Waiting for Hari

god is interested

And then, on Sunday, I was driving up to Chicago as I regularly do. I usually leave in the middle of the afternoon on Sundays so that I drive most of the way up in the light, reaching Chicago in the first dark when parking is awful, but not horid.

I was only about 50 miles out from Chicago, when the road became suddenly, very, very suddenly, icy. It went from a dry road to that black ice that covers the road with its devestating sheen. And the cars and trucks were all going fast. I was in the left lane of a two lane interstate (The fast lane). The car in front of me started to swerve on the road and the brake lights went on. (When I spoke to the insurance people on Monday and gave them my statement, they wanted to know which happened first to the car in front -- brake lights or swerving -- and I have no idea. I'm sure there was a sequence but I reacted to both.) I slowed a bit but that front car was slowing faster than I was and to avoid hitting it, I breaked harder. Of course, as soon as I breaked harder, the car started to swerve. I was loosing control. I was on the shoulder and in my lane. I tried to stay on the shoulder because it was rocky and it might have slowed me down or helped me get control, but I couldn't. My car was sliding. It slid right into the right land where a tractor trailer was. I was aware that I could not stop what was going on. (I will tell you that I have had premonitions of sliding under a tractor trailor recently. I am sure I was being told of something from inside of myself, but of what use was it. Or was it? What could I have done about what I 'knew"? But then, maybe it was just getting me accustomed to what was going to happen, so it would not be as much a shock. It was awful, but it was almost expected. Is that insane?). The passenger side of my car slid under the truck -- in the space between the wheels. The roof of that side of the car cracked and crashed in, the windshielf shattered and popped. I shouted, oh, god, oh, god, oh, god. It felt like the car was caught under the truck for a moment and then thrown away from the truck. (of course, it was not thrown, and trying to give an accurate statement to the insurance was impossible. I have impressions of this event without an objective story. By the time an objective story was again possible to tell, I was out of danger. There is so much talk in law about objective and subjective. It is hard to sort out in the best of times, and when the event is like Sunday's, the two merge, intwine, and cannot be separated. And the stories are messy.) As the car came away from the truck, it spun around and was briefly facing south headding for the oncoming traffic. Then it was spinning further and faced west. As I think of it now, I gained a little bit of control at this point. Maybe this was the beginning of gaining control. I turned the steering wheel and allowed the car into the median which is a grassy patch about the same size as a two lane highway. It dips down on either side of the road making a V- shaped grassy space. I had no thought so I can't say that I thought the grass might stop the car or even slow it down, but I realized that I was out of traffic for a moment. I was shocked at how fast the car went into the median and came out of it again. (Weeks ago I was stuck in traffic on the same road and watched some cars drive through the median and get on the other side of the road. I didn't dare because I assumed that my little car would get caught in the grass on the way back up the median. Who knew?) Then the car was on the median, then it was on the south bound lanes of traffic. And I shouted my half-prayer, half- salutation again. But the car had slowed down a great deal. It was almost stopped, facing north on the south side of the highway, I was in control again if control was possible for me to take, and the traffic which was heavy on both sides of the road seemed to be stopped or very much slowed on the southern side and not coming near me. (Later, I realized that at least two other cars had done what mine had done. I don't know whether they were cars in front of me or behind me, but they had come across from the northern side to the southern side of the road, and the traffice on the sourthern side had probably stopped by the time I headed into the southern side of the road. At least one of the cars that had skidded arcoss the median before mine was not as lucky and was hit by an on-coming car in the southern lane.) I turned the car around and drove over to the far shoulder of the road. I was shaken up beyond belief, but I was not injured.

I sat, whatever chemicals had shot through my body to keep me in the present during my slide began receding almost immediately and I started shaking, almost crying, making sure I was physically all there, and looking at the glass that was all over the inside of the car and all over me. Traffic had stopped, a man came to my car and aked if I was injured. I said I didn't think so. He told me he was a preacher and told me he was praying as soon as he saw cars slide. He said something that I remember as "god has taken some interest in you" although that is not exactly what he said. I opened the door and stood outside. I insisted in taking his hand, although he wanted to see what had happened in the other cars. There was one in the ditch off the shoulder that I was on. There was clearly more damage, injury, and help was needed. But I needed his flesh next to mine. I needed human touch and insisted on it for a minute.

Then there were police sirens, and ambulances, and questions, and I started feeling the cold, then someone gave me a blanket to keep me from going into shock. Then there was time of waiting, picking essentials from the glass strewn car, watching the car being towed, being taken to a rest stop, not being able to get David on my cell phone, being offered a ride home by a kid who had hit one of the other sliding cars with his truck, then talking to David, then talking to my boss in Chicago to let her know I would not be there this week, then the ride home and then David and home. I talked it through with David, and yesterday with the insurance carrier, and still felt not myself all day yesterday. By the time I was ready for bed, I felt myself coming back.

At some point during the slide and immediate aftermath, I realized how happy I have been -- life, family, friends, a great job, Chicago, my garden, and a new daughter. Had I been too happy to keep living? The preacher's words seemed to be the answer. David later asked if god was interested in the two carloads of people who were taken to the hospital? That makes me tremble again.

That's all. That's what happened. I have to write it. Tell it to you. I know, I still have no distance from it but I must share.

posted by Suz @ 10:55 PM