A lament for lost time | Ten years ago today a Bison transport truck lost control on the Trans-Canada highway somewhere along the desolate stretch between Marathon and White River in northern Ontario. When he sped down a hill and around a corner too fast, his trailer swung wide into the east-bound lane. It hit me.
Seven broken bones (knee, two ribs, four in the face and neck), a damaged lung, one crushed vertebrae and one displaced, broken teeth, severed nerves around an eye, cheek ripped open down to bone, a sprained ankle and a brain injury. I lost consciousness. When I awoke, frozen because all the windows in my pickup were shattered and it was about -20, I was trapped. The dashboard of the vehicle had collapsed on my left leg and it took almost an hour for the Jaws of Life to come and chew me out. A 45-minute ambulance ride to the Marathon hospital, a medical helicopter to Thunder Bay and eventually a medical flight to Winnipeg got me home to a shattered life.
It took more than two years to recover.
I lost so much… and almost destroyed my family.
I wish I could say I learned some enduring life lessons from all the pain, from the lost decade, from the missed opportunities, from the anger, frustration, the limitations, the what ifs….
But I’m not that wise nor can I absorb the subtle nuances that supposedly come from seasons of suffering.
I’m simply glad to be alive. And today, ten years on, I rejoice that I am not yet a footnote of history.