Whoever survives a test,
whatever it may be, must tell the story.
That is his duty. –Elie Weisel
Preface
It took me years to remember as much as I do. It came
to me bit by bit; tiny drips to make a flood.
The story told by others, began to match my own memories. People say, It could have happened to anybody, at any time,
and I nod in placid agreement. But this
didn’t happen to anybody. This is the story about what happened to me, and the life-changing series of
events that divide my life into two polar periods; before and after. It is not meant to change how people view me
or give others insight into how to better face adversity, and it has no fairy-tale conclusion that will make readers feel good. Stories like this are just meant to be shared
so I am telling mine.
Chapter One
That morning, after a silent road trip from Lancaster
to Orange County, through the monotonous desert landscape, we finally reached
the airport. I made the early morning journey with my husband Gary and young son,
Harrison. As my husband unloaded his
baggage at the curb, I took the driver’s seat.
I recall his being upset about a situation regarding a job possibility for
me.
I had recently finished work for a teaching credential,
and had started the application process for a potential teaching position. But, I had placed a job interview on the back
burner so it would not interfere with a planned holiday trip to see my family
in Montana. He was not pleased that my priority was the trip, not the job, and voiced
his displeasure on that morning trip to the airport.
There probably was some exchange about meeting up
later that day, but I don’t remember. As he hustled toward check-in, I eased my
Volvo from the curb, and headed for the freeway.
My memories of that morning, the drive through dry,
barren desert towards our home in the Antelope Valley, may be vague, but they
are my memories. Sally Jesse Rafael’s
radio talk show kept me company, that I know, but I cannot pinpoint what the
topic was. For years I tried to recall
the exact topic, but reasoning with myself, I asked, What does it have to do with my life right now? My daughter, as an all-knowing, wise teenager often used that line and it
made sense to me.
The
Sally Jesse Rafael talk show’s subject
never did become clear. And many details
of the life shattering event that occurred, after the drive home, have never
made themselves apparent either.
This is the way I choose to understand the blank spots: My brain exists above and
beyond; it is separate from my self. It makes decisions what is best for my self. My brain sees no need for the memory of such
horrific trauma. My brain, therefore,
has not revealed the traumatic part of my story. That part
comes from the memories of others, and I can only repeat what I have
heard.
At first, the account of events was just an
explanation to me, and was pretty simple.
It was the reason I was in the hospital, the reason I did not remember
the ordeal that brought me there, and the reason I was in such lousy shape,
physically as well as mentally. I don’t
even remember asking those questions, but I guess I needed somewhere for my
brain to build from. So, the explanation went like this. Nurses and family simply said that I had been
in a car accident, and I hit my head, real hard, and that I’d get better
slowly. It’s not lost on me that his is
how I explain it to others, even today.
Then, other people wanted to know exactly what happened,
and they were given the more detailed, grisly version. It was told many times, by more than one family
member and many friends. And, because I too am human, I also know that it was
retold simply for its shock value; the macabre account of what happened after the airport drop-off.
Apparently, I arrived in Lancaster, and was to pack my
own bags for a flight later that day and join Gary in Arizona. This was the meet-up that we may have discussed at the airport curb. The plan was to watch our Alma mater’s
football team, the University of Oregon Ducks, play the Arizona State Sun
Devils, and celebrate the fact that I had made it through Cal State
Northridge’s teaching credential program unscathed. At some point, during that preparation, I
spoke to my neighbor on the phone about my son’s fussiness.
During a short conversation with my neighbor, I told
her I was going to drop off a job application at the school district office,
and would take my cranky baby, hoping he might nap. Packing up a baby was not unusual since I was
a stay-at-home, going-to-school mom, and my kids were constantly in-tow. The job
app was for the job that would interfere with our holiday plans, so I guess
Gary’s unhappiness had goaded me into submitting it after all.
I hoped the car ride might lull my crabby toddler to
sleep and he’d get the nap he desperately needed. After securing him in his car seat, placed
correctly, I might add, in the center of the back seat, we headed towards the
district office. The position of his car
seat will make the difference between his being alive today, and not, and those I’m a good mother feelings could surface here, but don’t.
Since years have passed since I was in that high
desert community, I can only picture avenues indicated by the letters of the
alphabet, and the perpendicular streets being numbered. The accident occurred on the corner of Avenue
I and 70th Street West. I
know this because it was in the paper, along with a picture of my wrecked car. There is a stop sign at the intersection, and
the question remains: Did I stop, and
study the road for on-coming traffic or did I role into the intersection, perhaps
turned around, attending to me unhappy child?
And, if I did stop and look, did I decide to cross, unaware of how fast
the truck barreling towards me, was traveling?
My lawyer-brother from Oregon was
asked, or maybe he offered, to come check things out. His investigation verified that, yes indeed,
it was my fault. My Volvo had appeared
from behind some bushes, in front of a truck hauling down a highway with a 45
mile per hour speed limit. Truck had the right of way. There’s also the story, again I have no
personal memory, of an officer visiting the hospital, with the intention of
serving a warrant. But, I was still in a
coma! I guess it determined that I was
just a frazzled housewife with an unruly toddler, who made a very bad
mistake. It was a boo-boo that would change my life indefinitely, and affected the
lives of my friends and family too.
The actual accident report remained
filed away for years. It moved with me
from California, to Oregon, to Washington, to Idaho, where I began writing
this, and then to Montana, where I now live.
The narrative of events that day lived in file labeled accident gathering dust. It wasn’t until I started to write this, that
I actually read it for the first time.
That must have been hard,
a friend ventured. But it wasn’t difficult. It was as if the
article was about some stranger’s car wreck. I was out of it for a long time, and regained my mental capacity slowly. Also, as many people who have suffered trauma
to the brain will attest to life a different person all together.
The report tells me that a witness
named Curt says he …heard a big bang…I
saw the pickup truck in the air and I saw the Volvo in the air… He continued, telling the investigator No, I didn’t know which way they were going
at all…But Dave, the one who saw the accident, knew exactly how they were
coming. A passenger in the truck
that hit us told Curt, who then told the investigator, their vehicle had been running about 50 mph. Even though I have
never met Curt, I feel a connection with him, as I read his words.
He said, what I
think that happened is she thought she was on 60th where there the
4-way stop was. I believe she fully felt
that there was a 4-way stop here.
Because I don’t think she was…she --- I just think she was aware enough
to know…
Charles, another witness who also was
close by, said he heard some brakes, and
I looked up and it looked like the wagon was stopped in the middle of the road
or it was crossing the road and then the truck hit it and it went up and I
heard this crash, and the car went up in the air. The truck spun around 180 degrees, and the
car went up onto a bank and slammed on its right side and bounced back up.
After our crashed cars settled,
Charles first ran to the driver of the truck, and then to our car. At my car the men heard crying and went first
to my son, and saw that his foot was pinned between the car seat, and
door. Charles yelled for a crow bar, and
was able to pry the door off my son’s tiny foot, and extract him from the
mess. Somebody named Ken took my baby,
and cleared his airway, as he was choking on his own blood. Charles then hollered for a fire extinguisher
as smoke was coming from under the dash.
His initial assessment of me was that I had a neck injury, some type of jaw injury, maybe a broken rib… a puncture
under the right arm. His appraisal
was near perfect, but the neck injury
turned out to be the head injury that will haunt me forever.
After struggling with my seat belt,
Charles and Dave pulled me from the car and propped me on my side, away from
the wreckage. Then, another shout for a
tool brought a cable cutter, which cut the battery cable, and the smoke under
the dashboard subsided.
Charles shared with the investigator
that it was Dave who saw the accident.
Dave, he said, told me that the
lady didn’t stop at the sign. Reading
further into the statement, Charles (whom I’ve never met either) also became an
unsung hero to me. He apparently was
emotional, and although the investigator told him that the information he was
providing was not critical to his investigation, Charles continued on…If the baby had been in the right driver
seat, the baby would have been dead. So
the position of the car seat had saved his life, but the accident had changed
its course entirely.
The impact had
been so great that it lifted both my car and the half-ton pick-up that I had
cut off, into the air. Charles had a row
of autos setting in his yard, and the whole bottom of my car was above them. They
were visible, under our vehicles in the air. The truck then spun, in mid-air, 180
degrees. My car did the same and upon
landing on its right side, on the road’s bank, all the car’s windows exploded. My Volvo’s right side was demolished, and the
wound Charles had seen, on my right arm, had come from the mangled passenger
side door.
My son and I were cleared from the ruble, both taken
from the terror that encased us briefly, but would be transported separately to
the hospital in Palmdale. Although Harrison
was not old enough to put his experiences into words, he heard the story many
times, and was quick to tell whoever was interested that he went to the
hospital in an ambulance, but his mommy got to go in a helicopter.
No comments:
Post a Comment