A "Grace of God" Moment

Wow. Today I had one of those severely perspective-shifting, "there but for the grace of God go I" experiences. I was on my way to work, about 5-10 minutes late as always after the usual morning wrangle, and there was a big white monster pickup in front of me which was driving erratically, whipping from one lane to another, the driver gesticulating angrily out the window at the too-slow car in front of him. I remember looking at him and thinking "asshole, I should move up and box him in just to teach him a lesson", but then gave up the idea as juvenile and not worth the effort. Just then, as I was keeping a wary eye on him, he suddenly (and I do mean suddenly, with almost no warning at all) yanked his car over to the left into a left-turn only lane, and promptly WHAMMED into the back of a blue sedan that had been patiently waiting at the light, minding its own business. He'd been going about 40 mph when he swerved, and had barely begun to apply the brakes by the time he hit the blue sedan. The sedan got pushed into the back of the big gold SUV that was in front of it, also sitting patiently at the light waiting to turn. I watched as the glass shattered and popped out of the back window and the whole sedan just crumpled, front and back (which is what it's supposed to do, but still, the ease with which it just smooshed was rather startling). Then I was past the accident, freaked out and wondering whether I should go back and see if everyone was ok, or call the Highway Patrol or 911 or what, but ultimately I dithered and then didn't (and yes, I actually thought to myself "am I just pulling a Kitty Genovese here?").

I got to work a few minutes later, shaken and feeling very, very lucky that it hadn't been me in that accident, and told my boss this story. He offered to drive me back to the scene (which I thought was very thoughtful) and see whether help had arrived yet, and whether or not I could be helpful as a witness. So we jumped in his car and drove back there, and found that there was already a fire truck, an ambulance, and a bunch of police there. (Someone with more presence of mind and/or good samaritan manners had already called them, I guess.) We walked over to one of the motorcycle cops and I told him my story (he took notes) and gave him my contact details. He told us that it seemed pretty clear that the driver of the truck was "totally hammered" (at 9:30am!) and that he would likely get charged with a felony DUI. He also said that the driver of the totaled sedan was being checked out by the paramedics but that he thought she was not badly hurt, that she'd walked over to the ambulance herself. (The SUV was hardly scratched, of course--we watched her drive away from the scene while we were there.) I asked if I would be needed to testify in court or anything like that, and he told me that I probably wouldn't be, since if it was needed he could use what I'd told him in court. I remember joking with him "so can you put in the part about how that truck driver was a total asshole?" He said he'd try to think of a slightly more polite way to put it. We thanked him and took off again.

The thing I keep coming back to in this whole incident is the idea that the woman in the blue sedan was just sitting there, peacefully, just going about her day, obeying all the rules and doing everything she was supposed to, and then BOOM! her life changed for the worse. She couldn't have predicted it, she couldn't have defended against it, and it was in no way her fault--but still, it happened. It could have happened to anybody, but it happened to her. Why? Bad luck, bad karma...how do we make sense of something so random and arbitrary? Sudden, negative events like this violate the trust we have in social agreements (like traffic rules), and therefore shake up (if not destroy) any sense of safety we might have had. I'm so grateful that I *am* still safe, and my loved ones are all still safe (I had many moments of dark fantasy about what that accident would have been like with kids in the back seat, mine or someone else's), but I can't quite take that safety for granted as much as I did before I left the house this morning. I wish I could just stick my head back in the sand like a good little ostrich. Instead I think I'll just spend extra time hugging my family and waiting for this vertiginous feeling of "that could have been me" to pass.