Heather White of Chichester is grateful she took care of business – family business – before it was too late.

Her mother and stepfather, Cheryl and Carleton Thayer of Concord, died in a car crash in Hooksett earlier this month. Black ice caused their pickup truck to rotate 360 degrees before slamming into a utility pole.

Cheryl was 63, Carleton 70.

Four years earlier, however, White had opened a door, a barrier that Cheryl guarded closely. She invited her mom to the Olive Garden for White’s 40th birthday.

And there, before Cheryl could slip away or blanket her emotions, White got in close and reached out, thinking that enough time had passed. The life-is-too-short cliche was getting restless.

“I asked her to go with me,” said White, 44. “She was raised and taught for many years to get through relationships and not work on relationships. Our relationship was strained.”

Generational differences? Perhaps.

Life-changing. You bet. For the better.

Mother and daughter talked more often. Cheryl opened up, conversations got deeper, souls were bared.

Maybe that made it easier for White to beam about all the good deeds her mother had done. She certainly was proud of Carleton Thayer, her stepfather.

The couple met 36 years ago. Both had come from tough families, both had been married before and both knew quickly that they were good together. Great, in fact, White said in the obit she wrote.

“Hearing Carleton sing to Cheryl,” White wrote, “you could feel his devotion as he sang the words.”

White said they loved to dance, moving as one, always in sync.

“Their connection is a deep rooted and passionate love one can only wish for and few seldom achieve,” White wrote. “They found their home within one another.”

Like his wife, Carleton gave. His daughter wanted to be a veterinarian, so Carleton built a barn and put some animals in. Right there in the backyard, just to give her a head start.

White also called him an artist, with food, with carpentry, with painting. She said he was a dreamer, better at loving family than actually putting some of his odd ideas into action.

For example, Carleton was in the midst of doing his Dr. Frankenstein impression, trying to fuse two hotrod cars and then driving this new combo-car creation across the country.

Cheryl didn’t want to go.

Conversely, Carleton declined to jump from an airplane with Cheryl. White called her mother a thrill seeker.

She said she learned lessons by peering inside herself seven years ago, after her biological father had hydroplaned in Littleton, killed in a crash eerily similar to the scene last week on West River Road, just south of the Bow town line.

Blame the ever-fluctuating cycle of temperatures around here, the thawing and freezing, for creating this invisible, deadly black ice. That pattern and danger remain.

“I think my mom did everything she was supposed to do,” White said, referring to the breakthrough at the Olive Garden four years ago.

Meanwhile, Cheryl’s mother and White’s grandmother, Helen Barrett of Epsom, has taken a few falls in recent years, breaking an ankle and a kneecap. Cheryl lived nearby.

“She took care of me with my surgeries and shopping and she stopped by every day to see me,” Barrett said. “She did just about everything.”

On February 9, White found a wrapped box in her car, clandestinely delivered by her mother. She and Carleton died a few hours later. They were nearing great grandparent status. They were excited about that.

White cherishes the gifts she was able to exchange with Cheryl. The one four years ago, a new beginning, was a present for both of them, really.

The gift she found in her car recently, a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant, was hers and hers alone. It carried a message: “If I had one last breath, I would use it to tell you that I love you.”

A memorial service will be held Feb. 18 from 3 to 5 p.m. at Still Oaks Funeral and Memorial Home, 1217 Suncook Valley Highway, Epsom.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests you do one kind act for a stranger and live your life to the fullest.

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