They say that when life happens...when the rubber hits the road...you find out just what you're made of. For me, that didn't really happen until the rubber left the road and landed in a crumpled heap on a seemingly ordinary Tuesday morning.
It was a typical March morning. Breezy, chilly, but sunny. The beginning of a week long holiday. My children (then ages 2, 3,5 and 13) would be vacationing with Grandma. My husband and I would be driving two days west with his staff to attend a conference. Even though technically it was a "working" vacation, a week away from the diapers, the potty training, the crying, the interrupted nights, and a budding teenager seemed like a vacation to me. I packed the kids in the van and started out on my way to leave the kids and the van with my mother-in-law. My husband followed a half hour behind in the car we would be taking to the conference.
Half an hour away from Grandma's house, the car began to sputter-water in the gas tank? Even with the gas pedal all the way to floor, the speedometer topped out at 35mph. Because we were on a small state highway, barely more than a country lane, there were no gas stations or even places to pull over. In front of me loomed one of the highest mountain peaks in PA and I wondered how we would make it over. From the sky the first evidence of a snow storm began to flutter to the earth and that made me a little more nervous because the road over the mountain was not much wider than the one we presently traveling. We rounded a corner that began the descent into a small village that lay right at the base of the mountain. As I looked out the driver's side window it seemed that the back of the van was now somehow beside the van and I realized that we were sliding. I briefly saw a telephone pole right on the berm of the road and quickly prayed that we wouldn't hit it. It was too late.
The driver's side rear quarter panel and the side of my daughter's head slammed into the telephone pole. The van bounced off the pole and off the road, rolling down the 15 foot bank on the side of the road and dragging my 5 year old's head on the bare ground. We came to a stop at the bottom, resting on the driver's side.
All was quiet. All but one of us was unconscious. He dangled from his car seat still buckled into the passenger side seat as he gazed at his Mamma who was not moving or talking. When I was awakened by the annoying smell of smelling salts, the van was empty except for my dangling son. They removed him, totally unharmed. to a home across the road and two firemen dragged me from the vehicle. Outside of the van, scattered all over a small field, lay all of our personal belongings. It looked as if a bomb had exploded and had thrown their toys, bed rolls, pillows, potty chairs and clothing all over the ground surrounding where we had come to rest. As I surveyed the carnage, my eyes fell on three of my children laying on the ground side by side. It reminded me of a mini-version of the scene from Gone With The Wind where the thousands of wounded are laying in rows. The two babies were still and pale, lips blue, blood stained. I heard a man telling two paramedics that the two little ones had no vital signs and for a few moments what he said didn't really register. I was still taking in the snow, the field, the fire trucks, the ambulances, the medical personnel, and the tow trucks.
My oldest daughter was now conscious and looked over at me with tear filled eyes. All she said was "Mamma, you need to pray!" And I did. It was like no prayer I had ever prayed in my life. Turns out it was probably the shortest, most effective prayer I have ever prayed. When I was finished, an oxygen mask was slapped on my face and the paramedic said, "take deep breaths, Mam." (I think the prayer scared him. Honestly, it surprised me too!)
So many thoughts crossed through my mind as I stood on the side of the road and then as they walked me across the road to the house where my dangling son had been taken. It's funny to me how foggy, yet how clear your thoughts can come in those instances.
Eventually my husband appeared in the doorway of the house as the paramedics came in to take me to the hospital. I didn't realize that they had moved me away from the young children because they were pretty sure that they were dead and they didn't want me to know. In the ambulance, I started to thaw out. The snow storm had come quickly over the mountain after the crash and we had almost froze to death, which turned out to be a blessing for my youngest ones because it slowed the bleeding in their brains. As they threw warmed blankets on my body and heated IV liquids into my bloodstream, I clung to the hand of the paramedic asking over and over again "How are my babies? Are they okay? Where are they taking them?" The driver, not wanting me to hear, turned down the radio.
We arrived at the nearest medical center which looked more like a veterinary clinic. They really weren't equipped to handle an accident or injuries of this magnitude. After some conversation with my husband in the waiting room they decided to transfer the whole lot of us to the nearest trauma center which happened to be in Hershey, PA. Hershey was soon to become my second home and would become much sweeter to me than the chocolate they make there.
I cannot tell this story without speaking to it from every angle. In the future I will be posting things of a more practical nature like:
