Jaroslav Suchý

The Dark Side of Travel Note: The driver and doctor below are referred to as “she” because of their real gender. The sight of the full Moon on a starry night is just gorgeous. Making us dream about travelling there, seeing it, exploring it, just like going to places we’ve never been. Just like travelling to places we’ve only seen pictures of. The luckier of us make it there. The luckiest even make it back home, safe and sound. Should bad luck strike; travel, just like the Moon, has its dark side and we’ll get to see it. For example, when a car taking you to a beautiful mountain resort is destroyed in a crash, rolling over.  It was a beautiful sunny Saturday, the first day of spring, 2009. My wife and I with our parents in my father’s car, my sister with her husband and their two daughters in another, were traveling to Austria. After a long, a very long time, the whole family together. My wife (fiancée then) didn’t really feel like going that morning. In fact, she was crying. Shortly before the departure we’d learned that there was going to be three of us. But there we were in the car after all. Everything was going smoothly until a big black car overtook us speeding and appearing to dance in the road to our left. For a second I just thought about what that driver was doing but paid the car no further attention, only to see it a moment later in a skid right in front of us, realizing that a crash with our car, going at almost 130 km per hour, was now inevitable. When recalling it all, lucky and happy that I could, I was amazed at how many thoughts can run through one’s head in a minute period of time… …why did the driver go that fast if she couldn’t handle it? OK, this is what I’ve always been afraid of – somebody else’s mistake causing us to crash and now we are in it and we can do nothing to avoid it, we can only hope… BANG. We hit the big black car and started to skid. My eyes met with my wife’s… …I can’t do anything for her and our baby now. How frustrating this is. OK, now it’s about how many cars there are behind and how successfully they can brake. BANG, noticing some more rotation on the road and … standstill, waiting for another crash from the back that is not coming. OK, not that bad. Not that bad at first glance. But after a moment my dad notices my mother’s head falling to her chest. My wife’s great, acting as the rescue squad, helping us take mum from the car and cover her with a jacket and thermo cover. My mum’s eyes are closed. Finding myself telling my dad that she’s going to be fine and realizing that I can only hope she would be. Mummy, mummy, I love you, I broke down, crying. This is a good point to thank the Czech doctor who stopped her car and calmed us all down saying that mum was alive and that we could help her by behaving normally. That was easier said than done but we tried. Thank you, doctor. My mum was transferred to hospital by helicopter. I had to ask the rescuers to take my wife in an ambulance to check if our baby was still alive. In the hospital my mum was checked and she had to stay there. The same story with my father and my wife but at least we knew our baby was alive. My sister, who saw the whole horror in her rearview mirror, advised that I should get checked, too. I objected that I only had a bruise on my forehead, probably caused by our dog that was resting on my lap when the accident happened (the dog survived, by the way). “Well, since you rolled over, I’m sure you should get checked, too”, my sister concluded. It was only then I realized how bad the accident must have been. I did not remember any roll over, meaning my head had been strongly hit. No more objections, I got checked. As if the accident had not been enough, Austria decided to show us its dark side, too. No passenger from a crashed car got checked automatically, we had to ask for it. The crashed car was taken to a parking place which was not opened on Sundays. After a number of calls the owner decided to open for us (earning a hundred Euros) to take our luggage. At the same time the police told us to wait (outside, in the cold, in our car) for the interpreter to translate our testimonies, while the car park owner was waiting in the police office, which we did not know because the police had never told us. Before the interpreter came we could have made it to the car park and back twice. Anyway, my father was not allowed to go to see his crashed car, there was no negotiation, we did not speak German, the police did not speak Czech, we tried in English, and the police spoke rather good English but their ears were hearing without listening. My wife, my dad and I were transported home on that Sunday. My mum had to stay there. We thought she would be going home on Monday. On Monday the hospital informed us that she had a neck fracture and would have to stay a couple more days. Isn’t that strange that they found out about the injury only 48 hours later? Even today my mum’s not fully recovered. But she’s alive. There was one more unfortunate thing that one would not expect from a modern European country. My parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in February 2009. They had new rings sanctified on that occasion. Two rings, the new one and an engagement ring that my mum was given by my father before their wedding in the 60s, were on her ring finger when the accident happened. They were taken off her finger and she never got them back. Well, it’s a miracle we can thank God and our guardian angels for that we are still alive and that is the most important thing. It’s a miracle that my wife is about to give birth to our baby. It’s a miracle that my father’s still got my mum by his side. People, I know it’s very simple and it may even sound like a cliché but take nothing for granted. Every minute is a miracle. Cherish every second of your life. Tell the ones you love that you love them. Enjoy every minute moment. Enjoy the sight of the Moon on a starry night. Life is beautiful. PS. This article was drafted in early November, 2009. I decided not to change a word of it. It is fair to add that today my wife, our little Jareček, my parents and I celebrated our "other" birthday. Thank you, Lord.