Part 2: The Impact

We were stopped again. Half in the lane, half not.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I tried to look around and take stock of the situation. I had to find my phone. We needed the cops and probably ambulances. I wasn’t sure if everyone was okay. I looked for it frantically as my Dad and I both asked if everyone was all right. My Mom and I both said yes and he was out of the car like a shot.

“Oh shit!” came out of my mouth before I’d even thought it completely. I know my Dad well enough to know that he was going to be dangerously livid with whoever hit us and put us in danger. It will always be his first instinct to protect us. Knowing this, seeing his face, the fury in it, and the way he strode the distance between the two vehicles only proved me right. I threw myself across the backseat and all the clutter, opened the door only to realize I’d lost my shoes somewhere in the car during the crash. No time to look. I was afraid of stepping on glass should there be any and causing more problems, but I was prepared to walk over broken glass to keep my Dad from killing this guy. He had no idea what was coming his way.

My Dad ripped open the man’s truck door, pointed at him, and yelled a few choice words, which I approved of somewhere in the back of my mind.

I screamed to my Dad from the door of our truck. I knew he didn’t hear me over the roar in his ears or see anything but the red in his eyes.

“Daddy! Don’t!” I screamed, and – whether he heard me or not – I saw his mind instantly start to operate normally again. He said a few more words to the guy and strode back to us.

He moved the truck to the side of the road as two construction workers sprinted to clear the path in the cones for us and check on us.

All of this, every thought, every decision, every action took place in under 90 seconds at most. My Mom called the cops and seemed a little foggy and confused about it all. I just thought she was in a bit of shock. I was talking to her as my Dad talked to the construction workers, assessed the damage, and handled things with the cops once they arrived.

“Stay in the car,” he told us.

Of course, my Mom didn’t listen. She got out and walked to see the damage. He told her to get back in the car and I saw her coming back to get in. I was trying to straighten things up in the truck and find where everything had landed. I looked up as my Mom started to pass my window. My Dad and the two construction workers were standing just a couple steps away.

“Tony,” that’s all she said, quietly. Just his name. Then her body loosened. Her knees buckled and all three men dove to catch her. She seemed semi-conscious for about 2 seconds before her whole body went completely limp and her eyes closed.

“Tina!” my Dad yelled as they lifted her into the truck.

“Tina!”

“Mom!”

“Tina! Wake up! Tina!”

I choked back sobs as I grabbed her head to steady her neck in case it was hurt. I contorted my body to reach the button to lay her seat back.

“Tina!”

I was fighting to stay in control, to help one of the construction workers call for an ambulance, and the other and my dad to wake her up.

To hear my Dad put so much love into one word – her name tore me apart. I knew, as if I had ever doubted, how much he loved her and that if anything were ever to happen to her his world would be wrecked – completely.

Through the fear of losing her, my mind registered what I was seeing, processed and analyzed it in a way that I do, and all I could think was, “Damn, to be loved like that.”

She came-to within two minutes or so. She put her hand on her head immediately and asked what happened, then said she felt sick. I grabbed the first thing I could think of and reach (Cooper’s food bowl, which I dumped out), and thrust it in front of her face, grabbed her hair and let her throw up.

All of this took about 3 minutes. Those 3 minutes changed my life. To be honest, the less than 10 minutes all of this took changed my life, but those last few – they put everything into perspective.

They were hands down the most terrifying moments of my life. To see my mom go so limp, like the life had literally just been sucked right out of her was horrifying. To hear my Dad, screaming her name with all the terror and love in his soul, to see it in his face just ripped my heart to pieces. I was terrified that my mom was going to die, that we were going to be one of those stories where everyone is fine until they’re not and pass out and they never wake up.

The minutes and hours after were spent contacting family and friends, keeping them updated, giving medical personnel every piece of information they needed and I had at my disposal.

I had to take care of my family. Nothing else mattered. All the melodramas of my life, the sucker punch I’d been hit with earlier that morning didn’t matter. What did matter was my family. We were alive and okay. Bumped, bruised, sprained, and concussed, but alive.

There are a handful of moments in our lives that change its course.  In an instant, this wreck most certainly changed mine. It put into perspective all the little things I’d been sweating lately and reminded me what really matters: family, love, and living life to the fullest extent in the best I can. I cannot express to you the countless ways in which this wreck has impacted my thoughts, my priorities, and my life as a whole, but if I can tell you one – it is that I tell those I love and care about exactly what they mean to me, regardless of time, space, or circumstance because who knows what life is going to hit us with next?

Part 1: The Wreck

There are a handful of moments in our lives that change its course. Most times these are positive events – in retrospect, if not at the time of their occurrence. If we’re lucky enough, we are cognizant of them in the midst of their happening or in the moments immediately following.

I had one such event occur a little over a month ago on Saturday June 8^th in the middle of really one of the worst weeks of my life.

Wednesday, my family got word that our 12 year old cousin had passed away. The next day as we waited to hear about the funeral arrangements, my aunt called to tell us that our Granny (my dad’s grandma) had taken a turn for the worse. Friday, she called again and said they didn’t think Granny was going to make it through the night. She did. By then, the funeral arrangements had been made, and we were heading to Georgia and stopping by to say our goodbyes to Granny on the way.

Well…we didn’t get too far. About 3 miles South of Paducah, Kentucky to be exact. This is where we got hit with something else. I had just been dealt a personal sucker punch and was crying and talking about that with my parents when everything got thrown into a weird mix of fast-forward and slow motion.

I had been reading and stopped for a few minutes to check my Facebook (cue sucker punch) so I hadn’t been paying much attention to where we were or what was going on. However, somewhere in the back of my mind, it registered that we had slowed down. I figured construction and/or a traffic jam. It was both. Traffic stopped suddenly and my dad had to slam on the breaks, even though we were already going pretty slowly, to avoid rear-ending the car in front of us.

We stopped in time and had a second to breathe a sign of relief. My Dad and I both looked back to make sure no one was coming up behind us; he in his rearview mirror, and I by physically turning my upper body to see out of the back window. I always do this, as both a drive and a passenger because I like to know what’s coming.

The relief we experienced didn’t last long.

We looked back at the same time and saw a huge black truck coming in hot – straight at us at about 60 mph. I saw when he realized traffic was stopped and slam on his breaks before I quickly turned back around to face forward and my dad hollered out to us, “Brace yourselves. He’s gonna hit us!”

But it was already too late. He hit us at about 55 mph with us at a complete stop.

Everything happened so quickly. From the time we stopped to the moment of impact probably only lasted 10-15 seconds.

The sound of any crash is awful, but I’ve never heard anything like this one. Maybe because I was in it and so close to it since the truck bed was crunching and smashing directly behind me from the force of the GMC that rammed into us.

Stuff flew everywhere in the cab of our Ford F150. You know those scenes in movies or TV shows when the hero or heroine is involved in an accident and flip their car? They always let the other car be seen in real time, coming in fast toward the hero/heroine’s car, but they slow down the impact, the flip. The things, including and especially the people are floating weightlessly through the car for a few seconds in slow motion before they are put back in real time and are snapped back by their seat belts or are thrown from the car. Reality snaps into focus with the blink of an eye and then things move into fast -forward because people are rushing, rushing to see what happened and if everyone is all right. That is exactly how those few seconds happened for me.

I saw my dog Cooper laying on the center console between my parents in the front seat one second and the next – he wasn’t there anymore. Books, phones, cookies and donuts we had stopped to get from the bakery in West Frankfort: everything was suspended in the air until it smashed into something to stop its flight.

I saw my mom shoot forward at the impact, jerk as her seat belt caught, swing to the side, and smash her head against the window of her door. I’m not sure if I really heard her head hit the window or if I only imagined how it sounded, but I saw it – that much I know for sure. There was too much noise and chaos to know for sure. Real or imagined though, it was a horrifying sound I hope to never hear again.

I saw my Dad brace both hands on the wheel and concentrate on avoiding, once again, hitting the car in front of us. I didn’t spend much time worrying about this because 1) I trust him and his judgment implicitly, without question, and 2) it was out of our control at that point.

I fisted my hands, tucked my elbows, and put my body in a quasi-fetal position. The thought that crossed my mind in those seconds of impact were that if we were going to die I was glad I had written and given them letters telling them how much I love them, and how grateful I am for everything they’ve done and do for me, everything they’ve taught me. If we were or I was going to die, at least they’d know how much I love them.

I screamed as we were hit. Then it was over.