I have a somewhat involved history with people I know dying in car accidents. This is in the front of my mind today, as I found out this morning that someone I'm acquainted with died in such a fashion over the weekend. It's my biggest fear - car accidents - both for myself and more so for people I know and care about. It's a thought that keeps me awake with anxiety some nights, and on other nights is an intrusive, obsessive thought that requires half a Xanax to quell.
The first two boyfriends I had, both important ones in their own right, are dead. The first one died in a flash flood while driving through Nevada with his very best friend by his side. Is that a actual car accident? I'm not sure, but it's an easier way to explain. I found out about his passing while sitting on the bed of the second one, who died a few years later when he drove his damn car off the freeway and into a wall. I think about them sometimes...not about what they were like when I knew them, but about their last few moments of being alive. It haunts me, and I think of alternative scenarios (being a person who daydreams constantly) in which I somehow save them or warn them beforehand.
The third was a best friend from high school, who had long since gone the way of typical high school friends - which is to say I didn't speak to her much, but whom I thought about warmly from time to time, always assuming that someday we'd catch up over drinks and memories. I found out about her fate after finding her older sister's website, and the subsequent memorial page she had created for her. Her sister and I emailed back and forth a couple times, with her last email ending in the wise words "don't drink and drive".
I guess I'm a little traumatized from all these happenings, not to mention the memory of the aftermath of the accident I witnessed as a little kid. I deal by convincing myself that death, specifically ones caused by car accidents, are just part of life. I try to tell myself it won't happen to me, but even by writing that out and posting it on my blog, I feel like I'm condemning myself to such a fate. I guess I'm more superstitious than I lead myself to believe.
What are you terrified of? Lets all put it into words, and convince ourselves that by doing so, we're lessening the chances of it actually happening.
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Part II -
When I was a pre-teen, I would go out with my father on first responder calls. Because we lived in such a remote place, our motel (where there was the first payphone for many miles) was often the first to know about a bad accident. There were no cell phones, this was like '85-'86. My dad used to be a LVN, and he had a CB, so he'd call the sheriff dept. (where he works now) and go to the scene to do what is basically EMT work. I'd go with him because I was supposed to man the CB and communicate with the EMS people who were 15-20 miles away at all times.
Dad was always, like, "Stay in the truck, stay off the road, stay on the CB"—but this one accident was on an infamously bad turn on the highway. A blind corner with another right-side blind corner after it, from the opposite direction. A car took the turn too fast, flipped a couple of times, bounced off a rock face, and ended upside down in the center of a highway. The man who'd been driving was thrown out, and he was in various places on the asphalt, and very dead (I could see that from 50 yards away, but the woman who was the passenger had been buckled in, and she was only partially mutilated, sort of half in and half out of the car.
There were a ton of logging trucks back then, because it was the 80s and no one (except my father) gave a shit about the environment. I could HEAR their jake brakes as they slowed down for this curve at night, even from 1/2 mile away in my bed. I started panicking, because, how would they know that my dad and his fragile body was crouched behind an overturned car in the middle of a highway, trying to stop the bleeding of this woman who I could hear howling?
Part III -
Like I said, my dad was always like, stay put! But for the first time ever, he lifted his head and sort of awkwardly motioned for me to get out of the truck. I got out and very hesitantly started to walk towards him, careful to not look at anything, keeping my ears open for trucks or cars (no Priuses! no silent anything!), holding my breath. He was shouting at me to grab the cones out of the back of the truck, and get the flares out of the box built into the side of the truck (where we kept the chains for snow), because it had also just occurred to HIM that this accident could get so much worse.
I did what he said and ran ran ran. I put out a cone before our truck, and lit and threw a flare as far as I could in the highway, which had a little more visibility from that side. I knew I had to run PAST him, past the accident, past the bodies and the howling, to get on the other side of that curve that they fucked up. Which is, you know, how I found myself running down the highway toward my dad, as fast as I could (pretty okay back then, for an asthmatic) with my eyes closed and a cone under one arm. It's really not easy to run with your eyes closed, so I opened them to slits, and didn't turn my head. I passed dad and the woman, passed the car, passed the dead guy, passed their skid, passed all the shit that had flown out of their car (paper, clothing, cans, garbage), and around that corner. I could see a passenger car coming up so I waved the arm that was free wildly and yelled, "STOP! STOP! STOP!"
I remember that I could see the man who was driving through his windshield. It was tourist, not a local (you could tell because, 1) nice car, and 2) I knew everyone for 20 miles downriver), and what I remember most is that he looked ... annoyed. I was panting and wheezing, and dropped the cone. As I ran by his car, I sort of gasped, "accident, accident!" and kept running to put down the rest of the flares.
Part IV -
I've never talked to my dad about this, and there were other horrible things that I saw, or experienced, but this was the first really bad one. When I get near an accident now, if there is even *one* EMS vehicle on the scene, I am sure to avoid looking. If there isn't, I'll stop and dial 9-1-1, but I'll very rarely get out of the car.
After I watched that Tumblr video the other night, I couldn't sleep for hours, thinking about the terrible fragility of bodies, both human and animal. I'm glad I live a highwayless life these days, although there are plenty of crappy things that can happen in NYC, in cars, on bikes, on the sidewalk, on a helicopter, etc. Living in LA, though, especially working up the PCH, was constant anxiety for me. And this completely non-car related accident footage bought a bunch of it to my mind.
So, I watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua on Netflix to put myself to sleep.
Anyway, this was massively long for a comment. Sorry. You just brought up some thoughts for me, and I liked what you wrote, so I thought I'd share. Sort of cathartic.
Awesome, it lost Part I! Haha, here you go, the lead-in.
Wow. I'm sorry that you had not one but two exes that died in cars. That's truly terrible. Where I grew up, in the woods, that's how virtually anyone my age died. Winter driving, drunk driving, thrown out of the back of a truck, someone else's drunk driving, deer, falling asleep at the wheel, ice, taking a turn too fast, etc. This is one of the reasons why I'm a shitty passenger in a car, because the numbers of people I've known who've died in accidents are kind of outrageous, but it was never a boyfriend, never really a then-close friend.
It's sort of crazy coincidence that you wrote about this today, because yesterday (I think?) someone on my Tumblr posted a link to a video that traumatized her. I was like, don't look, don't look, don't look ... but I looked. It was a massive head trauma accident and was sincerely upsetting. And like your recollectionof the little kid experience of seeing the dead girl in the car, all my crazy accident sightings came rushing back. I wrote this long-ass thing about it, for Tumblr, and then I realized that I didn't want to go into it.
[ETA: But apparently, I just meant that I didn't want to go into it on TUMBLR!]
Wow SR, what an amazing and scary story. I was holding my breath through the whole thing. I'd love to hear more about your childhood with your father. Do you have it written out anywhere? There is NO. WAY. I could get myself to watch that video. I watched one about people who commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and it fucked me up for weeks. You're right, the human body is so scarily fragile. I think a lot of of people don't realize that until they come face to face with it.
Thanks for the comment.
There was a documentary about Golden Gate jumpers, right? I have a vague memory of seeing it. Suicide is a whole other issue for me ... sort of an illness in my family. Maybe I'll write about that sometime.
I don't have much written out about my father. He's a pretty incredible guy, as is my mom, and I should probably get some of their stories down before they kick it. He writes, too, and I've been begging him to write as many of his stories down as he can, but he's so moody and maudlin, I think it bums him out.
Maybe I'll put some stuff on LJ. God knows I should put it to use somehow.
And you're welcome for the comment! I'm sorry it was so spammy and long (and out of sequence). I think what you said was right, though ... writing this stuff, talking about it, really helps to process it a little.
(In other words, I'm exploiting your access to therapy to get ideas on how to work through my stuff, too.)
Non-ironic smiley face, meant as a "onward, ho!" cheer up:
:-)
I went to a reunion in August where we listed off all the people who passed who would have been there if they were still alive. I was asked to read the list on the band's break between sets. I was hyperventilating, naturally, looking at the list and said to the woman next to me, "Look at how many people have died!" She said "That's what happens when you get to be our age." I said, "But that's the thing! Most of these people died when we were young!"
So that's how I introduced the topic and began reading from the list. It's strange when it happens. Lot of alcohol and motorcycle deaths on that list.
My cousin was killed in a car accident a few years ago. A car full of teenagers was speeding down a hill and crossed the centreline and hit my cousin head-on. My cousin and the 4 teenagers all died. My cousin's car caught fire and was a pile of rubble and ash by the time the police and ambulance got there. We hope that my cousin died instantly in the crash but there's no way of knowing. I have been fucked right up since then when it comes to speeding, drinking and driving, reckless driving, etc. I am so anxious when I drive; I'm convinced that some asshat is going to drive into me and I will burn to death.
It's crazy how common it is to know someone this has happened to. I think about 4-5 kids I went to high school with died in car accidents while we were in high school. Also, one of my good friends growing up got into a fight with his friends on the freeway. They stopped and let him out of the car. While he was walking on the side he was hit by a drunk driver. It's scary and sad, but hopefully everyone can take something from those stories and do everything they can to not become the next one.
It feels kinda rude to comment as everything here is so personal, but I just wanted to say I found all your blog posts and people's comments on your blog to be really very cool, very intimate and honest. The recipes and food are also exquisite. Thanks.
Not really afraid of anything.
I am terrified of cars and driving!! I have not driven in years because of this. It's been so long since I've driven that the thought of doing so now really terrifies me.
I finally have a car of my own and I won't drive it. This is frustrating to those around me and myself...Sometimes I think to myself "if you could just get over this fear you could actually hop in the car and go some place instead of relying on annoying public transit FOREVER."
It was fine in SF but around here? Not so much. I wish I could get over this fear/phobia but I'm terrified of accidents and there are so many people on the road that just shouldn't be driving!!!
Oh and also, I'm terrified of losing all my possessions in a fire.
Actually, the first was indeed an actual car accident when you take into account that the natural disaster that swept his car across the narrow highway put him in the path of an 18-wheeler. I sometimes wonder if that guy ever thinks about it.
And I hate to be the older sister but while I'm at it, the second wasn't driving on the freeway - he was about to drive underneath it when instead, he passed through the intersection (where turning right would put you on said freeway and going strait would put you under it) and neither really turned nor went straight. He veered slightly to the right into the high wall of the freeway overpass. It took me years before I stopped having crying fits while wondering what he thought about all night before some kids on their way to school saw his car and called an ambulance.
Neither of these have obviously had any effect on me, explaining why I still get panic attacks when I drive on freeways despite my overwhelming need to for work. Thank god my stupid first ex boyfriend died, predictably, of a drug overdose. Sad about you-know-who, if you mean who I think you mean with the sweet older sister my age?
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