Car Crash

Driving out to Llanfair Caereinion today to install some sound equipment, I noted two crashed cars within no more than a mile of each other.  This is a twisty road in places, deceptively so I suppose for the young and unwary boy racer.  One car was sat on the grass beside the road on a sharp bend, closely bound in blue police tape, while the other was set in a field which it had not entered via the gate - you could see where the hedge had been extensively remodelled.  Neither car looked too badly damaged, at least so far as the passenger compartment was concerned so I hope the drivers and passengers escaped without serious injury.  Sadly, though, not all do;  the number of families each year plunged into sadness because of road traffic accidents is far too high.  Many of those injured and killed are, of course, the innocent victims of the foolishness or inattention - or, let's face it, the criminal negligence - of others.

To me, the cars I saw today were a reminder not only of how dangerous and all too often deadly our roads are, but also of how suddenly and traumatically accidents of any kind can change our lives.  So far as these particular accidents were concerned, at the very least there were two cars that are out of circulation, two drivers presumably now having to catch the bus;  both cars could very well be written off.  And who knows? maybe there is also the pain and discomfort of living with disability or with injuries that will take time to heal.  I hope there is nothing worse than that.  In the work I now do I am constantly in contact with people whose lives have been traumatically changed.  I've seen how they handle this - with acceptance and resignation, with fortitude and nobility, or perhaps with a real sense of being crushed by events and crippled by sadness and loss.  People are different, and so are the circumstances they face.

And it occurs to me that often, whatever one's actual role in the events, part of what has to be faced when accident or trauma happens is a burden of guilt, of having messed up, of actions or inaction to be regretted.  I shouldn't have done that!  I could have done more!  What the happens can be that we magnify these things up, twisting reality so as, almost, to gratuitously hurt ourselves more than we should be hurt.  Or we may thrash about, throwing blows and blame in every direction as one way of silencing those nagging voices from deep within.  Grief is a profoundly disabling thing, and it is, therefore, something we're not going to handle well on our own.  Sometimes the only role one can play as a friend or adviser is that of the parent whose little hurt child has no words, just pummelling fists against the legs of Mum or Dad to express the frustration of pain.  But that is such a vital role, when we're just there to help soak up the angst, until calmness and acceptance begin to prevail.

So today I was thinking not only of the disabling and disorientating suddenness of traumatic changes, but of how much, and how deeply, we need each other when this happens.  How vital is the work of the Good Samaritan!