Photos by JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

David Sirry (left) and his son David Allen are comforted by Sirry's fiancee, Lois Browning, at the graves of Joyce and Betty Marie Sirry.

David Allen Sirry, 10, holds the last school portrait of his sister Betty Marie (above) before she and his mother, Joyce (left), were struck and killed by a car in 2004. David just finished fourth grade at Shawsville Elementary School and lives with his father. He still has frequent nightmares about the death of his sister.

JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

David Sirry pauses as he recounts his former wife and daughter's deaths. His son David Allen, 10, who has Fragile X syndrome waits for him in the doorway.

SHAWSVILLE -- To this day, David Sirry pictures the horrific scene on the side of U.S. 460: His wife, her hands outstretched, surrounded by rescue workers, and the body of his 6-year-old daughter, covered in a white sheet.

It was five years ago when Sirry's world changed in an instant. As his wife of nine years and their daughter made their daily walk, hand in hand, along the highway, a car ran off the side of the road and struck them both on June 26, 2004.

Joyce Sirry, 44, died less than an hour after the crash at a hospital. Betty Marie Sirry died at the scene.

David Sirry got there just after Betty Marie's body was covered. He moved the sheet to hold his daughter's hand.

"I told her I loved her and David Allen loved her," he said Thursday as he sat on the porch of his Shawsville home with his 10-year-old son, David Allen Sirry, and his fiancee, Lois Browning. "They were just my life, you know."

David Sirry said he has tried to move on, but still struggles with the image of the crash and with thoughts of what life might be like if Joyce Sirry and Betty Marie were still alive.

He temporarily lost his memory after the crash and had to take medication. He sees a counselor and has a hard time keeping work. His oldest son, Kevin, lives with other family members.

Sirry never returned to their home in the Shawsville Mobile Home Park. He lived with Joyce Sirry's family members for a while, then bought a 1940s farmhouse off Willis Hollow Road. Pictures of Joyce Sirry and Betty Marie are scattered throughout it. Their graves are behind it. Sirry had them moved there a couple months after they died.

"I go up there every day," he said.

Christopher Matthew Hight of Christiansburg, the driver of the 1987 Pontiac Grand Am that struck the mother and daughter, pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter in March 2005. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison with 16 years and four months suspended and ordered to five years of probation.

Sirry said he hasn't seen any of the $5.2 million he was awarded in civil suits related to the crash. Hight did reimburse him for medication he took, he said.

"Me, David Allen and Lois, we've just been making it by the skin of our teeth," Sirry said.

Browning said she and Sirry plan to marry when her divorce is finalized, as soon as next month.

Browning said she understands how much Sirry misses his wife and daughter and always tries to be there for him. She and Sirry even placed David Allen's bed at the foot of their own because he has nightmares about his sister.

David Allen has Fragile X syndrome, a hereditary condition that results in mental impairment. He has no memory of the day his sister and mother were killed, Sirry said, but he talks often about Betty Marie.

Each night, he says good night to Betty Marie's stuffed lamb, Lambie, and Joyce Sirry's stuffed Shar-Pei, which he calls "Mommy's puppy."

Monday, David Sirry got an unexpected call from Chris Widrig, the principal of Shawsville Elementary School, where David Allen just finished the fourth grade and Betty Marie would have just finished the fifth.

The fifth-grade class had made a T-shirt with all the students' names. Below the names are the words: "In memory of Betty Marie Sirry."

Widrig said the fifth-grade teachers and students remember Betty Marie fondly and wanted to memorialize her. Her picture still hangs in the library, he said.

Sirry wore the T-shirt Thursday. "This here really touched me deep," he said.

It's things like that and people like Browning and David Allen that help him go on, Sirry said.

For him, he said, the five-year anniversary of the deaths of Joyce Sirry and Betty Marie is a day just like any other.

"Every day is an anniversary," he said. "Every 26th of every month is an anniversary.

"It's another day without them. It's another year without them."