You hear about shitty things happening to other people all the time. More often than not, you don’t know who those people are. They are not your family, they are not your friends.
Divorces, deaths, accidents, financial downfalls. Their severity can run from unfortunate to terrible. Take death for instance. A great grandfather passing on is sad, but not unexpected, and that tends to lessen the blow. A 30 year old father dropping dead of heart failure is absolutely tragic. But if you are hearing about this second or third hand, and its about somebody you do not know and probably don’t care about, it just doesn’t get to you. You don’t think that the very same thing that happened to that unfortunate person or family can happen to somebody you know.
I am very guilty of this. I say the appropriate “That’s so sad”, or “Damn that’s terrible”, and I mean it, but I’m not upset. I take for granted the safety of my friends and family. All the bad stuff was always happening to other people. That however, has changed.
Very late Friday, close to midnight, my sister and her boyfriend were making their way to my parents place. Living only an hour away, my sister frequently visits them. This weekend was a bit more important than usual. My mother had recently turned 52, and my grandparents were there visiting, which they had not done in an unusually long time.
Midway between Guelph Mildmay, Ontario, a truck ran an intersection and hit the driver’s side of my sister’s civic. The truck hit the side of her car with so much force that it removed the transmission from the car, and sent it rolling into the ditch. I do not know any more of the details from the accident. I am however, very aware of the result of that crash.
My sister, considering the state of the car, is not too badly off. Other than what can only be described as a full body bruise, the only major damage is a fractured ulna, which has been secured with a plate and the arm put in a cast. She has an eyelid stitched, and a cut on her face below the eye, also stitched. She was released today from a hospital in Guelph. She can still use both hands, and while she is in quite a bit of pain, she can get around on her own just fine. Her boyfriend Mike, however, has not faired as well as she.
Mike was driving. I don’t know why he was driving instead of my sister, but he was, and I owe him. I owe him huge. Mike’s left femur, is broken. It is one clean break, which is fantastic considering what happened. But thats not all. His hand is damaged. The doctors don’t know how yet, but there is something wrong. Last I heard, he has several broken vertebra, but the spinal cord itself is undamaged. There is a large cut on his head, and a possible fracture in his skull. Because Mike is a well muscled guy, so his injuries, while severe, could have been much worse. In fact, a foot more up the car, and the impact would have killed him. He had to be cut from the car with the jaws of life, and because of a potential problem with his chest, was airlifted to a Hospital in Hamilton.
Tough as he is, Mike was able to text my sister yesterday, letting her know he was okay. It must have taken a considerable amount of energy to do that given the state he is in, but I know it was really good for my sister to hear from him. I owe him again for that.
It gets worse for my sister however. Her boyfriend might be seriously injured, but her new puppy, which was resting on her lap at the time of the accident, is dead. Animals mean more to my sister than people do in most cases. The loss of Basel hurt her, and was the tipping point for me. All of it is just too much.
As I type this, my girlfriend, fantastic woman that she is, is cooking my sister more than a week’s worth of food, which we will be taking to her this coming weekend. I wish it could be sooner, but my sister IS okay, and I just started a new job that I can’t get away from until the end of the week. I can’t wait to see my sister, and my biggest hope is that when I get there I can make her smile.
Now, I have not yet commented on the person responsible for my sister’s pain. At first all I felt was rage. Shaking, tear filled rage. But then came a small feeling of pity. The anger is easy to understand, but what about the pity? I can’t help but pity somebody who is so very, very simple. So simple that their ability to make good choices is greatly overshadowed by that of most 7 year olds. So yeah, I pity him.
But its mostly anger.
I’m normally a peaceful, almost passive person, but I can honestly say, If I ever encounter the shit eating fucktard who decided it would be a good idea to try and kill my sister, I will beat him until he looks just as black and blue as my sister does. I hope he feels like the worthless lowlife he really is. And if it turns out he was DUI, I want him in jail, and I want him to end up the bitch of some massive, well-endowed bear.
Fuck you asshole. Fuck you.
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