On a particular Thursday in March

This is a story of two women on a particular Thursday in March. They each began their day much in the manner that they usually started their days back then with breakfast and coffee and a to-do list. Their names are Angel and Sarah and they had never met. In fact, they had never planned to meet and it was highly unlikely that their paths would have ever crossed, except for on this particular Thursday in March, there was an accident and it changed their lives forever.

Angel was 29 years old. An attractive single mom with two young boys, born and raised in the ranch lands of western USA. She loved horses, her blonde haired blue-eyed boys, guns, and Jesus. She dreamed of having her own ranch one day, no harm in dreaming big, she thought. After all dreams are free. At the moment, though, life was a struggle and on this particular Thursday in March, one of her son's was sick. This meant he was coming along on her days work of cutting and delivering firewood. She had an order that would pay her a couple Benjamin's and that should get her through the end of the month when her next government check would come. She was up early, fed the boys and loaded up the truck. She double checked she had everything she would need, chainsaw, oil, gas, gloves, goggles, tie downs. She threw lunch, blankets and warm beverages in the car and yelled at the boys to load up. She was in a hurry this day and would have to hustle to get the youngest dropped at daycare, cut and deliver the load and be back before daycare pick up time. It was going to be tight.

She never imagined her life would be like this. Everything thing was great until about a year ago. She was living with the father of the boys, her high school sweetheart and they both had decent jobs at a local ranch. They had enough money, she had a home and a horse and dreams, life was good. But her man started using and soon they lost their ranching jobs. Now he was in jail and she was alone. She was trying hard to turn it around and proud of being 6 months clean and sober. Unfortunately though, she hadn't been able to land a decent job and was living with a friend and trying to put her life back together. It just seemed like she could never catch a break.

She jumped into her 1998 Ford Ranger pick up that she had bought second hand and couldn't even afford to insure and headed out to cut wood. The weather was pretty decent that day. The sun was shining and the temp was in the mid 30's, snow still sparkles on the mountain peaks and spring was just around the corner, it was a good day. As she chopped rounds and split logs, feeling the strength of her body, she dreamed about ranching. She imagined having a home of her own again where she could keep her beloved horse and ride him every day. She missed him so. Soon enough, she has the truck loaded and drove to drop off the load. She was making good time, had the money in her pocket and stopped off at the quickie Mart to pick up a six pack of beer and a hot cocoa for Cole. They headed towards the day care. Out on these country roads, you rarely saw a cop, so she had the pedal to the metal and the music blasting. She was flying at 80 miles an hour kicking up a plume of dust behind her as she reached the junction of the Hwy and Bliss Road. Just as she was barrelling towards the stop sign, Cole distracted her, as 4 year old boys can do, and when she looked back at the highway she was about to cross, she realized his timing has been grave.

Sarah and Julian had been together over 10 years on this particular Thursday in March. Their love story was epic. They had met on an online dating site in late summer during hurricane season. They had placed ads on the site for very different reasons. Julian was an emergency room nurse in NW France and was interested in improving his English skills as many of his patients didn't speak French. Sarah was living in New Orleans and not only was hurricane season hot as blazes, the near annual evacuations were getting boring. She had always loved France and everything French and thought, maybe a French boyfriend would be great and she could escape part of the summer to France. As it so happened they exchanged emails for about 6 months and finally met in person for Mardi Gras in New Orleans in February. They fell in love in the 10 days they spent together and within 6 months, Sarah had sold everything she had and packed what was left into 5 suitcases and moved to France to be with him.

They married two months later. They travelled the world together, visiting 15 countries and much of the USA. They eventually settled back in New Orleans a few years later. They bought a house, rescued cats and a French mastiff and shared their joint passions of good food, music , wine and friends. They had a beautiful and happy life. They worked hard and spent all their extra income traveling and going to concerts. When Julian was eligible for early retirement, they took it and started planning a way to live a simpler life.

The couple bought an off grid homestead in a forest out west in the same ranchlands that Angel lived in. They had lived there exactly a year on this particular Thursday in March. Off grid living was not what they were used to and they had to learn many new skills, but they were very happy with their new life in the forest. Clean air, millions of stars. They heated the cozy cabin with a wood stove. They also cut a lot of wood. In preparation for winter they had stored 5 months of supplies. All the food and fuel and wood they would need because in winter the forest roads weren't passable. The homestead was on 10 acres down a 1 mile dirt road and 10 miles from a road that was regularly plowed. On this particular Thursday in March, they were headed to town, though. It was a 90 minute drive ( in summer). There was a birthday to celebrate and a kind neighbor had plowed the road, so they could get out. They hadn't been down the mountain in three months. They were looking forward to a meal out and some cake and seeing some other humans, for a change.

The forest road still had plenty of snow on it but once they hit the highway, it was all clear. There was a to-do list, of course, that rarely got completed, but they had bought $400 worth of groceries and had Mexican food and cake. It was a good day. They were headed back home before the roads hot slick and were happily discussing the plot twists of whatever they were binging on Netflix. As they approached Bliss Road, they could see the truck coming fast because there was a plume of dust behind it. It registered in both their minds at that moment that it didn't look like the car was going to be yielding at the stop sign. No time to dodge the bullet.

Seconds later, impact. The Ford Ranger struck the Ford explorer in the driver's door, crushing the car and sending it flying off the road and into a field.

Sarah felt the impact, the car left the road and the contents of the car tossed like a salad. She felt gravity and time suspended, her body being thrown and twisted around as the car spin and rolled. The airbags inflated, the seatbelts locked and at last they came to a stop, right side up in a field. She looked at Julian, his face was slack, head dropped on his chest and blood was dripping from his ear, his nose and his mouth. He didn't respond to his name. Panic rose in her throat and she began to desperately try to free herself from the seatbelt and airbag to locate her glasses and phone, she had to call for help. Everything has gone flying , she felt for a pulse and wasn't sure she could feel one. She couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. She needed help and fast.

Someone knocked in the window and helped her open the car door to get out. She ran to the driver's side and saw that it was so grievously smashed that there was no way to get the door open to help Julian out, she started screaming. She thinks she heard the person say they had called 911, everything was hazy and muted and nothing made any sense. All she could think about was how to get Julian out of the car. Soon the ambulance came and the police. The police removed her from the scene, while the paramedics tried to get Julian out. The police had many questions, she only had one. Is he alive? Can I go over there? She asked. The police insisted she had to stay away and led her to an ambulance. She could hear someone shrieking, probably the driver of the other vehicle, she thought. It looked totally mangled. They put her in the ambulance, the last she ever saw if Julian was his body on the ground and the paramedics doing CPR. They drove away to the hospital.

When Angel looked up , she saw she was about to hit a Ford Explorer that was on the highway just beyond the stop sign that she neglected to stop at. There was nothing she could do at this point. The impact threw her back against her seat and then forward against the windshield and her son out the open window. Neither of them were wearing seatbelts. The impact was so intense that the trucks engine travelled into the cab of the truck and crushed her right leg. She has never felt pain like this before. She looked down and immediately looked away, blood and bone is what she saw. She screamed more. She knew she wouldn't be in her horse anytime soon. The paramedics came running and carefully removed her into a stretcher and into a helicopter. She begged for something to relieve the pain, but they needed blood samples first. She passed out.

Angle woke up in the hospital emergency room. She and Sarah were in adjacent beds with a curtain between them. Angel was screaming and begging for relief from the unimaginable pain. Sarah was begging to be moved away from the person who was not only screaming her head off, but had just caused the accident that likely killed her husband. She wanted to scream too, to the woman next to her about what she just did, but she held her voice down. Neither of the women would forget this particular Thursday in March. Both of their lives were forever changed. Would Angel ride again, would she even walk again? How would she take care of her kids, how could she work ? Sarah had lost her partner, her best friend and essentially her house, because she couldn't live in the mountains alone. What was she going to do now? Both women faced uncertain futures and unbearable loss.

The two women in this story, never met on that particularly ill-fated Thursday in March, but they did meet 11 months later. Angel was charged by the state with felony vehicular manslaughter and they met at the sentencing hearing. Sarah made a statement about how the events of that day had affected her and her family and Julian's family and their friends. How their grandchildren would never see him again. How Sarah's life has been totally upended. How that moment of distraction had rippled through so many lives. Sarah was struggling with crippling grief and trying to find a way to live and a way to forgive Angel. Angel asked for forgiveness and leniency from the judge. She didn't want to be separated from her children and insisted it was just an accident. She walked with a cane and had endured multiple surgeries on her right leg. She was still in pain. Sarah hugged Angel at the end of the hearing and said she hoped her life would improve.

What Angel had said was true, it was an accident. However, there were actions taken and not taken that caused the accident and resulting fall out. Or maybe there are no accidents. Maybe 5 years down the road the story will seem very different.