There were baby toys in the rear window, settling in around the bottle of windshield washer fluid. It was that orange fluid, the color of St. Joseph's baby aspirin. Funny I should remember that right now, my first traumatic memory mixing with the newest. A toddler adventure with aspirin and getting my stomach pumped now swims in the same memory pond as ...
I just saw someone get killed.
A truck in front of me moved aside just in time for me to witness a swirling dust cloud flowing around a car as it landed on the guardrail in the median. I didn't see what triggered it.
All of it was so "out of place." It took a minute for my brain to grasp the meaning of what my eyes were seeing.
It's one of those "film strip" moments - the kind that re-runs over and over again in your mind. I see the cloud first. The car is sort of an afterthought in that first moment. I try to make the shape fit - what is that thing? Then I recognize that everything is sideways.
Those are the windshields, and that's the roof facing me, and the wheels are on the other side, and all of it is not on the ground. And it's coming from the other side of the highway. And then, just as suddenly, it's not moving.
And there are baby toys coming to rest, fitting themselves in around the windshield washer fluid. That bottle is the only thing upright in the whole car, standing on the side pillar just inside the rear windshield. There's other stuff in the rear windshield, but nothing that screams out like the toys. Baby toys.
It took almost an hour to finally realize the grayish curtain in the front windshield must have been the air bag. I'm am thankful for that airbag, not because it could have made any difference in the outcome, but because I couldn't see what was on the other side of it. My god, I can't even imagine. The car landed on the driver's door. On top of the guard rail. And stopped. Dead. It took just a moment for all the flying stuff inside to settle. Maybe as long as a sneeze.
I feel guilty for being glad it stopped, because if it had rolled, instead, onto my side of the road, maybe the driver could have survived. But then I'd have hit it, there being no time to react. It was awfully close, and I didn't know it was happening until there was just no time to move. It's the worst feeling - at that moment, my survival depended, directly, on someone else not surviving. I'm glad to be alive, but I feel like it's wrong to be happy about it. Someone died today, right in front of me.
And there were baby toys in the car.
I don't know anything beyond that. I wanted to pull over, but there was no safe place to do so, no room to maneuver through the traffic around me. I saw someone dialing the police on their cell - at least I assume they called the police. God, I hope they were calling the police. My cell phone was packed in a backpack in the back seat. I couldn't call. The only thing I could think to do was to flash my high beams at the cars coming the other way - trying to get them to slow down, to move over. Some did. I hope it helped. There was nothing more I could do.
I know this isn't really a diary, but I just needed to write it out. Hoping - maybe putting it in words would give it distance. Mostly, it just makes me want to cry.
Please, please, everyone, please drive carefully.