Sometimes, life hits you in different ways. For me, it was with a car.

 

On Christmas Eve of 2020, a dear friend of mine lost her mother in a car accident. A drunk driver had rammed into the vehicle in which my friend, their mother, their grandfather and their significant other were riding in. It was a blow that devastated my friend physically and emotionally. It still remains a massive part of their life today.

They were the first thing that ran through my mind as the police escorted me into an ambulance on January 2. Adrenaline coursed through my veins at lightspeed, enabling me to walk and put my seatbelt on just fine. 

When I sat, I expected to feel all the pain my body was ignoring. But all I could do was shake. I wanted to cry. I have no problem admitting that. I wanted to break down and let it all out. I knew I couldn’t though. 

What had just happened was nothing short of a miracle.

It had been a beautiful day. My family, consisting of my parents, my younger sister, my younger brother and myself, all drove up to the mountains for a day of fun. We headed to the Koke’e National Park (I’m from Kaua’i, Hawai’i), where we played frisbee, football and a wide assortment of board games. The sun was shining and random dogs played fetch with us. It was a perfect day; so perfect that we almost forgot there was a pandemic going on. 

Among the festivities were a hide and seek game on a half-mile hike trail and a series of wacky challenges designed to embarrass the relative of our choice. After that, we played board games, where I messed up in the same word game three times in a row … in the exact same way. It was a weird day, but everything about it was perfect. 

We left the park and began our way down the mountain at 6 p.m.. The setting sun left a bright orange pastele-like hue in the sky. The sky amplified the green of the grass despite its fading vibrance. In the distance, I could see a dark shadow of the neighboring island Ni’ihau.

My mother always told my father to drive carefully when going up and down the mountain. There were too many sharp turns for us to move quickly. My father respected her wishes. He has always been a very safe and smart driver.

My father hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, we made it down the mountain safely and returned to town. As we headed home, we found ourselves behind a truck that was waiting to turn into a parking lot on the other side of the street. My father waited a little more than a car length behind the truck, his foot never leaving the brake. The speed limit was 45 miles per hour.

I mention the speed limit because that’s how fast the car that rear-ended us was going. We don’t know what the driver was doing. We assume they were texting and driving. Regardless, they were moving fast, and the only thing that brought them to a halt was hitting my family’s car with all of us in it.

My siblings and I had been relaxed. Having just gotten service back, we were all looking at our phones to see what we had missed (spoiler alert: not much). My mother, who was in the passenger seat, turned back to look at my siblings and I. Within seconds, she saw two golden dots grow in size and then disappear as the car crashed into ours with a WHAM!

It was the slowest second of my life. My head whipped back as glass shards from the back window flew forward. My right arm swung out and hit the side door as a sound that could only be described as a thousand plates shattering on the ground rang through my brain.

Immediately, I felt around for broken bones and checked my neck for blood. When I found nothing, I twitched my legs to see if they were injured in any way. They weren’t. Once I had finished my self-assessment, my mother brought me back to reality.

She groaned and whimpered, terrified for my siblings and I. I looked to my left to find my sister clutching her head. Sitting in the middle of the back row, she had no headrest. My brother seemed dazed, but mostly fine. My father pulled over and limped out of the car to speak with the other driver. 

As my father got the driver’s information, I dialed 911 for my mother. She tried to speak to the officers on the line, but her shaky voice indicated that she just wanted to check on us. I took over the talking. It didn’t feel real, sharing all of this information after an actual accident, but it had to be done. 

Statistically, a given individual is involved in a car accident once every 18 years. I thought about where I was in my life. I was 19 and with my parents and siblings. The fear of another accident happening 18 years from now planted its seeds in my mind. Would it happen again when I have a wife and kids of my own? If I had kids, how old would they be? Could their bodies take it? Could I take it?

After a series of questions about the accident and our health, the paramedics escorted us into an ambulance. Cue the shaking.

I couldn’t stop thinking about all the negatives. The crash. The injuries. The panic in my mother’s voice. My friend. Their mother. The totalled car. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t look away from the picture my mother had taken of the car. Within minutes it was on my phone (the head image. See the smashed corner? That’s where I sat). I still look at it sometimes.

Then I thought even harder about my year. My 2020 was way harder than it needed to be because I made it harder on myself. Yes the pandemic sucked, but my negativity about it consumed me. Every aspect of my life was affected, from the quality of my schoolwork and my relationships to my physical and mental health. So while the car accident hurt my body, it knocked all the sense into me.

The saying “life’s too short” is true in the sense that time does indeed fly. It’s not, however, the appropriate saying that should motivate you to do more with your life. I finally realized what the saying should be that night.

“Live like there are no guarantees.”

I had wasted my 2020, which I didn’t think was possible given all the opportunities that had been stripped away from me. When I was in the car accident, I reflected on how I’d feel if that was the last day of my life and found myself disgusted. I would have left the world as a bitter, stubborn, frustrated and unmotivated human being. That’s not how I want to be remembered.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but on Jan. 3, 2021, I made a promise to myself that I would fix everything I had damaged in my life. I have since kept that promise physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. After a month, I’ve fully recovered from the crash. I’ve forgiven the driver who hit us and thank God everyday for protecting us from any serious injuries.

Sometimes we all need a reminder that rocks our world and makes us remember who we are and what we’re doing here. Something that forces us to think about how we’ve been living and how to improve upon that. For me, it was a WHAM!, but for you, I hope it’s more of a tap on the shoulder.