This thought came to me today after I was coming back from the dump (for lack of a better word) to rid myself of some 25-year-old textbooks. I think this has been formulating in my head in bits and pieces for a while but it came very clear right before I turned into Burger King for a quick bite. I had to suppress the urge to think about it too much to save me tears for after getting through the drive-thru. (I am setting the stage for how mundane of a time it was).
All this time I have been comparing your death to when you were alive-like there was your life and your death for the choices, like holding one in each hand. I don't want to jump right into it, but that's not what the options were-your life the way it was or your death. There was something major in between-the accident. I know that's obvious, but THAT is what changed everything.
I have said in other posts that there could have been so many outcomes of the accident-almost innumerable outcomes. If you lived-brain damage (innumerable outcomes in and of itself) broken legs (maybe never to walk again), something we just found out about-your eyes weren't able to be used to donate, so vision problems or blindness for you, whatever spleen issue you had, if you seriously injured or killed the other driver, if you were charged with some sort of crime, etc. Innumerable outcomes. An infinity of possible outcomes. The only outcome that wasn't even a possibility was your life and our life going back to the way it was before the accident. That wasn't an option. The accident took that away from us, not your death. Your death was a result of the accident but the accident was the life-changer.
Of course, we can think, if only there hadn't been the accident. Of course, we wish that! But it happened, and there is no way around it or out of it. These things happen for some reason-imperfect humans who make mistakes, odd and unknown circumstances. Things that could've been avoided and things that couldn't have. Things that can't be undone. We will never know on this side of Heaven. Maybe we won't care to know ON the side of Heaven, because we will be so happy already and it won't even matter anymore! People can speculate all they want (and I wish they would stop!), but no one has the real answer. I think everyone realizes how important it is to drive carefully, etc. so that is something that can help others from this circumstance, among another infinity of results.
YOU were GONE the minute your car hit that truck. You as we knew and loved you, were GONE! There was the shell of you lying there in the hospital room, but all of the wonderful things that made you YOU were gone. Once that's gone, you can't get it back. You can maybe get part of it back or what looks like you, but the BEST part of YOU was gone. That was one of the innumerable outcomes of this horrible accident and probably the most painless (no, that isn't a typo) for everyone in the long run. Painless is a relative term because it is extremely painFUL, but any more suffering for you would have been worse. Suffering for everyone, to see you suffer and to be a fraction of all that you were.
Coming back later to finish this: For some reason, this perspective has lifted a weight off of my soul. I don't know how long it will make me feel better, but I will take it for as long as it does! I shared this thought with the kids and with Dad. Dad pretty much ignored it as everything else I say, but the kids understood. I shared it with Jill too and I will probably tell Nance when I see her tomorrow night and maybe Jeanette Brenner. It helps to make your death make sense at the most very basic level: you were in a car accident. You got a brain injury. You died from the brain injury. Now to make it "make sense" on a larger level, that's a whole other story. But any little bit helps. I will take it! Love you SO MUCH!
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