It has been almost 20 months since Christine Candelmo was killed in a Windham car accident caused by a drunk driver, and the hole she left in the hearts of her loved ones has not closed at all.

“As far as closure goes, I don’t understand. There is not going to be any closure because you are not going to forget,” said her father, Ed Candelmo of Limerick. “There’s not one day that goes by that I don’t think about Christine. There is not going to be any closure until I die.”

Last week, Jeffrey Morse, 25, of Windham, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and operating under the influence in the December 2006 accident that killed the 37-year-old Candelmo and injured her two children. Prosecutors are seeking a six-year prison term for Morse, who awaits a sentencing hearing later this month.

Morse was driving his pickup truck along Route 202 when he failed to stop at the Falmouth Road intersection. Morse’s 2006 Chevy hit Candelmo’s 1995 Toyota Corolla. Candelmo’s car then ricocheted into a roadside tree before coming to rest in a driveway at 343 Falmouth Road.

Candelmo’s 2-year-old son, Nolan Cammack, suffered a brain injury in the accident, and her 13-year-old daughter, Courtney Candelmo, was hurt as well. In one split second, the accident took their mother, and divided their family. Nolan now lives with his father in Orrington, and the distance keeps him from regularly seeing his sister, who just moved to her grandfather’s house in Limerick.

“It’s like she (Courtney) lost both of them the same night,” said Ed Candelmo.

Courtney, who turned 15 on April 21, has not been the same since the accident, Candelmo said. She is now living in her third home since then, and though everybody involved has tried their best, it has been a rough time, he said.

“It’s been really bad on her,” said Candelmo. “She’s been in counselling since this. It’s really affected her. It’s a tough age when things are normal.”

Nolan’s brain injury has healed, said Candelmo, who talks to his grandson over the phone. But doctors are not sure if the injury will cause problems as he grows.

Even as the family has helped the children recover from the aftermath of the accident, they have had to deal with their feelings of sadness and mourning.

Candelmo has attended Morse’s court hearings over the past year-and-a-half, and said he was upset at the speed of the process, and at what he saw as Morse’s indifference to his crime. Morse, said Candelmo, acted “like he was there for a speeding ticket violation.”

He often thinks of the time before the accident, when he would sympathize with those who had lost a son or daughter.

“I thought I knew how they felt,” he said. “I didn’t. I do know.”

Christine CandelmoJeffrey Morse