Front Porch: Thanks for ways tragedy avoided in auto wreck

How do I express my gratitude for my son’s survival?

Just saying thank you doesn’t seem enough. Who to thank? God, the forces of random chance, fate, the fact that the seatbelts held fast, Subaru for making a good safe car? Even thanking all of them, I still feel the overwhelming need to thank everyone and everything for the fact that my son Sam, his boyfriend, Ryan, and their Old English Sheepdog, Ellie, emerged whole from the accident, the kind of accident that can, and often does, kill people.

I want to make gift baskets, hug everyone remotely involved in their lives that day and just … do something.

It was early in the morning on a snowy Friday in February when they left Seattle for a long weekend in Spokane. Snoqualmie Pass was slow-going and the weather still dicey along I-90 when, near Cle Elum, they spun out on a patch of ice and the car rolled three times before landing upside down along the side of the road.

Ellie squirted out the broken-out hatchback window and was 40 yards down the highway before Ryan was able to extricate himself, with Sam following shortly after. Ellie came when Ryan called her. A good Samaritan stopped and called 911 for them as they gathered themselves.

No one was injured, except for a few scrapes and scratches from exiting through some broken glass. They collected a few possessions and went with the tow truck driver to Cle Elum, where their Subaru was taken to a wrecking yard. While Sam tended to tow truck and insurance matters, Ryan took Ellie to a veterinarian to be looked at, just to be sure. Then they all checked into the pet-friendly Timberline Lodge, where they were treated with kindness and understanding.

The guys decided a daytime libation might be helpful, so they went to the nearby Caboose Bar and Grill. With a beer in Ryan’s hand and a bloody mary in Sam’s, they were decompressing and began talking about their morning … and what could have been. After a few minutes, the waitress came over to tell them that some other patrons had overheard their conversation and paid for their drinks. Sam wanted to thank them, but they had already left.

They decided to order some food. “I don’t know if it was the circumstance or what, but I think that was the best hamburger I ever had in my life,” Sam told me.

Sam and Ryan experienced many kindnesses that day, including from the Washington State Patrol trooper who told them that a citation was required in that situation but that the lowest-level one that could be written would be what Sam would receive. He also got kind words from the trooper about how common such accidents are.

The weather improved, and their friend, Aaron, drove over from Seattle to pick them up and take them home. He will be receiving a great big hug from me when next I’m in Seattle.

I spent much of that day and the next aching to rush to Seattle to give and receive hugs, but also thinking of all the what-ifs. What if they had been in a not-so-sturdy car? What if they had rolled over and slammed into a tree or slid down a steep embankment or gone into a body of water? But I kept coming back to the bottom line … they lived, they survived.

A retired law enforcement officer I know told me this is the kind of accident that usually kills people.

Since then I’ve been replaying all of Sam’s life in my mind. The fall from our backyard’s boy-eating tree when he was small and I held his broken little body in my arms as my husband drove us to the hospital. The time when he was a teenager and got the lead role in a Spokane Civic Theatre production. The time he was supposed to conduct the choir at Ferris High School for a song he had written but had to miss the moment because, embarrassment of all embarrassments for a high school senior, he had come down with the chicken pox. How, when he was in high school, he graciously helped take care of his grandfather, who lived with us after having had a stroke and until he died. And everything else.

All the memories, good and bad, I am holding them so close. I am thankful for each and every one of them – and grateful that we all have the opportunity to create new memories, that he and Ryan and Ellie survived.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It’s not enough, I know, but I send the message out into the universe … over and over and over.