I thought perhaps if I could write down one aspect of the crash, that maybe it wouldn't be so overwhelming but it truly is. I have so much going on that sitting to focus on the terrible stuff isn't something I want to do.
I share all the good things and blessings rather than what actually happened so I really just need to write it down. Today, I will focus on the accident itself and then tomorrow share what happened at the hospital etc.
She had just gotten off a major interstate coming home from a youth camp for a week. She took a nap at her sisters and then headed home. She was five miles off the interstate and had just gotten off the phone with Princess Four.
About three miles off the interstate, there is a little cross where ten years ago, two of Princess Two's classmates died and one of my neighbors was a survivor of that crash. Just over two miles past that, Princess left the road. She remembers turning in the little town off the interstate and then there is five miles of nothing but flashes of the accident. I thought perhaps being at the scene may bring back some of her memory of the accident but it didn't.
She has flashes that she thought she should have stopped to put on some music. She was just inside "the dead zone" as we all call it, where there is about 30 minutes of no cell service and no radio stations.
That is why I always have a talk tape with me so that I can keep my mind alert while driving there as it can be boring alone.
She has some remembrance of swerving, seeing a fence and then seeing the top of the car in her face and then someone talking about cutting her out of the car and that is all she remembers.
It is a miracle that she didn't crash at night. She was so far from the road that if she crashed at night, no one would have seen her car. There were no signs at the road where she left the road, there was only snapped fencing where she went through but as you can see by the pictures, because she was "flying" the sage brush is intact. We knew exactly where she left due to the report and we couldn't find it until we were nearly crawling searching.
I had to really search for each touch down point because there were no signs of a car going through, just a few feet of "touch down" then 20-45 feet of nothing but untouched sage brush and then a few feet of broken glass, plastic parts etc.
The first glass picture is the first "touch down spot" and was the rear window. The second glass picture was her drivers side window. I knew she hit her elbow out the window and hit her head on a sage brush but until I saw the little wrist band from her teen conference laying on the dirt next to her window and seeing a smashed sage brush that probably saved her life smashed next to it, it really didn't sink in just how lucky / blessed she is to be alive. The wreck pulled that band right off her wrist on the side impact that took out that window.
The picture with my shadow is me standing where her can landed looking back at Princess Four standing on the road, and the bottom picture is me standing at her "car" looking back at my car that is in the exact spot where her car left the road. The Officer that investigated estimated 200 feet from the road.
I counted four touch down sites before she hit the landing spot. If it had been at night or someone hadn't seen the dust cloud and she had landed upside down, I don't think she would have been seen as she was so far off the road and in the heat of the day, you can barely see my car on the road!
The top picture is of them carrying her to the road from the crash site. I will share a wonderful story about that tomorrow.
GOD is GOOD!
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