New Obstacles
It’s incredible, mind boggling, makes us being worn out ……… I don’t know how much we can bear………. and David and me are very surprised that we still can laugh.
It happened last Thursday afternoon (April, 26th 2007) when I received a phone call from the Emercency room of the hospital – Dad and his girlfriend Elli had been involved in a car accident. I rushed to the hospital after I called David who also got immediately on the road. I found Dad there in pretty good shape, it turned out that he got two broken ribs, but other than that not even a single minor cut. Elli did not do that well, they had to fly her over to St.Louis, she has a broken vertebral and a compressed intervertebral disc. Useless to say that she will suffer from that for a long time and will have to go through several treatments and rehabilitation programs.
It’s a miracle that both are alive. So, what had happened? Well, Dad oversaw a semi truck while making a left turn at an intersection which came with “normal” speed towards him – the truck hit Dad’s Van right behind the passenger seat….. A wink of an eye earlier and Dad and Elli wouldn’t have had any chance to survive.
I had no idea how bad it really was until Friday morning, when I took Dad to the place where his car had been towed to – after pulling into that place I got sick in my stomache. I could only identify that it had been once Dad’s car because of the stickers on the back of the car and because of the licence plate….
This was once a KIA Sedona……
David’s reaction was very similar, after he came home Friday evening and saw the pictures I had taken. His face colour turned into white, yellow, green…..
We are facing now a lot of troubles in the aftermath of this accident – the coverage of Dad’s insurance, trying to make him surrender his driving license to the Secretary of State (Dad definitely shouldn’t drive a car any more, he has lost most of the neccesities and abilities like speed rating and distance rating), dealing with Dad’s depression (oh, by the way, he has some guns in his room and made some very scary comments….) and maybe facing a potential law suit against him……. It also turns out the Dad and Elli’s relationship might end as she forces him to get another car so that they can go places alone again…. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and it looks like this relationship only depended on Dad’s car and not on true love ……….
We try our best to keep our thoughts and actions straight, to support Dad in this critical time but also deal with our every day life. Dave has to go to class this week to pass a difficult exam that he desperately needs to keep his job. I feel so bad for him and I try my very best to help him and to do everything to keep as much trouble and errands to run as possible away from him.
The future will bring all of us a new “Normal”. Since Dad will probably not drive any more I will have to take him everywhere he needs or wants to go and run errands for and with him. This will also mean that we probably will not be able to take any vacations or trying to escape from all for a weekend. Dad has no way to shop for groceries as we have absolutely no public transportation system here in the US (except for some major cities). Even to go to the pharmacy or the doctor would be impossible for Dad as he is 85 years old and was never used to walk. And in his current condition it’s absolutely impossible.
We hope that we will get some help or support from David’s brothers. We know for a fact that one of them (who currently is in Germany) is not willing to support us in any way, shape or form. He made this absolutely clear in a very unpleasant email that David received yesterday. We still are hoping that the other two can help us out once in a while as we also need some rest from all the challenges we are facing.
David and I were planning of meeting my Mother and family in June, but it looks right now that David will go alone again on his business trip and maybe I can fly some time this year on my own to Austria. This will kill both of us as we swore that we won’t go any place alone again – ever. But it looks that we can’t keep our promise because of all circumstances that we absolutely have no influence of. I very much want to go and see my Mother, I gave my promise to her and she is waiting for me/us. I still hope that we will find a solution that we both can go, but right now we have to deal with so many other things, so we need to take one step after the next one.
Baby, I love you so very much – don’t give up on me like I will never give up on you. We will make it like we also did it in the past with all the obstacles and challenges we had….
God bless us all!
