I know I have been a terrible blogger lately, and truthfully, I am just uninspired to write.  This is a first for me in the six years of blogging. I don’t expect it to last forever, but I also didn’t want to bore you with tales of work, work, work and not much play.  Add to that the bad weather we had this Spring, I really was just not up to it.

And then, as life goes on, something happens to put it all in perspective for you once again.

I will start this by saying no one was hurt.

My Mother, who has never had an accident other than a little tap on a fender back in the 1960’s when fenders were made of steel, was in a pretty major crash up yesterday.  And the saddest part is that I didn’t know about it until 9:30pm.  Maybe not the saddest, but sad to me because life went on.  At 3pm I was picking up J at school and we were sitting outside in the long awaited sunshine, while my Mother was being crashed into and spun through an intersection.

Just like that, in a blink of an eye, it could have been all over.

I would have missed her almost daily calls, all her love and advice all because someone didn’t take time to realize their light was red.  As my Mother turned on a green arrow through an intersection, a van with four passengers came flying at her, realized they were going to hit and slammed their brake.  They skidded 28 feet into my Mom’s front as she was turning, sending her into a 180. She was left sitting facing the opposite way she was heading wondering what on earth had happened.

Now, I wasn’t there and there is another side to this story, the one where the other light was green and my Mom wasn’t turning on an arrow, but since my Mother is probably the best driver I know. And has never had an infraction and is so all about shoulder checking, obeying the law and doing the right thing, always. I believe her 100% that she was turning on the green arrow and that the other car was also doing that (but in the opposite direction) and changed their mind into the intersection with the red light.  As for the other 10 or so cars in the intersection at the time, you would think one witness would have stopped to a) see if everyone was alright and b) bear witness to the incident. But, nobody did.  An off-duty fireman stopped after the fact to check out my Mom and the other passengers and offer assistance until police and my Dad showed up.

This isn’t a post about who was right and who was wrong, this is a post about putting it all in perspective.

She will be needing a new car, it would seem. And I suppose I should send a shout out to GM for this baby down here.  The Impala, built tough and strong, kept my Mom safe yesterday. I shudder to think of her in our little red car getting hit like she did. I know it doesn’t look so bad in this photo but when you are standing next to it and see the engine on an angle and hanging out the bottom of the car you realize just how hard she was hit.  Something I just had to do today was go and take a look at it, to gain just a little bit more of the perspective around me.

Today could have been a much, much different day for me. I could have been laying my Mom to rest instead of thanking God that she is alive. Give your loved ones a squeeze today, be thankful they are home with you and try to keep it all in perspective.