A Grateful Heart by Robin Janney

Sara and me <3

The past week or so has been particularly rough for my younger sister.  Some of you may know her only through her picture Carol posted from our last girl's night to the right.

She and I don't always get along, but sisters are sisters no matter what.  So when she approached me one morning at work and asked for a hug, I knew something was wrong.

The price of dinner...

The night before, she had stopped at our local McDonald's and while she was inside the restaurant, someone backed into the rear of her jeep.  And it had completely shattered the back window.  When I got a chance to see it, I saw that a bit more damage had been done than that...broken taillights and a dented bumper are still minor to the busted window.

At least she was able to get insurance information from the offending driver...and $10 towards her diner.

But her bad luck held.

Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from my mother asking if I would come help her at Sara's place with some last minute cleaning before an important meeting.  I figured I'd go, at the least I might get treated to dinner as a thank you.  No, it's not my mess but sometimes we all need help getting out of messes we've made.

As Mom and I were sitting at Sara's home, waiting for her, there was a knock on my window.  Which startled the poo outa me.  But anyway, it was a woman from the veterinarian clinic next to my sister's and she had a message from Sara - 'she was ok, but she'd had an accident and they were taking her to the ER just to get checked out and could we pick her up from there?'  Once we survived the message, Mom and I traveled to the ER only to discover that we had beaten her there!

So we waited some more.  Made some phone calls.  Including my sister just to see if she had her phone with her and if she'd be able to answer it.  She did and she was.

Sara was released from the ER close to 2 hours later and we got to hear the whole story.  She had stopped at the Dollar General after work, and she was trying to make up that time in a hurry to get home.  She was very anxious about the meeting, which has been moved to Monday.  So even though it's a road she travels everyday, and even speeds on everyday, something about this day was different and as she turned through a slight curve she lost control of her vehicle and then overcompensated.  Off the road she went and got up close and personal with a tree.

Her worst injuries...

Sara got off lucky.  Her worst injuries are the cuts and bruises you see in the picture to the left.  They're from the air bag or maybe the steering wheel; she's not really sure.

Her jeep did not fair as well, but jeeps are replaceable and humans are not.  We are all very grateful that Sara was not badly injured even though the loss of the jeep is a hardship.

Busted back axle.

Fender damage

The part that kissed the tree

Full frontal view, lack of anything witty to say...

Pulled the drive shaft out of the transmission.
And those are her feet

My sister's learned a few valuable lessons from this experience.  Don't speed.  Don't drive around with a messy vehicle.  Don't eat at McDonald's...just kidding, I don't think she'll ever abstain from the restaurant.

Even though the weather is nice and we don't have to worry about snow-slicked roads, I want to remind everyone that nothing is worth speeding for.  Unless you're in labor, but I don't know anything about that.  Or if you're being chased by evil doers. I am just as guilty as Sara, but I've been watching my speed more.  It's hard when 'keeping with traffic' means going 75mph or getting out of the way so they can pass you at 5am.  I've been driving our pickup recently and I haven't figured out the cruise control on it and so I've been going faster than I did with our car which is parked waiting for rotor work.

I just wish I could convince my husband of this truth!  But that's another story.

Sometimes you don't know how much a person means to you until they're gone or they've had a close call with serious injury.  Appreciate your loved ones, and let them know you care.  Make that phone call, write that letter.  One day it will be too late.