April Shearer

GPC Student 

Fall 2006

In a Flash of a Moment

            Outside, the sky was bluer than ever before, birds flew free and everyone I passed had a smile on their face. All worries were taken away by the cheerful atmosphere. A perfect day was ahead. Everyone knew that their day would be clear minded and filled with exhilarating moments. This glorious day would become the most memorable for me, April Leah Shearer, a sixteen- year- old girl.

            As the magnificent day progressed to mid afternoon, all still appeared pleasant. While driving down the road with a mind absent of worries, I began to wonder what had emerged in front of me. An unimaginable image ran through my head over and over. The vision in my head became clearer the closer I approached the strange object, which was headed straight for me. At first, with a puzzled mind, I processed the image as a white light shooting across the road. With the distance between the object and me decreasing quickly, tit became easier to realize what was happening. I soon decided to follow the flow of traffic, pulling over on the side of the road. Steadily staring at the white blob, I saw shape of a van.

            The van advanced swiftly, demolishing everything that stood in its way. Panicking, I questioned myself, “How do I escape the pathway of this destructive force?”  The van arrived directly in front of me, but out of some miracle it shot off to the other side of the road like a dart. “What just happened?” I wondered. Before I was able to answer my own question I was found, once again in the same situation, with the exception of the location of the van. The van now approached the driver side of my silver Chevrolet Caviler. With my eyes squinted I shrieked, “Oh my gosh!”

            Now, opening my eyes, from what I thought had only been a few seconds, I found myself in a new environment. Looking straight up into a blue sky, I grew curious of how I had gotten this way.  Looking around, I began to focus on the people scrambling around me like buzzards around a dead animal. Everyone,  realizing that I had become conscious, shouted, “Are you okay?”  After reality set upon my conscious, I began to fill shocking waves travel up my spine with each slight movement of my body. An older gentleman recognized my pain and came to stand by my side. Looking into his eyes, I could tell he was in wonder at  my survival, giving me a feeling of nervousness. Rushed to the hospital, I was still in confusion of what had happened.

After the worst eight hours of my life, which I thought would be the last hours; I finally gained the knowledge of what truly happened. The older gentlemen, whom I vaguely remembered from the accident scene, hovered over the bed accompanied by my  terrified parents to explain the happenings.  He clarified that a man driving a white work van had fallen asleep while driving. Woken by the disturbing movements, the man panicked by the scene he faced. Losing control of the van, he unintentionally collided into my car. The impact sent the car into a ditch rolling four times and it eventually was abruptly stopped by a visible gas line. The immediate stop sent me airborne across two lanes of traffic into a large wooded area. After the stunning news, the gentlemen then proceeded to tell me how relieved he was to find that I was okay. After knowledge of my new condition given by the doctor, the gentleman progressed along with his happiness of my well being to say “I wish I had been the one in your position because I know that your life will now be made more challenging by the hard roads you will face in the future.”

              Through my month of rehabilitation, the gentleman, who became know as Jim, and I spent day after day together thanking God for each new day. We both know now that life could end within seconds. Jim and I have come to find that all things happen for a reason. Why was I the victim instead of the man parked only a foot in front of me? Believed by both me and Jim, for some reason we were meant to know each other. Fate had pulled us together. The bond made between Jim and me is indescribable. Jim became ill over the years. It now became time for the two of us to switch roles; instead of Jim taking care of me, I would now take care of Jim, praying for him each day. Three years later, Jim has become like a grandfather to me. I am not saddened by what happened, but instead I have learned that fate takes its own course for many reasons. Within a flash of a moment my life had changed, not for the worst but for the better.