My Day

This has been one heck of a day. I woke up this morning and was stumbling around trying to get myself ready for the day. I had a performance so that meant two sets of clothes. I had rehearsal so that meant making sure I had music. I had my regular daily activities and that meant making sure my head was placed on my neck and then fastened properly. Then suddenly my day changed and everything that seemed so important no longer was. At 5:40 a. m. my sister came running out of her bedroom to inform me that my brother had just been hit by a car and was on his way to the hospital. It took 5 minutes to get in the car and head to the hospital to meet the ambulance. When we got there they had no information for us. We didn't know what had happened, how it had happened, and what kind of condition our brother was in. That first 30 minutes of not knowing anything was torture. All the possible case scenarios that fill your head are not a comfort in any way. Thankfully the staff at the hospital was really nice and they tried to let us know things as quickly as they could. After a while we learned that my brother had been hit head on by a truck. He had been walking and the driver of the truck didn't see him and ran into him. The truck hit my brother full force in the chest and then flung him backwards. The impact caused his back to split open, but thankfully didn't damage his chest cavity at all. Amazingly he had no broken bones or internal injuries. His fall caused quite a bit of damage though. His shin bone was completely broken and dislocated and there were surface wounds all over his body. He had to undergo several x-rays and a CT scan and then emergency surgery to correct the broken leg. I saw him in the ER just before he went in to surgery and he was not a pretty sight to behold. He was so beat up and he was in so much pain I couldn't help but get teary-eyed. My brother was suffering in front of me and there wasn't anything I could do to stop it. All I could offer was to hold him as best I could and tell him how much I loved him and was praying for him. You know, it's funny how in an instant your life can change and suddenly things look so different. At that moment in the ER nothing mattered but letting my brother know that I loved him while I still had the chance. More than once the thought crossed my mind, "What if he hadn't made it and I never got the chance to talk to him again?" What if I had lost my brother this morning? Would he know that I love him and really care about him? What would I do differently with him if I had it to do? I know these are common thoughts for people to have when they go through this sort of thing, but it was startling to be reminded of the uncertainty of life, of brevity of life, of the fact that you should show those you love how much you love them while you have the chance because they won't always be there for you to show and you never know when they will be gone.
Needless to say the day was a bit emotional for me, I'm still fighting back tears of relief as I write this, but I am so thankful that things didn't turn out worse than they did. Something good out of the bad - my family really came together and we tried to support each other and ease the burden each one was carrying. From one of my sisters buying breakfast to my little brother letting me cry on his shoulder to my uncle staying most of the day with my brother in the hospital, my family was there for each other as well as for my brother and when it's all said and done that's what really counts in times like these.