September 6, 2006
My auto accident happened eleven months, twenty one days, and approximately nineteen hours before I decided to write in this forum about what happened.
You may ask why did I take so long to write about this? Well, for a long time I didn’t feel ready. I’d sit down to write and either be met with a mental brick wall or I’d be angry all day after attempting to write about it.
Since I am at a point that I am feeling angry all the time anyway the outburst wouldn’t be an issue now because people wouldn’t notice much difference. Anyhow, as the first anniversary approaches I feel like writing about everything may help things. I can’t seem to leave the subject alone even though everyone else would just like to forget this ever happened to me.
Before my accident, I thought these horrific kind of events happened to other people. I’d see news stories and biographies of courageous people who learned how to live their life again. I’d think gee, what a nice story. How brave of that person to come out of those trials a stronger person. Good for that stranger who learned to walk again and thank God it didn’t happen to me or someone I knew. To actually live through these things is a different matter all together.
The day of the accident was just like any other day I got up did my usual routine. I was especially nervous from the moment I opened my eyes because I was planning for our annual trip to the family cottage in Mackinaw Michigan. We had to pick up our serviced car from our mechanic and to add to everything else we had to baby-sit my parent’s dogs because they had an out of town trip.
I usually wouldn’t have agreed to sit with the dogs so soon before vacation but recently their oldest male dog; Jiggs had a stroke and was unable to be kenneled. To put him in a kennel would have killed him. As a side note he died this past April due to colon cancer. My family thinks that God gave Jiggs back to us so that he could help us get through this accident. He was more than a dog to us; he was a family member.
On top of all this I had to get the laundry done for the week and get us packed for Michigan as well as finish a last minute merchandizing trip for my job with Crossmark Corporation. To say the least I was panicked at the thought of trying to finish all this up in three days before vacation.
As a result my husband and I were arguing. He was an insurance agent for a nationally known agency and he still had a few appointments to get through that day. This meant everything else was on my shoulders and I was pissed. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and my husband was moving at a slower pace than what I'd have liked and I was in a hurry. I wanted to get going and get things done, he seemed to be getting slower and slower the more I wanted to pick up the pace. We had to pick up the car at the mechanics together because one of us had to give the other a ride so that both of us would have access to a car. I still had to get to my parent’s house in another town in time to feed their dogs. The dogs hate to be fed late don’t ask how I know I just do.
I chalked it up to nerves and the need for a break. I thought I’d feel better as soon as we crossed the border from Ohio to Michigan. Since this accident I have learned to pay attention to my feelings even if it's inconvenient, pisses people off, whatever. If I don't listen to myself there could be far more dire consequences to pay.
My husband and I were about to leave for our mechanics when I looked at him and said "something’s wrong, I have a bad feeling". He agreed that he had the same bad feeling too but we continued to fuss and grump at each other. Again before I went out the front door of our house with my husband, I wondered If I should take our then four year old Australian Blue Healer, Foster with me. Don't worry something told both of us not to do that and my dog is happily sitting in my kitchen as I write.
Anyway we left for the mechanics house. Our mechanic has been a great friend of our family since my husband was a boy. He and my husband’s dad used to work at the same factory together and were friends for many years until my father in law's death of a massive heart attack two years before. He had even promised to look after my husband’s mom for him when my father in law looked ill for a few months before his death.
We arrived at the mechanics house, and he wasn’t there. I took that as the perfect opportunity to remind my husband that if we’d been there sooner then we wouldn’t have missed him and how he might improve that problem in the future . My nagging abilities were at Olympic Gold Medal level that day. We continued to bicker for a few more minutes about weather we should leave the money for the mechanic because we knew the total and leave with the car since I thought the keys were on the front seat. He had even said it was ok to do this as we’d done this before. My husband couldn't find the damn key. I had a million things to do and everyone was moving at a snail’s pace. During this fuss, the mechanic finally arrived and made our argument moot but I was unwilling to let it go. We tried to act as if we weren’t fighting but the mechanic could tell something was wrong. He offered us some of the huge vegetables from his garden; a few tomatoes and green peppers. I was so excited, I was going to use them to make us some stuffed peppers. I forgot about the vegetables after the first night in the hospital and didn’t remember about them until several months later.
I got in the car and my husband came over to the passenger side wanting to kiss me good-bye even if I didn’t one because I was mad. He said he loved me I grudgingly said that I loved him too and we agreed we’d meet back at out house before he went on to his appointment. My husband pulled out before me and as I was about to turn off of the road our mechanic lives on, I thought I’d better turn off the radio because I'd heard that good percentage of auto accidents were caused by fiddling with the radio. This fact, nagged at me for several weeks before the accident, always present whenever I got into a car. Why the hell didn’t I listen to my gut? There was practically a neon sign in front of us saying you might be in an auto accident so please be careful. I drove up a road and turned the radio back on, I couldn’t stand it. I pulled up at a stop sign and decided to turn off the radio again. I was a bundle of nerves. I let several cars through before I pulled ahead.
Unfortunately I didn’t see the silver Jaguar coming toward me on the driver’s side . My car was t-boned, hit broad side. In a momement my life changed forever. The million things I had to suddenly mattered very little. My argument with my husband mattered very little. Being right also did not matter. All that did matter was the exquisite pain in my back and hips and the shattered windshield in front of me.
It’s now just past midnight, I still haven’t eaten dinner and I’m going to have to find some happy thoughts before I attempt sleep if I don’t want nightmares. I’ll continue what happened later.