybody and was grieving,” she said.
“I needed someone to go to and talk about my feelings,” she recalls.
She found “an anchor” of support when her new sister-in-law, Debbie Webb, told her about a program at Rock Creek Baptist Church called FROG – Fully Rely on God. She started attending last March and is beginning her third six-week session.
“They’ve helped me so much. I don’t perceive I’ll stop going,” she said of the group that addresses loss, even related to events like divorce.
“I don’t think anyone can grasp losing a child until it happens to them,” she said, adding that she still dreams about the accident at night, playing it in her head even though she never saw it. She said she has spoken to her ex-husband who said he has a similar dream, but in his, he is driving the truck that struck and killed his son.
“I’m not going to be the same,” she said as she brought out a painting of her son, which Gary’s oldest daughter commissioned for her. “I want to talk to him.”
“It’s not a textbook [situation],” she said of the grief process. “The best people who have helped me are those who have been through it. It’s amazing the outpouring I’ve received.”
Southern brought out a laminated paper frog with a saying on it, which is given out at each meeting. In its message, this one states: “… Suffering doesn’t come our way for no reason and He seems especially efficient at using what we endure to mold our character …”
The outcome
She would not go to Lubbock until the first anniversary of her son’s death. What she thought was going to be a small, quiet tribute to her son near the location where he was killed, ended up drawing the media and numerous friends and road crews. She said that close to 20 TxDOT trucks drove up simultaneously with their lights flashing.
“It was amazing, it gave us chills,” she said.
Now, as a result of her loss, Southern wants to help others, whether presenting at TxDOT and other road construction safety meetings or helping those who have lost a child deal with the grieving process.
“I’m volunteering myself to any [organization that] wants to utilize me to speak about my experiences and how loosing a son can impact so many lives,” said Southern, who can be reached via e-mail at sharonmac928@aol.com.
At 8 a.m. Monday morning, she will address employees in the Mineral Wells TxDOT office at their safety meeting, urging them to be aware that someone wants them to come home and say, “I love you.”
“Everyone should always remember to say, ‘I love you.’ You never know when it’s your last time,” said Southern.

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