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From the second Ashleigh Victoria Szabo was born on Aug. 5, 1980, her mother — like all mothers — had the same nagging fear.

"You always worry that something is going to happen to your baby," Treva Szabo said.

"They place a newborn in your arms, and at that magical moment, you become a parent. That's also the time the gray hairs appear.

"You can't help but worry about your kids, but after a while, you realize nothing bad may happen to you," Szabo said.

On May 28, 1999, Ashleigh, then a senior at Carlisle High School, nearly was ripped out of her mother's arms.

Ashleigh and her cousin, Celeste, drove to Carlisle to find out whether Ashleigh passed her English final, her the last piece to graduating.

She passed and they drove to a Germantown diner for a celebratory lunch.

Then they drove home, a trip they never finished. Celeste drove off the side of the road, compensated, but when the tire rims dug into the asphalt, the car flipped several times.

Celeste received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital a few hours later.

Ashleigh wasn't so lucky. She suffered multiple skull fractures and a severe brain injury.

She spent two weeks in the intensive care unit at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton and three months total. Then she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility in Cincinnati for three more months.

The doctors, probably the same ones who said Ashleigh would die within hours after the accident, told her parents, Ernie and Treva, to place her in a nursing home.

"We never considered it," her father said.

"We wanted her at our home," her mother said.

For the last eight years, Ashleigh has lived in a first-floor living room that was converted into a bedroom. The room is decorated with photos and Ashleigh's beautiful artwork, all reminders of happier times.

But there are stacks of medical textbooks, tables of medicines, and an upgraded Hill-Rom hospital bed that was delivered Friday morning.

Treva described Ashleigh's other hospital bed as "something from World War I."

"You don't know what this bed means to us," Treva told a group of Hill-Rom employees who installed the bed. "She's very happy."

With that, Ashleigh — unable to speak — lifted one finger. No words were needed.

Ashleigh requires around-the-clock medical care that's provided by her parents. Her mother sleeps only a few feet away in a small bed, and except for one night, has been at Ashleigh's side every day since the accident.

They don't make Mother's Day cards for people like Treva.

The hardest part of the last eight years came days after the accident. Doctors, not wanting to give the Szabos false hope, instead were pessimistic.

Or as Treva said, "They sucked the hope out of you. They told us all they could do was make her comfortable."

To help other parents dealing with a loved one with severe brain damage, the Szabos founded a nonprofit organization and created a Web site that provides educational information.

"We want to give them hope," Ernie said. "When this happens to you, you have no knowledge, no background."

Ashleigh has limited movement, but she seems to have very good cognitive skills, her parents said.

So today, maybe more than any day the rest of the year, Treva gives thanks that Ashleigh wasn't taken away eight years ago. Ashleigh probably never will be the same, but she's alive, and in the Szabo house, that matters most.

"How lucky I am to be her mom," Treva said. "This is the greatest gift in the world. Sometimes mothers take things for granted. We're all guilty of that ..."

Treva stopped. She glanced toward Ashleigh and they shared a smile. Mother to daughter.

"When I want to see my daughter," Treva said, "I don't have to go to the cemetery. I'm not the mother to her

memory."

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at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.