Ten Years After

It is quiet here this summer morning. The sun has just eased up over the line of woods to the east and only birds sing as I step out of my truck onto the blacktop road.  There is no traffic and the air smells of alfalfa and asphalt. This is a pretty typical intersection on a country road in southern Wisconsin.  One road has a stop sign and one does not. It’s quiet and peaceful. Yet, ten years ago - almost to the day - this sleepy intersection would become the setting for events that have altered my life in ways too numerous to count. The details of the event are rather simple. At dusk on a beautiful July evening, a drunk driver in a van ran through the stop sign on the north side of the road and plowed directly into the driver’s side of our Chevy Trailblazer. Fortunately, our children were not with us. Jeanette and I were going to visit friends who wanted to celebrate our wedding anniversary a day early before they moved out of state. I was spared much of the actual experience of the crash because –as the driver - I was unconscious. It was Jeanette who has had to live with the twisted steel and exploding glass for all this time. For me, most of it is a blur of images and pain. Screaming sirens, worried faces, broken vertebrae, spine injury, operating rooms, Vicodin. I missed four months of work and accompanied Jeanette for PTSD therapy. I’m still trying to make my right hand work correctly. It was brutal. But that is not what has brought me back to this intersection ten years down the road.

       Many people experience some type of traumatic injury. Car crashes, freak accidents, falls, etc. Those of us who have had such injuries struggle to understand why such things happen. Some get angry. Some are bitter. Some seem to shrug it off. ALL struggle. In my own case, I obsessed over the timing of the crash. Had I spent five seconds more playing catch with my daughter or adjusting the radio, I would have seen the van fly through the intersection. What are the odds that we would be at that exact location at the exact same time? It made me aware of other events that have occurred by accident and those that didn’t.  Eventually I came to fully understand what I only gave lip service to before: many – perhaps most – of the important events in my life have happened by accident. We think we are in control but we aren’t.
       The gravel crunches as I walk along the edge of the road where our Trailblazer came to rest on Jeanette’s side. I had been pulled out of the driver’s window and whisked away by ambulance while Jeanette remained trapped. A kind and thoughtful EMT helped Jeanette cope while they cut away the windshield to get her out. While they talked, Jeanette’s cell phone - which had been thrown from the car – began to ring in the grass. It was our youngest Cassie calling to let us know our friends were worried. Jeanette’s mom talent carried the day as she carefully assured Cassie all was well and asked her to call some nearby friends of ours who would know what to do. Realize that Jeanette did all of this while trapped in a smashed car, unsure of her own injuries, and uncertain about me. (Cassie was the first daughter I saw in the ER. They let her in just before I boarded a medical helicopter for Madison. ) I was told someone came to this site a day after the crash and carefully collected all the things that flew from the car in its three rollovers. CDs, books, pens, flashlights, etc. A monument along the roadside to interrupted travel. There is nothing here now save some tall grass and distant memory.
       The sun has risen higher in the sky now. The rich green farmland that surrounds me here is comforting. Months after the wreck a friend of mine asked, “Did you ever think you were going to die?” I was startled by the question because no one had asked me that, but also because I had NOT ever thought I was mortally injured. The EMTs, the nurses, the doctors all assured me I would be OK. And I believed them. But then I thought what else would they say? “Sorry buddy, this is lights out for you”? It bothered me so, that when I had to transfer my medical files from Beloit Memorial to UW Hospital, I took the time to read what the ER physicians had noted when I was admitted. Apparently I was more severely injured then I thought. They said things like, “critically injured, severe spinal injury, multiple broken bones”. Perhaps the Med Flight helicopter should have been the give away. In any case, I’m glad they were encouraging. And I did find myself thinking I was “lucky” because some things didn’t happen. (You can see how this can drive one crazy. I was unlucky to be at the intersection at the exact moment of impact, but lucky that the car had side airbags. I was unlucky that my neck broke, but lucky that only some nerves were damaged. See?)
       Fortunately, I don’t spend much time thinking about “the crash”. When I do – like on this lovely summer morning - I find myself doing what we all do most of the time. We look for the good things that come out of the bad. The kindness we received, the support my family gave me, the simple joy and pleasure we get from the things we take for granted. (One example. There was some concern that the nerve damage from the spine injury would affect my hands and make playing the guitar more difficult. I did not realize that Jeanette and the kids were as worried as I was. When I finally slipped into our bedroom with my guitar and played it for the first time, I was surprised to see my family weeping in relief.) We all seem hard wired to find the good even in the worst situation.
       When I got back in my truck and headed home, I was glad I had stopped. There is value in returning to the broken parts of your life. It gives you a chance to see how the world works when things go wrong. I think Leonard Cohen wrote in one of his songs, “There’s a crack … a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Here’s to more light and healing cracks.