That's not the cruelest irony.

The cruelest irony is this:

Melissa was in bed at 2:30 a.m. when her boyfriend, in a bar much of the night, called her for a ride. So she woke her daughter, Jasta, 4, buckled her in the car seat, and went to pick him up.

On the way, Melissa's car was hit - by a drunk driver.

Jasta died within hours. Melissa fell into a coma, near death.

Outwardly, four years later, Melissa bears only the faintest physical remnants from the crash: an occasional loss of balance, a scar where her tracheotomy was. She can walk, work, even drive at times.

But she still struggles with the lasting effects of her brain being shaken like a can of paint in a mixer.

Her short-term memory was permanently damaged. She won't go to the mall because she can't remember where she parked. She'll call her mother . . . then call again because she forgot she already called her.

She recently started working evenings, cleaning an office in Fairless Hills. When she moves the waiting-room chairs to mop, she can't remember how to put them back. She must study a photograph.

The brain injury also wiped out many memories of her daughter - their last Christmas together, their last Halloween, when the pictures show Jasta dressed as Cinderella.

"I want more than anything to be able to remember all the little things about her, and it's hard," Melissa said.

When she's alone in her room, Melissa, now 31, still tries desperately to remember that fatal night. She wants to ask herself these questions: "Why did I agree to go? Didn't I see the drunk driver coming?"

A shy teenager

As a teenager, Melissa Sweeney was shy, an introvert even, who wouldn't go through a fast-food drive-thru alone. After her parents divorced and her mother moved to the Neshaminy district, Melissa couldn't bring herself to go to a new high school.

Her mother, Donna Daubenspeck, would drive her to school and pull Melissa out of the car, but she'd hide out in the bathroom.

Then at 19, Melissa ran off with a carnival worker. Daubenspeck called her son and said, "You better talk some sense into your sister," but nobody had any luck. The carny got into drugs, went to jail.

"The only thing good that came out of it was Jasta," Melissa's brother, John Sweeney Jr., said of the relationship. "That girl was basically an angel from day one."

For Jasta's sake, Melissa began emerging from her shell, to be her advocate, her guide, her mother. One example is their trip to Disney World in 2002 - a surviving memory that Melissa treasures.

"I remember she was so scared to meet Cinderella because of how much she loved her," Melissa said. "All she did was talk about how she couldn't wait to . . . tell her that she was beautiful.