I have been absent from this blog for a while.  In June, I moved just across the border into Lincoln Parish a stone’s throw from Downsville.  I had every intention of picking up where I left off.  A tragedy intervened.  Luckily, I was a minor player in the event but it left me derailed, confused, angry and sad.  Mostly, I felt blessed to be alive.  I have pondered the decision to write this account but I think that I may need to purge my system, prune away the dead branches so that the tree may grow.

On June 30th, I left work feeling great!  I had just moved into a new home in the quiet middle of nowhere.  I was looking forward to sitting on the porch that evening and watching the kids play.  My husband, a pipeliner, was home between jobs.  It had been a relaxed and happy couple of weeks.  Leaving daycare that evening with the kids, we approached the dreaded intersection of Highway 33 and Highway 821 in Ruston.  If you know anything about this intersection, then you know that many have died there.  Because I travel that way every day, I am used to it and the high rate of collisions there.  A store sits at the corner and my husband had asked me to stop for a couple of things.  This pause to buy a jug of Cranford’s tea may have saved my life.  As I was walking to the rear of the store, I heard the impact and the immediate screams of witnesses.  I literally dropped the items that I was holding and bolted for the door–my children were sitting in my truck.  They were fine but had witnessed a horrific accident.  I could hear people calling for help.  As soon as I knew the kids were fine, I ran across the parking lot to where the vehicles were resting.  A Ford F250 was sitting in the ditch with the hood demolished and the driver side door open.  The driver was standing outside of it and he waved me off.  Go check on them!!  The other car was a Ford Taurus and it was almost unrecognizable.  Locating a pair of gloves, I checked for pulses for the lady in the driver’s seat.  There were none.  The passenger had been unconscious but came around quickly and was responsive but in a lot of pain.  Other bystanders stood with the passenger.  A couple of others and I stayed with the woman in the driver’s seat.  It was painfully obvious that she was dead, no amount of anything would bring her back.  Please God, don’t let her have felt any pain!  We waited for what seemed like forever until we could hear the EMS and firetruck sirens.  When they arrived, the paramedics told me that I had been correct, the poor young woman had been dead since impact, nothing could have been done.  The passenger, her husband, was fairly stable.  I cleaned my hands and went back to my truck.  The last thing we saw as we left, the police were placing a clean white sheet over her body.

The first few days afterward were okay.  Perhaps the kids and I were still in shock from the events that we had witnessed.  I am a nurse with 15 years of experience.  I am a wound care nurse.  I have seen death in many forms but I was not prepared for what I had seen.  I could not focus and I would cry without warning.  The kids talked about it often and I did not try to discourage it but I would try to redirect the conversation.  My mom put her hand in that car and she had blood on her hand when it came out.  Reese would be playing “car accident” with his Hotwheels cars.  I was just angry!  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  I had been so happy and then something that I had no control over had taken my happiness!  I sat in my new house with tears streaming down my face wondering why that poor woman had died in front of me.  I found out later, from a relative of hers who was an acquaintance of mine, that her sister wasn’t taking her death well.  She has worried that she (the victim) had died miserably, pinned in the vehicle.  I was able to bring her some peace of mind when I told them that I was there and that she did not suffer.  She never even responded….

They were a married couple who worked for the same company in Farmerville.  They were heading home to Arcadia after working all day.  They were doing nothing wrong.  Simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The F250 blew through a stop sign and nailed the Taurus ride in the driver’s side door.  Dead before the car came to rest on the diesel pumps in front of Cranford’s store.  If she had been travelling one second faster, the impact would have occurred at the rear portion of the vehicle.  Two seconds slower, the truck would have gone across the road in front of her.  But it was a bullseye, right in the wrong place.  She never saw it coming, she never hit the brakes.  She was driving down the road one minute and in the presence of Jesus the next minute.  Just that simple and bitterly unfair.

This continued with me for days.  Then the nightmares began.  I would see her standing over me at night.  I would scream and scream.  I would avoid sleep.  I thought it would never end.

One night, I saw her standing at my bedside once more.  This time was different.  She was not scarred and injured from her tragic death.  She was in a long white dress.  She started to walk away, then she extended her arms in a graceful motion much like a ballerina.  She began to run with her arms outstretched.  She ran to someone and someplace that I could not see.  But there was joy and longing in her run.  She faded away, never to return to my dreams.  I felt then that her death had not been untimely, but in a strange way, it had just been her time and God had called her home.  I think the last dream was her way of helping me let go and letting me know that she is okay.  Simply a stranger that I stayed with while she died, she is always in my heart.  I am forever changed.