Car accidents that haunt you years later...

In 2008 I was driving along with my sunroof open and my windows rolled down, soaking in the late afternoon sun on a hot July Friday. Traveling at about 40 mph, moving with traffic, I saw a white flash out of the corner of my right eye and then BAM!  I was hit by a box truck that was exiting the freeway without stopping or yielding to the flow of traffic. The truck hit my little red Subaru on the A-pillar of the right side and smashed the car in all the way to the gas cap. My car was shoved across the busy street where I came to a dead stop. Miraculously, no other cars hit me. Thankfully my window was down so my head and upper body swung outside the car and then back in. Although I was sore and my kidneys were bruised, I did not sustain any immediate and more serious injuries.

Except that today, while visiting my French Homeopathic doctor for another treatment of my neck/arm and shoulder pain on the left side, he asked me if I had ever been in a car accident.  Um...yeah, why?

Well, this pain that I have been living with now for over 4 weeks may be due to that same car accident years ago. The tingling down my arm, the stiffness in my neck and the occasional left-side headaches that I suffer with are all long term injuries from that guy not obeying the traffic law, striking my car at 50 mph. It is a real possibility that I may have developed arthritis in my neck causing all of this pain, a condition that will only deteriorate as I...  wait for it.....AGE!

Arthritis....at 34.   So discouraging!

The next car I buy will have to have side-impact airbags!

"And if the darkness is to keep us apart, and if the daylight feels like it's a long way off, and if your glass heart should crack and for a second you turn back...oh no, be strong..walk on"

I took myself out of the house this afternoon for a walk to clear my head. My feet found their way to the local olive tree garden just steps away from our apartment. Peaceful and quiet with the scent of wild flowers and the olive trees themselves, it felt like the right place for me to think and be alone. Most of the trees in this garden are well over 500 years old. As I sat there feeling overwhelmed with my sorrows I thought of all that those trees have seen. The joys and the sorrows. How many people have come and sat under their leaves and breathed in their scent and found comfort, just like me? How many have walked here and sat and just let their tears flow without restraint until there were no tears left. Imagine the stories these trees could tell me if only they knew how. If only I knew how to listen. Imagine the secrets that they are guardians of.

Maybe they were speaking to me...maybe their silent sympathy was the comfort I needed. I walked among them until I came across a patch of rose bushes and I stopped to smell each different one. Then I wandered to a batch of sunlight by a very large olive tree. There I found a bench that I laid across and looked up through the leafy arms of the old olive tree to the blue sky with its scattered clouds. I watched the clouds dance past and let my mind think upon things I have been too scared to think about for the past 24 hours. Memories I was afraid to remember, certain that just the mental pictures of my dear friend and all she did for me would crush my glass heart completely. Somehow though, I found the comfort I was seeking and for a few moments the clarity I needed. We are such small pieces of a picture too large for each of us to begin to understand. Laying there among my new friends, breathing in the clean perfumed air I felt less alone in my pain. Miles and miles away from the ones I love, being unable to help them and forced to simply wait to hear, I found a measure of peace in the olive tree garden.

"Who's to say where the wind will take you, who's to say what it is will break you. I don't know which way the wind will blow.......I know that this is not goodbye"