Healing is a process: How my life changed the day my dad crashed into an 18-wheeler head on

This is one of the more difficult memories that surfaces for me every year as winter fades into spring.

The first picture is from May 1, 1997. I’m with my parents and my baby sister outside Sterling McCall Toyota in Houston. My dad finally decided what kind of truck he wanted to buy, as part of his plan to retire early and move to Western Colorado. The dealership gave him a calendar with this picture and the caption “Tom’s Toy.” 

The second picture is just after my dad’s wreck on January 26, 2000. Three months after moving to Western Colorado, he was driving alone on US 550 leaving Ouray to pick up the mail in Ridgway. It had been raining and snowing off and on all day, turning the road into slush. The truck’s back wheels broke loose, spinning head on into an 18 wheeler. We later learned this turn on US 550 is banked towards the Uncompahgre River and was nicknamed Tuffy’s Corner for the county undertaker. My dad’s truck hit the semi’s front and kept sliding, hitting the wheels, then the mountainside before stopping. If he had missed the wheels, the truck would have gone under the trailer, which is usually fatal.

Since it was a small town, when our next door neighbor drove by and saw my dad, the sheriff’s deputy let him take my dad around the corner to our house. We went back to the scene of the accident with him. My dad found the face of his watch in the snow and wreckage, stopped at the exact moment of the accident. Later, my dad had a concussion, but he didn’t trust an ambulance to take him through the snowstorm to the hospital 40 miles away. A doctor treated his swollen knee the next day. 

I was 10 years old, and this was the day that I realized even parents aren’t invincible. I didn’t want to learn how to drive anymore. I used to brace for an accident, duck down and hug my legs, every time we drove around that corner for years afterwards. In summer 2007, my driving school in Colorado Springs, MasterDrive, taught me skid recovery techniques that helped me work through my anxiety about driving. It’s been 23 years now, but I don’t have nightmares about sliding into semis anymore. 

Thanks for listening. Things do get better. Healing is possible.