A dear friend, an horrific accident

Perhaps the hardest lesson I have had to learn this last year is that uncertainty is our constant companion in life. Given that this is a universal fact, no one is more surprised than I am to find that it took me 33 years to figure this out. I always thought I had some measure of control over the things that happened to me. If I was a good girl, if I studied hard, if I made good decisions, if I look after myself, I could avert those dangers that happen to 'other' people. I don't need to tell any of the readers of this blog how fatally wrong; how stupidly naive I was. But this is either an extremely hard realisation to accept, or I am a very slow learner, as despite everything I now know about randomness and chance and uncertainty, I was still struck dumb with shock and disbelief, not to mention fear and profound sorrow, when I received a phone call last night from the mother of a dear friend to say that something terrible had happened to my friend and her little three-year-old girl.

My friend and her little girl were involved in an horrific car accident almost two weeks ago. It appears that her car was T-Boned on a section of straight road by a driver overtaking her at speed in a massive 4WD BMW, complete with bullbars. Britta's extended family, who came across the scene when she failed to turn up to a family outing, were met with the most unimaginable horror as the emergency services tried to free the girls from their wreck of a car and airlift them to the city's main trauma hospital to be stabilised, assessed, and treated.

Thank God, her little girl's life was saved by virtue of the fact she was strapped into a very high quality child seat which protected her from much of the impact from the accident. She suffered a nasty gash to the head, bruising, and was showered with glass, but otherwise, remarkably, OK.

My friend did not fare so well. She has extensive injuries and did not regain consciousness or the ability to breathe on her own for several days, during which time so many things hung in the balance due to the sheer number and severity of her injuries. She has survived, thank God she has survived, but her injuries are too many and too horrific to mention. She is immobile, faces a long, heartbreakingly difficult future in rehabilitation, and does not have her little daughter at her side when they need each other most. She has only recently began rebuilding her life after a traumatic marriage breakup whereby her ex-partner has sought to make her life a living hell. That ex-partner has assumed full custody of this little girl and it is doing his best to prevent contact between them, and it seems at this stage that there is nothing she or her family can do about it.

I shook and cried for a long time during, and after, speaking to her mother. I am not on Facebook anymore, so I had missed the communications her family had made to try and let everyone know when it had first happened. How could this be happening? How could it have happened, and how had I remained blissfully unaware of what had befallen one of my dearest friends? She didn't deserve it! She has already been through so much! She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time! I am still reeling. I am still processing. I am still in shock that tragedy can befall the undeserving, even though I have first-hand knowledge that it does.

My first instinct was to drop the phone and rush to the hospital to see her, but I knew I had to wait until I could process the information so that my visit could be all about her, her welfare and her recovery, and not about my sadness and shock at what had happened to her. I plan to visit on Monday. I want to give her everything I have. But I don't know what I do have. I don't know what will help. I don't know what to do, what to say, when there is nothing I can do or say to make this better. I can only hold her hand, as she has held mine on so many occasions when I have needed it. But it feels like not enough. It isn't enough.

I will tell her that I love her. That she is the most determined, resilient person I know. She is, by far. I will tell her that I am with her for the long haul, no matter how many weeks and months and years that becomes. Because all we need to know in order to survive is that we are not alone, isn't it? That someone will bear witness to our suffering. That we won't be forgotten. That we won't be left behind.

Please, if you can, keep Britta in your thoughts as she faces her difficult journey ahead. I don't know what difference it can make, but it certainly can't hurt. Heartfelt friends are irreplaceable. Those soul connections we forge with people of like minds, and like hearts, are what make our lives worth living, in so many ways.