New Beginning: MVA

The phone call to my parents could have gone very differently. I could have been calling to tell them that I was in the hospital. Or a worse nightmare, my husband would have been calling to tell them that the girls were in the hospital and that I was in a coma… or dead.

I struggled to call them because of some part of me that wished to stay emotionally detached. I felt obligated to call them. I knew my parents would be hurt to find out about it months later around a dinner table.

“Hi, Dad… I’m calling because the girls and I were in a car accident yesterday. And I feel very lucky to be alive.”

We had gone to visit Granny for a part of spring break. On our last day, on our way home, we decided to go swimming at the pool in Chilliwack. After the swim we put our wet things in the trunk with the suitcase and drove another 20 minutes on the highway to buy donuts. Claire, three, was by this time fast asleep in her car seat, so we used the drive-through. Iris, seven, had one timbit and closed the carton, holding them on her lap until her sister woke up and so she could share the rest with her. I put a decaf in the drink holder, not being much of a coffee drinker that would be enough to keep me alert on the road after our swim. I had also insisted on the girls wearing their winter coats so that I could keep the air cool in the car.

The highway was surprisingly busy, for a Friday during Spring Break: the slow lane dawdling 10km less than the posted speed limit, but the fast lane racing its usual 10-15km faster. I stayed in the slow lane, not being one of those people that has to get anywhere fast.

I hummed harmony to Tracy Chapman’s album: New Beginning a tape I could only play in this car’s antiquated stereo. It was music I hadn’t listened to since other happily maudlin times: the complicated birth of my first child, falling in love for the second time.
Now, my first independent drive out to visit Granny, just me and the girls. “At this point in my life… hmm, hmm, hmm, I still have mountains to climb, hmm, hmm, hmm… I want to live as if the search to live honestly is all that anyone needs.”
The car adjacent to me in the fast lane moved onto the inside shoulder and then a towering SUV bashed into our little Toyota Corolla on the driver’s side forcing us onto the grassy shoulder.

I reduced my pressure on the accelerator, the SUV continued to race on at 130km or more, gunning it. Suddenly my steering wheel went loose and the front wheels seemed to collapse and turn to the left. We were now only travelling 60-70km/hr, but the car careened across the two lane highway, going into a roll. I held that useless steering wheel saying to myself, “Good-bye, I’m sorry girls.” People don’t walk away from a car wreck like this.

As the car rolled into the grassy median, I held onto the roof through the hole where the window had been, and I felt the grass slowly come up to meet my fingers so I pulled them in. We had stopped upside-down. Iris started to cry and Claire woke up and started making similar sounds, so I spoke encouragingly to them, “We’re gonna be OK! Iris, please calm yourself, you’re upsetting Claire. We aren’t hurt; we’re just going to get out of the car.” We hung upside-down from our seats, our coats cushioning the seat belts.

I unbuckled myself and my feet fell to the …ceiling.
Someone came to the window and said, “Don’t move!”

“I think I’m okay,” I replied, with some astonishment.

He helped one of my kids out and I went around the other side to help the other one out, but someone else was already there, donuts everywhere among the broken glass. Police were there before paramedics, perhaps chasing the SUV, stolen it turned out. I corralled my children, grabbing one from a woman speedily carrying her off. We sat down in the grass well away from the car, to answer questions. I thought, well, I don’t have to watch out for dog pooh we can sit anywhere.

Once in the ambulance, I asked the police to bring some things from the car: the car seats, and my notebook, how would I survive with out that! They said the towing company would secure all the rest in the trunk.
The paramedic told me I had to phone someone. I felt as I did when I had to later phone my parents. A painfully detached call to my husband resulted.

“We have been in a car accident. Can you meet us at the Abbotsford Hospital?”

“Is everyone OK?”

“Yes, but I can’t drive the car home.”

“Is the car drive-able?”

“No.”

Colin drove out to meet us. He didn’t want to drive for an hour wondering how bad it was, but unfortunately heard on the radio, “Single vehicle crash on Highway 1 near McCallum Road, rollover.” He knew that must be us.

The next day he drove out to Abbotsford again to an auto wrecker for our suitcase and wet things from the trunk. The clerk told him where to look, but he walked past the car several times not recognizing it, it was so squashed. He broke down, realizing at that point how lucky he was that we were alive.

After the motor vehicle accident, I aggressively worked on some unresolved issues in my older daughter’s life. What would happen to our family if I died tomorrow? I look at all of my decisions differently. I still get glimpses sometimes of that intense feeling, when I feel unsatisfied with the honesty of my moves.

“…my unfaltering belief that truth is divinity.” Tracy Chapman

Months later, still reeling from the accident, I broke down in the street at the news of a stranger’s death while their child lived because of a winter coat in a car seat. I realized that my greatest fear is not only to lose my children, but to leave them orphans.

Helen Spaxman
November 29, 2009