Steve Christilaw: Mom’s OK, but let’s be careful out there

Indulge me while I bring up a topic that has weighed heavily on my mind since the day after Christmas.

It’s kind of a cautionary tale.

If you recall, the day after Christmas was the day we got a nice dusting of snow. If you are a lover of all things winter, it was a lovely day.

I missed it.

My mom, Jeanne, has lived in the same house in Millwood since we moved here in 1972. At 89, she is understandably reluctant to drive a whole lot. A trip to the grocery store or to a doctor’s appointment is about the limit of her willingness to adventure out.

And if it’s snowing, she never leaves the house.

So that morning, with snow in the forecast, she decided that a trip to the store was in order to pick up a few things before the white stuff started to fall.

The past few years, she’s developed back routes to all the places in the Valley she needs to go. She avoids Argonne Road as much as she can and she hasn’t driven on I-90 in ages. Traffic worries her and it’s simply easier to take a back road and avoid it altogether.

She made it to the market and picked up what she needed and was retracing her route back home when the first flakes began to fall.

She stopped for the light at Vista and Trent, and when it turned green, she started across the four-lane road heading for home.

And that’s when the semitruck ran the red light and slammed into the front left wheel of her 1990 Thunderbird.

The truck driver admitted to running the red light immediately, and we’re told that he tried to swerve when he saw that he was going to hit Mom. I like to think that’s what saved her life.

Had he not tried to steer away and impacted her at the engine compartment and slammed into the driver’s side door, it would have been a fatality. For that, we are thankful.

When people got to her shattered window, Mom was shaken, but trying to work her cellphone to call my brother, the retired sheriff’s deputy to let him know she was OK.

She was alert when first responders arrived on the scene and used their machinery to cut her out of the car and get her into an ambulance.

One of the firefighters helped her make a call, but when my brother did not answer and the call went to voicemail, the only thing he heard was something he was all-too familiar with as a former first responder. And when those kinds of sounds come from your 89-year-old mother, you get an icy feeling in the pit of your stomach.

Calls went out. First to me, then to a long-time friend in the dispatch office to find out where the traffic accident was. En route to the accident site, we learned that she was already on her way to the emergency room at Sacred Heart, so we all diverted there.

To keep a long story short, the biggest injury of the day was to everyone’s nerves. Mom was shaken, bruised and battered, but the only injury she suffered was a small chip to a bone in her foot.

The old car had given its last full measure of devotion and protected its occupant with its final act.

We were lucky. Oh, so lucky.

After a couple of hours at the ER, after X-rays and CAT scans and visits from trauma specialists, I happily drove Mom home.

The reason I share this story is simple.

We have all been distracted while driving. It so pervasive that you can buy cars so automated that they drive themselves while we indulge those distractions. Not always successfully, but that’s a different story.

We’ve all occasionally treated speed-limit signs as more of a suggestion than a mandate. I am as guilty as anyone.

And most of us have risked a quick look to see who just sent us a message on our phone while we’re behind the wheel.

We can do better. We must do better.

Many of us have lost a friend or family member to a car wreck, a drunken driver or someone just driving too fast for the conditions. I know I’ve seen too many lives lost this way and came close to losing another one day after a major holiday where we celebrate life.

Please. Put down the cell phone, back off the bumper of that car in front of you and stay mindful of the fact that ice and snow rarely forgive and show up when you least expect them.

The text message, the email, the phone call can wait.

Trust me.

Hearing firefighters cut the door off an automobile is not something you want to hear on voicemail.