The fog is thick tonight. It rained for the majority of today (yesterday, now) causing the road to be slick.
My 16-year-old brother-in-law was in an accident.
Things are really put into perspective when Life smacks you right in the face. He’s okay, my brother-in-law, Jared. The roads were/are wet, and he over-corrected causing him to go sideways into a guardrail. It could have been worse, I know. I really can’t give a good description of what happened because I wasn’t there. However, Josh was close behind him, and when my mother-in-law called him telling him Jared had wrecked, he was, needless to say, scared. My mother-in-law was too, though when she found out he was okay and that there was minimal damage, her fear turned to anger. That bothered me, slightly.
I have a friend; she’s my age: nineteen–her name is Danielle. I’m not sure of the exact date of her accident–it happened before we met. I think she was sixteen or seventeen at the time. She had skipped school, I think I remember her telling me. I believe she even said it had been raining. She wrecked. Hit a tree, if I remember correctly. She was thrown from her car and the car flipped and landed on top of her. She doesn’t remember much aside from being taken away in an ambulance and she couldn’t feel her legs. Her back was broken. After the accident, she had to wear a brace, and now, she is fine, aside from the occasional back pain.
Mid-December 2007 came along; Danielle’s younger sister Heather (who was seventeen at the time) was driving home from her boyfriend’s house. The roads were wet. Heather lost control of her vehicle and an oncoming truck hit her. She had to be rushed to the emergency room. Danielle called me, asking me if I had heard. I hadn’t, so Danielle filled me in. Heather’s brain was filling with fluid and she hadn’t woken up. This seventeen-year-old girl hadn’t woken up. She was on life support, and the doctors eventually pronounced her brain dead, giving the family a number of hours to take her off life support. And so they did. Her organs were donated (it was what she had wanted, since her mother once had an organ donated to her that saved her life).
My point in all of this is: I’m sure Danielle’s and Heather’s parents wish they had the choice to either be angry with their daughters (for maybe driving a little too fast or not paying enough attention) or to just be glad they were okay. They didn’t get that choice with Heather. Being angry with her would have meant that she would still be here. But they didn’t get to choose.
I wish my mother-in-law could have heard my thoughts when I heard the anger in her voice. Maybe he was driving a little too fast. Then again, maybe not. Maybe he just didn’t drive with as much caution as he should have.Be glad that he is alive. Be glad it wasn’t worse. Honestly, it could have been much worse. But by some miracle, it wasn’t. There are just a few minor dings on his car. Cars are replaceable. Lives aren’t.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I work on a spinal cord unit, and worked in an emergency department for almost five years. This is stuff I see every day, and the range of emotions surrounding it is nothing surprising to those of us who have dealt with it, daily, for years. I can see how it would be off-putting, and I don’t know your mother-in-law, but it may just be that the anger is a kind of steam-valve, a way of letting off the pressure build up that comes when you learn your loved one is in an accident. Anger is also one of the stages of grief. I don’t know though, it’s just a suggestion.
Incidentally, the ER was one of the angriest, most toxic environments to work in. The one I was in at least–a level one trauma center (the highest, most acute level of ER there is.) I’ll bet it goes along with that steam-valve theory. It could be so stressful there that people who didn’t know how to manage it well, which was all of us sometimes, could completely flip a lid if things got too out of hand. Others just had a baseline of nastiness…
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I understand. I even took that into consideration. Fear is a sign of vulnerability, and to hide her fear, she may have just shown anger. It just really hurt to hear her rattle off several reasons why it HAD to be his fault.