the accident

I let the curtains fall back into place...again. How many times have I looked outside now just to watch the rain splatter in the moonlight? Sigh. Sigh. Pace. Pace. Waiting isn't one of my best pastimes. My son and his best friend were on their way back from a youth retreat. One was saved, had been saved for years, the other... well we' had been praying for just as many years for his salvation. We being my best friends, Angie and her husband Greg. Oh and Jeff of course had been praying. It was his idea to invite Randy to the retreat. We'd hope that this weekend would result in an answered prayer. Jeff and Randy had been best friends since birth. It was predestinated since Angie and I had been friends since birth.

I glanced at the annoyingly slow time piece on the wall. Why did the hands move fast when I was late for work but so slow when I sit up waiting for my son to come home? Hopefully with good news. He isn't even behind schedule yet, they had about an hour's worth of driving to do to get home. They should be here within the hour, if not then I will engage myself in real high tech worrying. Teenagers driving so far from home make me nervous, but they were both excellent drivers. At least when We were watching. Again, We, being Angie and myself. I've always heard kids put on a good show while driving when their parents are around so they can sweet talk us into extra privileges, like taking the car out of town for a weekend retreat.

I forced myself to relax for forty five minutes. If you call reading for five minutes, getting up and pacing, then re-reading the same paragraph relaxing I was doing a bang up job. Ah. The phone. Either Randy or Jeff must be calling to tell me they’re getting close. Good boys. Don't make mommy worry or she will cut back your curfew. They know how I think.

"Hello." I answered anticipating my son’s voice..

"Is this Mrs. Carson?" a stranger asked. An official sounding stranger.

"Yes." I answered hesitatingly.

"There has been an accident......." more words followed but my mind had shut down, however, not before I had heard the location! They were just around the corner. Almost home!

I didn’t say goodbye before I dropped the phone on the floor, and rushed out the door. The rain soaked through my night clothes before I reached my car. Then I had to go back inside to get my keys!

There were lights marking the accident scene: lights, blue lights, yellow lights, flashing lights. Lots of flashing lights. Lots of activity. The first mangled car I spotted made me gasp; it belonged to Angie and Greg, their two bodies were slumped in the front seat and police were hovering over them, no one was moving them to one of the ambulances parked about. They must not be hurt too bad. Or...no! I couldn't think the worst. I couldn't accept the worse. Angie and I had been friends since our diaper days. We had been born on the same day, in the same town, in the same hospital; that is how our mothers had met and become lifelong friends. We went to school together, become Christians and were baptized together, married together, had our sons, Randy and Jeff, together, though not in the same hospital on the same day; that would have been too creepy. We had prayed for our sons together. Prayed for their salvation. Rejoiced together when one finally accepted Jesus. Prayed together for the success of this weekend. Angie had been my solid rock through my husband's infidelities, then through my divorce. I needed her now!

I was instantaneously encircled by several police officers who barred my way and restrained me. My nightie was clinging to my body, my bare feet were scrapped and bleeding from the gravely street I had just run down. A street lined with on lookers, pointing, whispering, speculating.

I heard someone whisper, "That must be her, the mother of the one....."

"Shhh, she doesn't know yet." another voice responded.

A kind face under an umbrella asked me if there was anyone she could call for me as she wrapped an overcoat around me, her overcoat, to provide me warmth and offer some decency from the gown that was plastered against me revealing way more than should be seen. I was fighting furiously to get loose from the well meaning cops, my wet arms were too slick for the officers to keep a steady hold on and I broke free, several times. The policemen grouped together and tried to regain a grip on me but Umbrella lady pushed them back with a no nonsense look that kept the strong law enforcement officials at bay.

There they were; Randy and Jeff! Jeff's body was reclining, Randy was sitting up, bent forward at the waist, his face in his hands. He was crying and sobbing while paramedics worked on Jeff. The paramedics eventually stood up and shook their heads. Oh no. Randy sobbed harder, then he saw me and his face lit up, but only momentarily. I ran to him and clutched him hard. Hard and secure. Then I sat down beside Jeff and gripped his hand while Randy wailed. It was alright for him to cry like a baby.

Jeff didn't look like Jeff. I've known him all his life and I couldn't recognize him! A mother, a father, a son. Dead. A complete family; three fourths of the people who meant anything to me; who met everything to me. It was just Randy and me now. He had been driving when the full day's activities followed by the long drive (and a secret bottle of beer he had snuck in his backpack and enjoyed while Jeff snored in the passenger seat) had had its affects on him causing him to become groggy and doze off briefly. Doze off going forty miles an hour. Briefly, but long enough for him to not notice the light turn yellow, then red, that was when he careened into Angie's car as she and Greg were heading home to be there before their son. Now, at sixteen Randy was responsible for the death of three people. I clung tightly to him and we wept and wept. We wept till the police separated us, handcuffed him and drove him to jail, leaving me standing there, soaking wet, and muddy, barefooted and cold. And in shock.

Umbrella lady had stayed by me and offered to drive me home in my car. She was a godsend since there was no way I was safe behind a steering wheel myself right now, even for only a few blocks. She not only drove me home, she stayed with me, fixing me some tea, tea that had a calming effect on me. Tea I’ve never tasted before. I wondered where it had come from as my eyelids slowly closed. I had ephemeral thought I’d been drugged. Umbrella lady proceeded to assist me to my bed where she undressed me, sponged bathed me,dried me off, re-gowned me, and tucked me under the covers. Oh, it felt so good to have someone nurturing me right now. (How did she know where everything was?) Umbrella lady had the uncanny common sense of not bothering to be overly eloquent. She just was there, quietly seeing me through my nightmare. I woke up once in the night to see her sitting by my bed, eyes focused upward, lips moving, then pausing, then moving again as though she was carrying on a conversation with someone…or something. Whatever had been in that tea was strong stuff if it was making her hallucinate!

In the morning Umbrella Lady was gone. I had no way to contact her, to thank her. All I could do was pass my thanks on to God who I hoped would deliver them to Umbrella lady, via his messenger the Holy Spirit. It stunned me that after last night I had any thanks left in me. There was one more thing to be thankful for. The Teenage boy that still lived was the one that hadn’t been saved yet. That had not found Jesus at the retreat, though Jesus had been there looking for him. How could he have missed out on such blessing over the weekend?

What followed were weeks of blurry actions and reactions. First there were three well attended funerals that sent three wonderful people off in grandeur. People I would see again, not in this lifetime but in the next, longer, eternal lifetime. The funerals were followed by court appearances, then a trial and sentencing for Randy. I stayed by his side, not condemning him for his mistake, holding out hope to him, giving assurances that things would work out. That God was still in control. That Angie, Greg and Jeff were home in heaven after their brief sojourn here on earth. That they had died knowing without a doubt they would join Christ at the throne.

As Randy served his time he was visited often by church members who counseled him. He was full of anger about a God that allowed this to happen, that had taken people like Angie, Greg and Jeff instead of him. They were Christians, they had trusted in God and where had it gotten them? If God existed he picked the wrong persons to die that night, he was the one that deserved death, not them. The church family answered some questions for him; made him still feel loved and unlocked the world of salvation and redemption to him. The world of forgiveness. At last, the moment Angie and I had prayed for for years had come. Randy accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior and was baptized behind bars. The metal bars held him in captivity but his spiritual prison opened up and let him free. He took courses in religion while in confinement. He grew in spirit. He healed. Healing from his mental injuries was a choice and his choice was the peace of God that he accepted on his seventeenth birthday.

At last the day arrived when I could pick Randy up from juvenile detention and take him home. A son would be sleeping under my roof again. I opened up the door to the bedroom that I had prepared for his homecoming. He blinked back tears at the photos on the dresser of Jeff and him as they were growing up. In softball, football, hockey, cub scouts, boy scouts. Manly sports. Bonding sports. He let some tears slide down his cheeks as he picked up Jeff's baptismal picture. His best friend had been the first to make a profession of faith and had tried to convince him that he needed Jesus in his life. It took the death of Angie, Greg and Jeff to persuade Randy of his need for forgiveness and salvation from his private hell.

I took the picture from Randy's hand and gazed into the eyes of my son.

"Jeff wouldn't have wanted to live if you had died without Jesus." I said putting the photo back in place so I could retrieve the picture of Angie, Greg and their son and said, “Angie and I shared everything growing up. We swopped clothes, records, videos, makeup, books, and now we’ve swopped sons. I’m confident that she is taking good care of Jeff in heaven. Now it’s up to me to take good care of you till we get to see our families again.”

Up above Umbrella Lady smiled and passed the tea kettle to an excited Angie, Greg and Jeff for refills as they breathlessly watched the unfolding drama on the big screen television in God’s throne room. Greg and Angie held hands, delighted that they would see their son again someday, and Jeff…well he was grateful his mom had someone to watch over her till they met again.

Umbrella Lady pulled her beeping pager out of her white gown's pocket, spread her wings and descended earthward to comfort another one of God’s children walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

psalm 23
john 3:16
2 corin. 2:15
col 1:13
hebrews 11:13
2 peter 3:1