Nows and Forevers

Life can be a matter of inches.
The difference between a grand slam and a foul ball. Whether your eyes meet with the love of your life, or she passes by, a face in the crowd. Or the narrow space between a high-speed crash or driving off unscathed.
We walk around knowing that, often saying “there by the grace of God go I.” Living to an old age is miraculous, given that for most of human history the Earth and life itself was inhospitable. The Covid-19 pandemic taught us that again, when a tiny virus meant a matter of life and death for untold millions across the globe.
Life taught me that lesson yesterday morning, when I was on the far end of a vicious multicar crash on the interstate highway on my way to work. I was within an inch or two of being struck by a vehicle tumbling out of control, a cacophony of metal and dust that breezed by my rear-view mirror between my car and the SUV behind you.
It happened so suddenly, it was hard to register what was happening. Until I glanced over at the grassy median and saw an SUV on its side.
What I didn’t know was the whole picture. I pulled over into the right lane and then over to the side of the highway. I called 911, told them to come quick. I described the car on its side, a few other cars behind me. I said I think I knew what happened, at least in the beginning, and would stay for the state cop to arrive.
Then I headed out of my car and across the highway, where the cars and trucks slowed but didn’t stop. The woman behind me had stopped, essentially where the crash happened. Her car was clipped in the back by another car that didn’t stop. A sedan sat in the breakdown lane, with front-end damage. The 20-something guy behind the wheel was shaken up but unhurt; the woman behind me wasn’t hurt either. She was amazing, helping to get the couple in the tumbled SUV out of their car and then tending to their minor wounds. Turns out she went to high school with the driver and his wife.
We were both just glad the couple whose car had smashed into the median weren’t hurt badly. When I called 911 I feared the worst. It’s nice to see when the worst doesn’t happen.
We each knew a piece of what happened.
In the front of the line, I had a few moments before the accident saw a black sedan screaching past me in the righthand lane, perhaps trying to get out of the traffic conga line. The car suddenly changed lanes, about three cars in front of me, and abruptly slid into a cars-length space. The cars behind, already going a little bit over the speed limit in the travel lane, tapped and then more urgently hit the brakes. I had some room behind me so I didn’t stop so abruptly until the second set of brake lights.
What a jerk, I thought. It didn’t seem necessary to swing from the right to the left lane, moving so fast.
I had just slowed and put my foot on the accelerator when a gray SUV tumbled through my back mirrors and landed in a pile of dust I could see, even thought it wasn’t sunrise yet.
It was inches from hitting me, that I knew. I didn’t know the rest but I knew I needed to call it in, needed to stay. Turns out that it was only the four of us. The car that cut in front probably wasn’t aware of the crash. The cars in front of me and around me, other than the woman in the SUV directly behind me, drove off. It turned out to be just her and me, the couple in the car that left the roadway, and then the other driver and a truck driver.
Felt like forever before EMS, then the state cops came. Turns out I wasn’t necessarily needed, for the truck driver — who, like me, had stopped because we were concerned — had dashboard video of the whole thing. I told the trooper my view of what happened, as he requested.
It could have been much worse.
As I walked back to the car — waiting to cross the highway, where the cars were moving about 20 mph in both directions — I started to ponder what it all meant. How close had I come to disaster? Less than a second, it seemed. I happened to be in the right place at the right time: away. A second earlier and I would have been safely past this crash. A second later and I would have been hit by the tumbling car broadside. I have a small car. It might have been me in the ditch.
I had forgotten, after working from home for more than two years, how dangerous it is to drive sometimes. We focus on the days and nights of snow and ice, when most everyone is on the alert. But this day was dawning bright and cool and clear, not the typical day for a crash.
Except I knew, from my days as a volunteer firefighter and then as a young adult covering cops, that the worst crashes could happen in the most beautiful weather. One crash, 30 years ago, killed a teen-ager and a retiree, both traveling in opposite directions of I-95 but meeting tragically in a multicar crash. It was a 75-degree, clear-as-a-bell afternoon just before the Strawberry Hill Avenue exit in Norwalk, Connecticut.
The teenagers’ car, with four kids in it, had been traveling so fast that it left the northbound lanes of I-95 and bounced into the southbound lanes, where cars and trucks were moving just as fast as they were on the other side. As I recall, the teens’ sedan was hit by one car before being smashed squarely by a Buick with four retired people.
One teenager died at the scene, and I’ll never forget that. One of the retirees later died at the hospital. Things were never the same again for the other six people in those two cars.
It was a matter of inches, a matter of life and death.
Yesterday though, it went the other way. I saw part of a violent crash, all in my rear-view mirror. No one died or was severely hurt.
But it was only a matter of inches.