Posts Tagged ‘car crash’
Temporary Ripple
There has been a stressful ripple in the fabric of normalcy for our family recently. Out of respect for the privacy of all involved, I am choosing to be purposely vague, but I would like to provide some context that was otherwise missing from my narrations of late.
There is good news in that, other than some residual post traumatic stress that will take time to process, everyone involved is okay, and everyone impacted is on a path of recovery from a powerful dose of hyper-concern.
Yesterday morning, with Cyndie home from Florida, our children gathered at our house for much-needed hugs and a large dose of comfort-food for a brunch.
Trauma has absolutely no respect for time and place, and it does a person no good to live in a state of constant alert for potential threats, so the sudden unexpected rise of calamity is, well… traumatizing. Compounded in this case because the incident grew out of a well-intentioned effort to offer support for a friend in need.
I guess this falls under the adage of no good deed going unpunished.
One thing that our recent experience has reminded me of is this: We can’t always know, in fact, usually don’t know, what people around us have lived through. That person next to you on the plane may have just been to the emergency room before boarding. Or a police station. Or both.
Last week, on my way to work, I approached a sudden slowing of traffic and soon discovered a crash had just occurred. As my mind processed the visual while rolling past, it struck me that the final location and resulting damage to the van indicated it likely rolled before landing back on its wheels. There were still people inside, looking to be in shock.
I was traumatized remotely. One of my first reactions, upon arriving at work, was to tell someone about what I had seen. Talking helps to process the intense emotions of trauma.
At the same time, telling strangers of our personal traumas is not a reasonable practice. Therefore, it stands to reason that we shouldn’t expect that others are freely telling us of theirs.
We can all hope that everyone around us is always having a safe and healthy day, but don’t take for granted the possibility that things might be otherwise. Someone you find yourself interacting with may be using precious effort to maintain a veneer of normal, despite riding an unspoken residual wave of some uninvited drama.
Hope for the best, but be prepared for the alternatives. Always give people space to have unseen reasons for the way they behave.
Sending love in advance to others around us is a pretty safe balm for what might ail a person.
Thank you to all who have offered your love and support to contain this temporary ripple for our family. It is helping to guide us all back to our preferred calm tranquility.
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Unexpected Anxiety
Back on August 1st of this year, the Twin Cities marked the tenth anniversary of the 35W bridge collapse across the Mississippi River. On Tuesday, I unexpectedly found myself remembering it again, with an unnerving amount of anxiety.
On the way home from work, driving east, past downtown Minneapolis on I94, flashing lights of a state highway patrol car caught my attention as it made its way into the flow of traffic ahead of me. Never a good sign.
Brakelights were soon to follow, quickly filling all four lanes. Eventually, I could see an overhead sign in the distance with information. An accident east of the Huron exit had closed two of the left lanes.
Traffic crawled at a snail’s pace, bumper to bumper. It was a little claustrophobia-inducing, with plenty of large trucks mixed in among the autos.
Then, I and all the many vehicles around me reached the bridge crossing the Mississippi river, just south of the 35W bridge. There we sat.
Way too long, for my comfort.
And there was nothing I could do. It became nerve-wracking. Normally, we whiz over this bridge in an instant, but now the weight of these many vehicles was a static load. The west-bound lanes were freely flowing, and I could feel the bridge shake when that traffic passed across the deck.
We progressed not in feet, but inches. The slower the progress was, the tighter the congestion seemed to get. I allowed for greater space between my bumper and the car ahead of me. Images of what it would be like to suddenly be dropping appeared in my mind.
I did not want to be stopped on that bridge –especially when surrounded by the combined weight of all the other vehicles around me.
Talk about anxiety. Imagine what that would have been like for someone who actually was involved in the 35W collapse in 2007. No thank you.
With great relief, I reached the other side of the bridge without incident. I had successfully avoided a screaming and pounding meltdown, despite an urge that lurked surprisingly close. Conscious breathing does wonders in moments like this.
A short distance ahead, I reached sight of flashing emergency lights and the traffic in the left two lanes began forcing their way, two-at-a-time into my lane. Upon reaching the location of the incident, the scene was rather odd. It’s hard to know how many responders may have already departed, but there were only two patrol cars and officers, plus a highway helper truck managing traffic.
A dramatically squished car with fluids beneath it rested cockeyed in the second lane. That was it. No other debris, no people, no tow truck. I’m guessing there was a lot of activity there while I was stuck in line for the preceding 15 or 20 minutes.
From that point, it was instantly back to highway speeds and an uneventful commute the rest of the way home, during which, I had time to think more about what people experienced 10-years ago when the 35W bridge collapsed.
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Emotional Connection
People die every day. On the grand scale, it’s too much to comprehend, so when we aren’t aware of specific incidents, we tend to remain oblivious. When it happens to people we know, the news suddenly hits home. But what about when it happens within close proximity to us, but to someone we don’t know?
On the way home from work yesterday, just as I got on the highway, an electronic sign overhead warned of an accident creating a traffic delay. I see enough of them to expect the typical couple of vehicles on the shoulder with crunched bumpers causing traffic to slow down a bit before proceeding on with little impact.
The situation yesterday was dramatically different. A very heavily traveled exit ramp had been closed and a vast multitude of emergency vehicles were gathering to tend to the scene.
When I got close, the thing that first caught my eye was the startling gash of ruptured concrete at the top of the wall that serves as barrier to the frontage road a couple of stories above the Interstate. Without time to comprehend what that meant, my car passed one of the fire engines, and the spot where the lone vehicle had landed came into view. It took my breath away.
There was concrete shrapnel strewn across an incredibly large area, shockingly far beyond the wall from which it had been torn. To the credit of movie-makers everywhere, my impression was that this looked like a movie scene, because it isn’t something you see in real life. I guess the Directors and Special Effects people who create movie crashes do a pretty authentic rendition.
From the looks of the vehicle, that was a ferocious calamity. I feared for a life, or lives.
It was as if everyone could feel it. After we moved clear of the incident, none of the cars around me demonstrated much in the way of urgency toward wherever they were headed.
I tried to forget about it when I got home. We watched a ridiculously bad comedy movie that made us laugh, despite ourselves. It wasn’t enough to distance me from some emotional connection I felt to the earlier incident. When our show was over, I checked news articles online. My suspicion was confirmed: a fatality.
Most folks won’t even be aware of the passing of one more soul yesterday. Normally, that’s the way it would be for me. This time though, the death of a person unknown to me has impacted me significantly, as a result of the close proximity of time and place.
I’m sending love to all who had a connection with this person.
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Relative Something 
