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A parent's lament: `All of a sudden she's gone' Ashland 3-year-old dies following simple fall By Chris Bristol of the Mail Tribune ASHLAND -- Of all the funerals in the Rogue Valley today, surely none can be as sad as the one for Abigail Crawford. Barely a week ago, Abby was the typical 3-year-old terror. She liked coloring outside the lines (her "artwork" frequently adorned the walls at home), and she was hard on her toys. To her, dolls were made for taking apart. Especially the Barbies. Abby died in her father's arms Tuesday. After she was brain dead for three days, her parents had asked the doctors to take her off life support. Neil and Evie Crawford still can't believe it. "One day she's there, and then all of a sudden she's just gone," Neil Crawford said. "It's been a bad dream, everything that's happened. It just seemed like a bump." The bump came from a simple spill, the kind of wipeouts little kids have all the time. But unlike most bumps and bruises, this one was bad. Nobody knew it, not her parents or the doctors or anybody, but Abby was starting to die. What happened was this: Abby had hitched a ride on her sister Laura's hip, when 10-year-old Laura tripped over a crack in the driveway. She fell to her knees, and Abby snapped backward and hit the back of her head on the pavement. Her parents saw it happen. The girls had just escorted a neighbor girl home, and since it was late, Neil and Evie stood at the door of their home on Wightman Street to make sure they made it back safely. "Abby got right up," Neil said. "It didn't knock her out, but she was staggering a bit, which scared us, so we took her right in (to the emergency room)." That was Friday night, Oct. 8. She seemed OK at first, but not the next day. Even though two Ashland doctors examined her in less than 12 hours, not until Sunday morning did a neurosurgeon figure out she had fractured her skull. By then it was too late. She was airlifted to Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, but the damage from a huge blood clot on the brain was too great. It all happened from Friday to Tuesday. Her death has been classified an accident. Abby is to be buried today. Neil Crawford said he holds no grudges about his daughter's medical care. "We live in a pretty broken world, and things happen and mistakes are made," he said. "Unfortunately, stuff like this happens to families every day." The child was a firebrand, he said. If you gave her an inch, she would take the whole country. That's the way she was. And now she's gone. "She disappeared in a heartbeat," he said. "It's just going to take a little time for all of us to come to the realization that it's happened, and go on." A memorial fund has been established at the Bank of America to help the Crawford family with funeral and medical expenses. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA