We are born, we grow old, and we die. It is a simple concept made difficult by the
growing old part. From the moment we are
born we begin to age and nothing can stop that until death. This past weekend I almost met with my death
and now I’ve been obsessing about not only the incident, but life, and my life,
in general.
On a divided highway I travel frequently, and through an
intersection I’ve traveled probably hundreds of times, I was almost “T-Boned”
by a Sheboygan County Sheriff SUV from my left.
I never saw him cross the northbound side of traffic (I was traveling
southbound), go through the island divider of the north/south roads, and only
until I had passed in front of him did I see him in my peripheral vision. I had glided past him by the time I slammed
on my brakes. He glided past me just as
smoothly as if we had coordinated the whole maneuver. I remember seeing just a flash of blue and
then the brown blur that is the front end of an SUV that sits higher than my
Matrix. I saw with blurry side vision
his headlights, grill, hood, and the massiveness that is too close to a moving
vehicle at 60mph.
Once I came to a screeching halt, I looked back on my
right and saw that he had slammed to a stop also. I didn’t see him in the cab, just the side
and back but once he determined I hadn’t rolled my vehicle stopping, he took
off on his original call. Not once
through the entire episode did I hear his siren. It wasn’t on.
I still don’t understand how I never saw him, and he never saw me. I know they are trained to proceed through
intersections slowly and cautiously, for this very reason, so I can only
determine that he didn’t see me or made the assumption that I saw him.
This is a wide open part of the highway, and I really
should have seen him. I’m still bothered
and at a loss as to why I didn’t see him.
It was daylight so maybe his lights weren’t as effective, and he didn’t
have a siren on so I never heard him. I
didn’t have music blasting, and was not texting, on the phone, or otherwise preoccupied. I had just taken a drink from my soda bottle
and I think I may have looked down to put it back in its holder and by the time
I looked back up had traveled far enough that I didn’t scan the horizon and
intersection like I should have. If he
was responding to a call, he was distracted because they have to concentrate on
the details coming over the radio and writing stuff down. That’s as bad as texting.
My point is this.
I never saw my life flash before my eyes, but I do know that had we
collided, I would have taken a direct hit to the driver’s side door and
probably would not have survived the collision.
I guess in some regard I would have never known what hit me. As the days progress from it, I have stopped
being in shock and fear, and have moved on to some kind of melancholy about the
whole thing and how quickly life can end.
I’ve had close calls on the road before.
I travel so much that it would be impossible if I haven’t had some kind
of incident. I would think every driver
has had close calls. But I’ve never felt
so sure that I wouldn’t have survived before and this bothers me. Maybe it’s those awful commercials and tv
programs that show the impact of a side collision that is vivid in my mind, but
I think I was given a second chance on Saturday. However, the question is, why?
As human beings we search for meaning in pretty much
everything. And I’ve never really been
the one to think that it is all coincidence.
I think some is, but basically I think there is a Divine plan that we
are part of, but may never know why or how we play our parts. I guess some would say they don’t want to be
manipulated in that regard, but if I am on this Earth to fulfill a reason, no
matter how unclear to me, I will count myself grateful that I was a split
second faster than the Sheriff. Now, to
figure out why.
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