Sandy folded the sheet of paper and stuffed it into a plain white business envelope. She stared at it for a moment, licked the flap and sealed the fate of her marriage. She wrote a single word on the outside, her husband’s name. She set it carefully against the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen counter where he was most likely to see it. Locking the door behind her, she climbed into her indigo blue minivan.
As she adjusted the mirror and buckled her seat belt, she thought about how much she hated that car. It had been the bane of her existence ever since they bought it as a family vehicle. She had always preferred small economical cars, but they had planned to take vacations with their children and never did. She resented that car as much as she resented the last seven unhappy years of her 13-year marriage.
She pulled out of the driveway and never looked back at the house as she headed down Bissonnet, took a left on Woodhead and stopped at the light at the corner of Richmond. She was going to see Catherine, her spiritual mentor and safe haven.
When the light turned green, she noted the car stopped in the oncoming right lane and proceeded into the intersection. The sound of crunching metal and the strange sense of the car spinning around told her she had been hit by a car that ran the stoplight. As she tried to regain her bearings, she realized the heavy steel 1970s low-rider luxury car that had hit her had not even stopped. Hit and run again.
She acknowledged this was the third hit and run she’d experienced in the last year, and she had the epiphany that just as she was ending her marriage with that note to her husband, this accident had ended the hated family car.
Death Drives a Red Pickup Truck
She flashed back to her last accident.
It was a Friday evening, a little after 5:00 pm when she left work on I-10 East. At rush hour, it was quite a feat to enter the freeway near the 610 loop north and move over to the left quickly enough to avoid being forced into an exit she didn’t want to take.
As she accelerated and moved easily through the lanes to the far left, the traffic in front of her screeched to a halt. She saw in her rear view mirror that a red pickup truck had moved into that left lane going faster than she was, and it was about to hit her.
To avoid an accident, she tried to swerve quickly into the next right lane, but the pickup clipped her bumper on the rear driver’s side and she started to skid. She knew she was about to be in the middle of a rush hour pileup and there was no way to avoid it. At least five or six cars would be involved, possibly more.
In that moment, the fear that she was about to die caused her to wink out. When she winked back in, she was on the far right, safely parked on the shoulder.
All the traffic was gone except for her and the red pickup truck that had hit her, and five minutes had passed. At least he stuck around. The thought struck her that it was impossible to have avoided an accident, and for all that traffic to have disappeared on a Friday evening - she must be dead. She must have blocked out the crash, perhaps she was lying in a hospital in a coma and dreaming this over and over.
After exchanging insurance with the other driver, she sat there shaking for a long time until she realized she was not dead, and that she had to drive home. She did not have a cell phone back then to call for someone to come and help her.
On that drive home, she heard a message from her inner guidance speaking gently inside her head, “It’s time to create Sanctuary.” She knew for that to happen that she would have to leave her husband, so she started making plans to get a divorce. In a way, she really had died that night, her unhappy life had come to an end, and she was being reborn.
Gentle tapping on her window brought her back to the present. She was still sitting in her disabled car in the middle of the street, trying to start it.
Several street people who hung out and drank their beer outside the dilapidated Richwood Supermarket (also known as Freaky Foods), were standing in the street looking concerned for her.
She rolled the window down, and a half-drunk man slurred, "Lady, are you ok?” “Yes, I’m fine, but my car won’t start.”
He said, “Put it in neutral, and we’ll push you out of the street. It’s not safe to leave it here in the middle of the street.” She did.
Everything went into a surreal, almost orchestrated, slow motion movie as a ragtag group of indigents pushed the car into the nearest parking lot.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said in a slightly stunned voice. Just as the car rolled to a stop, and she got out of the car to see if she could walk or if she was hurt in any way, a police car arrived. If they had hit her 3 feet further back, she would have been dead with the force that hit her.
The officer took her police report and got confirmations of what happened from some of the street people.
Just as they finished the paperwork, a tow truck pulled in beside them and asked if she needed a tow. He happened to be from one of her insurance approved repair shops, so just 30 minutes after the accident, she was in a rental car headed for her original destination, the home of her friend and mentor Catherine.
Sandy recounted the surreal story and ended with the observation, “You know, all those accidents I kept having in this car were trying to tell me to end my marriage before it ended me. I feel like this is a sign, happening the same day as I am leaving my husband, a confirmation that I'm doing the right thing.”
Catherine hugged her and said, “I agree, and I’m glad you’re safe.”
The next day, September 11, 1991 (long before the tragic 9-11 that lives in infamy), she and her children moved into their postage stamp-sized apartment.
Her husband never said a word about her leaving. That was all for the best as she could not be persuaded to change her mind. She was through trying to make it work.
The note she left had said, “I did the marriage; now you do the divorce.” It took him 13 years, but she was determined not to take the reins this time.
Besides, as long as they were still married, she did not have to make any decisions about custody or visitation except their own agreements.
The day she left, she knew she was never going back and never looking back. Time to go forward with a brand new small car and a new vision of Sanctuary guiding her.
