On Valentine's Day, 1996, 20 years ago, I was riding in the car with my mother very early in the morning. She was driving into work and I was riding with her because I didn't drive at that time. I was going to take the bus from her work to my college for classes. In my hand was an inexpensive chocolate rose that I had purchased for about $2 to give to my boyfriend. I was, after all, a broke college kid!
I was in a great mood when I woke up that day. There was a light sprinkling of snow on the ground, very pretty, and my mother and I were chatting casually about Valentine's Day plans. Then, out of nowhere, my mother hit a patch of black ice on the road. The car fishtailed out of control. On one side of the road was a large wall with a house at the top, built into the side of the mountain. On the other side of us was a canal full of frozen water. Coming the other way on the road, toward us, was a big rig truck with a trailer attached. We were sliding, passenger side of the car first, toward the truck.
There was a loud crunch of metal, as our small Ford Taurus was crushed around the bumper of the truck. My head crashed through the passenger side window, then bounced back to crash into my mother's head. The car crushed in such a way that I was pinned between the center console and the bumper of the truck.
My mother had a serious concussion and short term memory loss. She kept asking me what happened. I felt my hands go cold and something warm dripping down my neck. The rescue teams arrived and a towel was placed over my head as they used the jaws of life to disassemble the car so that I could be removed. A man was holding my head still, it was John, a boy I had known since childhood. He asked if it was a bad time to ask me out on a date. I laughed.
They strapped me to a back board and put me in the ambulance where they proceeded to ask me a thousand questions about my mother, her medications, allergies, and medical conditions. They asked a few questions about me, too. It concerned me that they asked so much about her, because I assumed it meant that she was not well enough to answer her own questions.
Moments after the ambulances left the scene of the accident, my father came upon the crash scene on his way to work. He got out of his car and ran to the scene. "That's my car. Where's my wife?" He was directed to the proper hospital. He didn't know I was in the car with my mother.
In the hospital, my father came to me. "How ya doin' Kid?" he asked. I immediately began asking where my mom was, how she was, what was going on? He told me to relax. Just relax. Mom's fine. She got knocked in the head, just a minor concussion with some memory loss, "It's YOU we're worried about, Kid."
Me?
Why?
What's going on?
"My head hurts." He reached behind my head and pulled out a large chunk of glass. It had been lodged into my head and held in place by the back board.
"They think you have a broken back or neck," he told me. I had never seen him so worried. The nurse came and removed my necklace and all 6 of my earrings then took me in for x-rays.
In the end, I ended up with 2 cracked vertebrae, one in my neck and one in my lower back, and a bruised liver. I also had a large cut in the back of my head from the glass and several bruises and lacerations.
When I was released from the hospital, the nurse handed me the chocolate rose I had been holding when the accident happened. There were bits of glass stuck into the chocolate. I started to laugh.
After a few days, my mother's short term memory returned, but to this day she does not remember the accident. I recovered in time, and it became a unique Valentine story for years to come.
I'm so thankful to God for protecting me and my mother that day. Here I am, 20 years later, doing great! After seeing the pictures of the car after the wreck, I cannot fathom how anyone could have survived. I decided to share this story because the accident led to some other things that I'd like to share in the days to come. I mostly wanted to share to show you all how great God can be. He protected me and my mother. We are alive to tell the tale -- well, I can tell it, she can't remember a blasted thing!
