The Wreck

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”

PJ called me yesterday to tell me he was on his way home from the farm. It was close to 3 pm, around 2:50, and he was trying to make it home before our house tour that we filmed back in February premiered on HGTV’s YouTube channel. I answered the phone jokingly complaining about the pile of clean clothes he threw in the corner of our room that I was now folding, and he was telling me how the drywall contractors that were supposed to start working on Holiday House didn’t, in fact, start that day. Normal Wednesday stuff.

As we were talking, my sister beeped in, so I told him I had to go, and I answered her call. We talked for about five minutes before a number I didn’t recognize beeped in. I was invested in what we were talking about, so I made a mental note to call them back when we hung up. A second later, that number called back and again, I didn’t answer. Then, Lori, PJ’s mom called me. I told my sister I would call her back because I had to take Lori’s call, so we hung up. When I answered, his mom was frantic.

She told me PJ had been in an accident on his way back from the farm, that he was fine, but he truck was totaled. For a split second I thought she must have gotten it wrong because I had just talked to him and he was almost home. Nothing could have happened that fast. Life changes in the instant.

Our daughter and I were supposed to go to the farm with him yesterday, just as we’ve done all week, but I told him we couldn’t go because I had work to take care of at home, but that he should go real quick and come back so we could watch the premiere of our house tour before picking the boys up from school at 3:30.

When I got the call from his mom, I quickly called my mom to pick up the boys and Anna and I jumped in the car to rush to PJ. As we were pulling up to the spot where his phone was pinging, I saw a fire truck and seven or eight police cars, a wash in a sea of blue and red lights. This couldn’t all be for PJ, I thought. This had to be for another wreck, too. It was all too much. None of it was making sense.

When I pulled up to the scene, he was walking around with a cut on his head as police officers wrote things down on white pieces of paper and the debris from his truck was strewn all across the road. The shovel he used for mulch at the farm. The mat that protects the bed of his truck. His side mirrors. Broken glass.

It feels like some kind of miracle that he walked away from that with just a sore neck and a few scratches. The truck was morbidly contorted, but it took the biggest beating and protected him as much as it could.

PJ is a fixer. He fixes things when they’re broken. He fixed my belt when it snapped last week. He got our Land Cruiser unstuck when we ran over a stump last month. When something goes wrong, he’s always there to fix it. But who would fix him if he broke? How could anyone do as much as he does? Thoughts that went through my head about a million times yesterday.

But our guy is fine. He walked away from that crash and by the end of the day, he was home to kiss our kids good night. I fell asleep squeezing his hand and feeling so fortunate we got to spend another night together, the same way we have for the last 13 years. And this morning when I woke up early and turned over and saw him sleeping there, so soundly and so peacefully as if nothing happened, as if our entire world wasn’t almost destroyed yesterday, I knew he would be alright. We all would. And for that, I was grateful.

Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant, but sometimes, if you’re the luckiest person alive, it decides to stay exactly the same.