Yvette Flores has replayed the scene in her mind hundreds of times. The San Jose woman imagines her husband riding his Indian motorcycle along a two-lane stretch of road on Mount Hamilton. Suddenly, a car is heading right at him. He veers off the road, crashes, and falls 15 feet down an embankment.

David Flores, an experienced rider, dies in the crash.

The circumstances surrounding Flores’ death on Dec. 23, 2007, remain a mystery. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department found his body and crashed motorcycle about eight hours after his riding partner that day reported him missing.

Yvette Flores believes a driver accidentally strayed into her husband’s lane, forced him off the road and panicked before leaving the scene.

She can’t help but speculate.

“I try not to because it starts making a cloud over my head,” Flores said. “I get really down. I know it was his time to go, but what happened? If a tire blew out, I could see. That unknown keeps making life not be real at times.”

Not knowing details has made the loss especially difficult for Yvette Flores and her three children, ages 31, 24 and 21.

“It’s been a roller-coaster of emotions for them,” Flores said. “It’s as if it happened a month ago.”

The investigation by the California Highway Patrol indicated David Flores was traveling north on Clayton Road near Mount Hamilton Road at an unknown speed when he moved left across the southbound lane and continued down a steep dirt embankment. He was ejected from the motorcycle.

The CHP said this week it has closed its investigation, a development that surprised Yvette Flores, who thought the case was still open. Officers have previously told Flores she may never find out what caused her husband’s fatal crash.

Still, Flores hopes that someone with information — maybe that driver she sees in her mind — will come forward with the answers.

“If it was my scenario, maybe they will have a change of heart and anonymously tell us what happened that day so we can close that chapter,” said Flores, who has visited the accident site numerous times.

David Flores was an avid and experienced motorcycle rider when he went for an afternoon ride that day with a friend, who was a beginning rider. David Flores, 47, was more experienced than most of his riding partners and would often get ahead, then pull to the side of the road and wait for his friend to catch up, his wife said.

That’s apparently what he did on the day he died. But the friend couldn’t find him and called 911 around noon to report him missing.

“My husband took him on an easy road,” Yvette Flores said.

The autopsy report ruled that David Flores’ death was caused by blunt force trauma to the head, according to his wife. David Flores was wearing a helmet at the time of the crash. There was no indication of drugs or alcohol in his system, and the coroner didn’t find that he suffered a medical emergency such as a heart attack, Yvette Flores said. The motorcycle also checked out mechanically.

David Flores’ three children continue to struggle with their father’s death, especially around the holidays; he died two days before Christmas.

The holiday lights that David Flores put up on his house in December 2007 have not been taken down and have not been turned on, his wife said. Before her husband’s death, the family would go all-out with holiday decorations, including putting a large blow-up Santa Claus on the front lawn.

This year, the Flores family might pick up a small tree and nothing else.

“I don’t even want to celebrate Christmas,” Yvette Flores said. “I just don’t have the zest for holidays.”

Contact Mark Gomez at 408-920-5869.