Today when my daughters a couple of their friends and I came out of the movie theater there was a horrible accident. A driver had veered off the road right in front of the theater and hit two parked cars and then rolled their car. The car was across both lanes of the road, there was glass everywhere.
The first car they hit, was parked behind the second car and the impact shoved the first car through a fence and it ended up next to the car in front of it. It was a little surreal, the situation was bad.
However, the accident was less of an impact than what I saw after everything settled down and the driver was sitting on the side of the road with her passenger. The driver was a very, very young mother that had just finished working at a fast food restaurant. She held in her arms her daughter, not more than a year or so old. I felt a whole in the pit of my stomach swallowing me from the inside. For a brief moment, I was stuck trying to process what I was seeing, then the daughter looked up at me. I cannot tell you how much of a weight was lifted seeing that little girl look at me. On the same note, I cannot express in words the hell I went through for that mother in the brief seconds when I first saw them together, mother and motionless child.
I asked if everyone was ok, as did every other person in the crowd that was gathering. The police and emergency response showed fairly quick and began to check them both out. I overheard them say the child was in her car seat and the mother was wearing her seat belt and that is probably what allowed them to walk away.
The entire event was a stark reminder of how mortal we are and how things can change so quickly in just a couple of moments in our lives. The rest of my day has been spent with each one of my kids doing fun things together. But even with the fun, I couldn’t eliminate from my mind the thought of what I would do if anything happened to one of them…and equal time trying to force the thought from my mind.
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