Life can change in a moment

As I was coming home from work on Tuesday, at around 5:30 p.m. I received a call from my husband. He and our daughter had just been involved in a car accident, more specifically, a rear-end collision.

A million thoughts raced through my head, even as the first words out of my husband’s mouth were, “We’re OK. The car? Not so much.”

Upon arriving, traffic was backed up in both directions — right down from Waugh’s Harley Davidson in Orange.

I was able to pull along a side street and could see my husband and our daughter standing on the side of the road, surrounded by emergency fire, rescue and police vehicles.

Long story short — three cars, including my husband’s, were stopped when another vehicle crested the hill and smashed into the last one in the line —my husband’s.
Those paragraphs above bring us to a couple of conclusions — we never know what can happen, one moment to the next. The other conclusion is the fact that seat belts and airbags do save lives.

All five people affected by that accident —one in front, the two in the middle, and two in the rear-ending car — walked away. Now people are faced with replacing cars, but a car is replaceable — a life isn’t.

You’ve read about my love of my dad and the fact that we miss him like crazy. He passed away unexpectedly 2 1/2 years ago of a heart attack.

We’d had dinner with him and my mom the night before, and we were laughing and cracking jokes, as usual.

The last time I saw him, he was walking out of Mario’s restaurant, on his way to skeet shooting practice, gearing up for competition that weekend.

The next day, my husband saw him only hours before he passed away. He’d helped him hang up a new clock he and my mom bought.

Hours after that, I received a call from my brother saying that dad had passed away.

He and mom were on their way to dinner with some friends of theirs, who were following in their car.

Dad told mom he was dizzy, and thankfully, my mom was able to stop the truck and put it in park.

Dad passed away right there, on Rapidan Road. CPR had been started, and rescue crews tried everything they could to bring him back, but he was gone at the tender age of 61.

A cousin of ours lost her husband last year, on Valentine’s Day. He was helping to get her car out of some snow, and he succumbed to a heart attack that very moment.

We hear about events every day of people suddenly taken from their families.
The Virginia Tech tragedy that happened a year ago Wednesday is no different. Students and teachers were going to class on a day that seemed like any other. The courses of lives were changed that day, in an instant. Families would never be the same, and the future was largely changed as well.

A good friend of mine at work gave me an article called “How Precious Each Moment” (thank you, Jean!) Part of it reads “Helen Keller once said, ‘I who am blind can give one hint to those who can see. Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same can be applies to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if tomorrow you would become deaf.

‘Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of the flowers, taste with relish each morsel of food as if tomorrow you would never smell or taste again.
‘Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which nature provides . . . . but of all the senses, I am sure that sight must be the most delightful.’”

Above all, live each moment as if it could be your last. Say your goodbyes and “I love you’s” as if you may not see your loved ones again.

Hope A. Smith is an independent columnist and resident of Orange County. Her column appears on Friday. E-mail