A Deconstruction of the Accident

There are many roads and all, like Proust’s, contain young and old persons from whom one must win affection, grace, an overarching raison d’etre—perhaps most of all a pardon and restoration to love—gone missing for so long it seems unattainable in these long summer days full of dust and ennui. Love would be self-love, the sense of feeling at home in the body. All that has changed. I am a stranger to myself, and when I try to explain this, take for instance, a word or two chosen badly in the presence of beautiful girls, the blue-eyed pair of lithe almost-sixteen year old twins two generations away, it’s as if I have fish-flopped onto a matt and landed the worst possible pose, and I become as laughable as I am, this self-absorbed, full of back pain, seventy-year old woman denounced by society as old; contained only in a fragile psychological mix of lacerating self-talk, ritualistically slow mornings with sixties music, gluten-free pancakes, physical therapy, and laundry.

To say that this is only the beginning of a beginning would be euphemistic. It is necessary to travel, though travel can be forward, backwards, sidewise, up, down, north, south, east, west—that is to say, every journey takes place in time and space. Otherwise, I am the victim of never-changing walls brightened only by the cat lying in its chosen spot. This particular road does not exist anymore because it has been repaved and has a median. Only the idea exists, though to be sure this ideation intrudes far more than I would like, into the daily fabric of a life made whole by grown children who visit at intervals. In July and December. One in particular, the grown-up son, happened to be with me and could even be said to have been the cause of the accident. And yet he was not—perhaps I was at fault. There is never any single, immutable causality in the case of an accident. An accident is, by definition: “an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, …resulting in damage or injury”.

That I’d purchased the boot a month or so before, at the local K Mart, has been written of before, and it was this opening to guilt that continues to plague those inner recesses wounded equally or more by being run over by a car. It was this bizarre singularity the legal shark who came after me two days after the accident used to “settle” the case of being hit by a car. She settled very quickly, although now so many years later it would be facile not to add some particulars, such as my relief that my then two-year old son was alive and had survived the severe concussion he sustained in the accident. All this took precedence to the young mother I was then.

I’d no idea that the injury of being paralyzed, albeit temporarily, would create a morass of chronic pain and surgery once I turned fifty-five. I would not have been able to imagine the mélange of painful sensations running through my back, hips, and pelvic floor every minute of every day. That sitting would become more and more difficult.

Forty years later, trauma with a big T hijacks my nervous system. I have a memory of stopping in to a Dunkin’ Donuts where police officers were lounging. I asked where the nearest gas station was because my car had broken down. No one offered to assist. Not that I asked for help; I would not have in my twenties.

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The need to move on took precedence over what would have been a reasonable, should I have had someone (such as my absent mother)—a reasonable need to advocate for compensation. Compensation is solely monetary, in this culture. Money would not change anything. The lack of it means really nothing. I have been blessed with comforts in terms of an almost upper middle-class station. There was a time when I pondered how different life would be if I’d been given a million-dollar settlement. How would I have known to ask for this amount? How could I possibly have known the multi-faceted serpentine narratives stemming from this hidden disability in a crystal ball unavailable to the 28-year-old young woman I was.

“If I had a crystal ball”. Is the skull a crystal ball, that it can be broken by collision with these vehicles made of material stronger than metal? Three sets of titanium rods in my lumbar spine. Fall out of said accident endured and experienced on a daily basis. “Stenosis” the diagnosis prior to and after fusion.

That K Mart is no longer in existence reveals the mutability and endless change of this, our perhaps only planet capable of sustaining life in a vast and humbling universe. Here is an email I found. As Proust would agree, our memories dim over time. I didn’t remember the length of time I was paralyzed:

Hi Moriah,

…invoice me for the big Kush same as usual then…I will try to roller ball though I doubt it will penetrate…metal plates and six pedicule screws (two level fusion, as of July 2019).

…I was run over by a car when I was 28, while carrying my then two-year old son across a street…Was paralyzed for four hours; then sensation came back…

Judith

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I wake up and everything hurts, because forty-two years ago a car ran over me and my son. When I came to, I thought he was dead. In the ambulance I asked the medic “Am I paralyzed?” The answer: “I don’t know, ma’am”. Or perhaps there was no ma’am then as I was twenty-eight. Red ski jacket ripped, glasses broken, shoulder blade fractured, contusions head to toe. Skull fracture.

Five years after lumbar fusion it feels like I got hit by the car again. I don’t like to bend down, even to feed my beloved cat. Don’t like to wake up. Don’t want to be stuck here anymore. And yet it could be worse—that is “at leasting” phrase, given that name by my somatic life coach. It could be worse.

You could be in a wheelchair comes dimly into my mind, and I ask for peace from myself, from my body. I accept that I could be permanently paralyzed. My son could be dead. He is starting a new company, one coveted by investors. Will this make me feel better? Would vanilla chai tea help? A cup of oatmeal cooked in a little pot, how about that?

The constant ache and burn in my spine rivers down hips and legs. A waterfall of nerves. I made it to three score and ten. So what? Smile when you feel like sobbing. Sob privately. Put a Pollyanna finish on the thing. We all have close calls. In this world, on this blue marble in the corner of the Milky Way galaxy, children starve, innocents are killed, girls are raped.

The man who hit me and my son—who ran over us—had to pay not one red cent. His insurance company came after me two days after the accident. They said it was my fault. I was jay walking. I’d stooped to pick up my son’s boot, which had fallen off his foot. “Boot” he’d said. “Boot” is irresistible, when said by a two-year old toddler.

Author’s Biography

Judith Skillman’s poems have appeared in Bracken, Commonweal, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. She has received awards from Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust. Oscar the Misanthropist received a Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Her forthcoming collection is Oppression. Visit www.judithskillman.com

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