Family works together to cope with car crash, deaths of 3 loved ones

SANDY — How do you go on after losing three family members in a single night? Keep in mind these are the three people who have arguably had the greatest impact on your life: your parents, who were indispensable in your being, and your wife, the only person you've spent more time with than your parents.

Eric Gustafson is going to try. The Sandy father has five children who need him. And three of those children were present at their and their father's most tragic moment in life.

That night went like this.

Thursday, Eric and LuAnne Gustafson were taking their three youngest children — Elaura, 16; Christopher, 14; and Elyssa, 10 — with Eric's parents, Jaret and Diane Gustafson, to Powell, Wyo., to watch daughter Elizabeth in her last two home basketball games of the season with Northwest College.

In a matter of hours, Eric would be calling home from a hospital to daughter Elise, 21, to tell her how the family's sport utility vehicle had slid on the ice outside South Pass, Wyo., how the SUV rolled and how her mom and grandpa didn't make it.

He would listen to her scream in shock, but could tell her that he and her siblings were battered and bruised, but OK. And that Grandma was OK, too, and was hardly injured.

Then, Eric and the kids would be taken in by a kindly bishop of the local LDS ward in Lander, Wyo. He'd try to sleep. But he couldn't.

And when the phone call from the hospital came at 4:30 a.m., he knew there was more bad news.

His mom had suffered a swift heart attack and died.

"The nurse said, 'Eric, I think some people know when it was their time to go,' " Eric said Saturday.

But you had to know Diane and Jaret Gustafson, who grew up as children next door to each other in East Millcreek back when the area was farms and orchards and fields.

"They had spent their whole life together," Eric said. "There is no doubt in my mind: She knew she didn't want to stay here without my dad."

It's like Jaret came and got his sweetheart, Diane.

But that brought Eric's void to a new level.

He and LuAnne would have been married for 25 years in August. Twenty-five years.

As reality began to settle over Eric and his children in Wyoming on Thursday, the unfairness of LuAnne's untimely death hit hard.

Ten-year-old Elyssa was lying next to her dad that night.

"Dad, I only got to be with Mom for 10 years," she told him.

LuAnne is the woman her family and friends call their "No. 1 cheerleader" and their "everything."

A steady stream of people have been sending condolences to the family and sharing stories about LuAnne. She sounds like Superwoman.