Death and life have a very subtle line in between; add an “IF”, and you’re dead, take away an “IF”, then you’ll still alive. We might often hear such sentences like: “If the doctor came earlier, he might have been saved”, or, “If he didn’t go that day, he might have still alive”, or, “If she didn’t insist to fly with that flight, she might not have dead”. Most of us probably, those who see things from spiritual aspect, will associate the absence or presence of that “if” factor with our destiny: “It’s not his/her/my time yet to die”, or further “Maybe there are many unfinished things that we have in this world, that’s why God hasn’t yet called us back to heaven”. Some maybe are just realistic, “Well it’s just because the driver was careless”, or, “It’s because of the poor health care and medication that made her died”. People perceived death, or near death or other unfortunate events in many different ways.
The accident
I have never been as closed to death as I just experienced last week. Even until now I still feel like it was just a sort of nightmare, an unreal event. I could have been dead that night. I and my friends were on our way back to Jakarta from Bandung with a rent car. We drove through the highway very fast, as everybody else did, approximately at 100 to 120 km/hour speed. It was quite foggy when we left Bandung. In some part of the road, we could only see less than 100 meter ahead. As we approached Karawang, we saw a truck stop in the second row of the road, leaving a narrow empty space in the left and two rows in the right side filled with other two cars. Everybody said to the driver to push the brake from like 500 meter before we reached that congestion, but he drove too fast that it would be too dangerous to push brake in sudden. So he steered the car which was still in the high speed to the right side of the road, a bowl-shaped, 6-meter wide space with thick grass, to avoid hitting the other cars. Our car “flew” (I believe we really flew, literally), hit and bumped the grass several times before it really stopped (spinning). If I’m not mistaken, it was around four times bump or so. Eventually, it stopped at about 30 degrees from the soil, right side up, followed the land contour. Strangely, no screaming, nobody spoke or said anything during the “flight”. When we really stopped, the driver asked, “Is everyone okay?” Then we all got down from the car and tried to push the car up to the road, but failed. Lucky then because the vehicle service from toll road came and dragged our car up. We drove half way up to Cikarang and the other car from the rental picked us up return to Jakarta.
The weird imagination
I initially hesitated to go because I was sick. I got cold and flu two days earlier, and this time with a bit fever. My body temperature was higher than normal, and I felt so weak. I almost refused to join but I felt that it wasn’t good to cancel what we’ve planned weeks before. So there I was, slept most of the time during the trip to Bandung, and still felt not well when we returned to Jakarta. I’m not sure whether it because I was having a kind of fever or what, but a few kilometers before we approached the foggy road, I had a terrible imagination. I imagined about how hurt it was for those who died because of hitting the concrete blocks/fence (since we just passed the concrete blocks fence). It must be really hurt when they died and their souls leaving their fractured body. Until now I still wonder why I could have such a horror picture in my mind. When our car almost hit the other cars and we flew to the grassy space, I thought it was my time, when the horror image actually came to pass, but this time with me as the victim. I slightly had a thought about me joining those who have just gone before like my father, my aunt, et cetera. I also slightly had a spark of thought about my plan to study abroad, which may never comes true if I die that night. What a tragic life of mine if it’s happened.
The post accident and the if’s
After realizing that we have not died, we were quite shocked, and even we tried to be as normal as possible, we inevitable started to think about the “If’s”. If the road has concrete blocks fence, we’re dead. If the driver insisted to push the brake suddenly, we’re dead because of the shock of hitting other vehicles. If he chose to steer a bit left, we would have hit the truck and we’re dead. If he was panic and couldn’t control the steer, we’re dead. In reverse, if I refused to join the group from the beginning, I would have not experienced that accident. If we spoke louder for the driver to push the brake, he might have done it earlier, and no accident, or, he might have more panic and losing control of the steer, and we’re dead. If the grassy space’s shape is not like a bowl, we might have bumped into the road across and hit by the cars from Jakarta that were in the high speed, and we might dead. If God said it was our time to take an eternal rest, we were dead. There were so many “if’s”, whether for good or for bad destiny. Maybe, it’s not just our time. Maybe because there are so many tasks we have to carry out in this earth. There are many more people we should meet, there are people we need to help, and there are other places we need to visit. Maybe in the book of life, our life wasn’t supposed to end that night. It’s the other date in the future….. As nobody knows when the day our soul was infused to our mother’s womb, our last day is as secret as our first.
Wrote in Apr'08 as a reflection after the Bdg-Jkt accident.
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