Carrying Her Heart

I have several out of town family and friends that visit my blog so my dad suggested I share this article that was written about the wreck. I remember so clearly being on the phone with this lady and thinking " i can't even form a sentence" and then I realized, this is my chance.Tell this woman how special Rachel is to you.Tell her what you know! I was amazed at how much was written. Usually they just mention that there was a wreck and thats it.I'm so thankful to Beth for this=
from the Beaumont Enterprise
UPDATE: Mom came upon wreck that killed daughter
By BETH RANKIN
September 17, 2009Posted: September 17, 2009, 8:42 AM CDT Last updated: September 18, 2009, 2:39 PM CDT

Suzette Ratcliff had just left her home in Vidor at 8:15 a.m. Thursday when she came upon a wreck at the corner of Decker Road and FM 105.
It took her a moment to realize that her 19-year-old daughter Rachel was inside the green Pontiac Sunfire that had collided with an 18-wheeler.
Instantly, she said, the lyrics to a song she had just heard popped into her head.
Christians never die, the song proclaimed. They just move away.
Rachel Clark, a 2008 graduate of VidorHigh School, had just left home when an 18-wheeler struck her car on the driver’s side.
Ratcliff said her daughter was already dead by the time she arrived at the scene.
Memorial Funeral Home of Vidor will handle funeral arrangements.
“I’m just so very tired,” Ratcliff said in a phone interview Thursday night. “Words fail me. I was very blessed to have her for those few years.”
Clark, who had recently worked as a production assistant at KBMT, had recently started a job at Sertino’s Restaurant. She was planning to go back to school, her mother said, even though she wasn’t quite sure what to study.
“She just knew she was so much bigger than where she was,” Ratcliff said. “The things she wanted to do she couldn’t do in this area.”
Those who knew Clark said she was a talented singer and photographer.
She used her music and photography skills to produce Power Point presentations for her church.
“She had a gift for being able to capture emotions with her photography,” Ratcliff said.
Kristen Stuck attended VidorHigh School with Clark and said they were good friends.
She recalled fond memories of a church scavenger hunt and a trip to Orlando to sing at Disney World with their high school choir.
“She was amazing,” said Stuck, a 19-year-old Vidor resident. “She was goofy and wacky and she could always brighten your day.”
Stuck said she had just arrived at work at Walgreens in Vidor when she received word that her friend had died.
“I didn’t believe it at all,” she said. “I wanted proof more than anything else. I didn’t want to believe it was her.”
Stuck said that among her graduating class, even those who didn’t know her were affected by her death.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “She was the first loss in our class. It’s definitely a hard hit to all of us whether we knew her or not.”
Ratcliff said funeral arrangements will be made today.
Although Rachel is gone, Ratcliff said she takes comfort in the words of the song she heard just before her daughter passed away.
“The next verse says that something’s never lost ,if you know where it is,” she said. “And I know where she is. And I take a lot of comfort in that.”