Sirens filled the air.  EMS teams frantically scrambled around looking for the next necessity to save a life.  Seven people.  Two cars.  One wreck.  One death.  There are no guarantees in life and that became evident to me on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  The smells of early autumn were evident with every breath. The plans for the day were to attend church and then sit back, relax, and watch the opening week of the NFL season.  These plans changed when sirens filled the air.

I first heard the sirens around 1:10 in the afternoon, minutes after kickoff. Noises outside intrigued me to go outside and see where the sirens were headed.  Little did I know they would be sitting right outside my cozy tri-level home.  A tan Impala had pulled out in front of an indestructible looking black SUV.  Unfortunately for the SUV, the Impala won in a shocking outcome.  The driver of the Impala and her baby came away with only a few scratches; however, the driver and four passengers of the SUV weren’t so lucky. 

Nowadays, police officers preach to people to always wear seatbelts because seatbelts can and will save lives.  But some people refuse to wear them, and the negligence to wear a seat belt just about cost all six of the people in the SUV their lives.  Because of that day, this family will never have a sense of normalcy again.  The aunt, the oldest family member in the car, was ejected from the vehicle and sadly died in the arms of the dedicated, yet frazzled, EMS worker.  The driver, also the father and a severely obese man, was trapped underneath of the car.  The workers radioed into the hospital asking, “Can a helicopter carry a 600-pound man?” 

Unfortunately for this man, the answer was no.

In his near-death condition, he would need to ride in the ambulance for an hour to the nearest hospital.  The daughter, a recent graduate of high school, was worse off than the father.  An article later reported that she had broken her pelvis.  Put in a full body cast, the mother of the family ended up with six broken vertebrae in her back. In the worst condition of them all was the junior high son.  EMS workers dashed toward one of the twenty-three total response units there to grab the defibrillator and bring this young man back to life, and they were successful.  Paramedics also used the “Jaws of Life” in this nightmarish crash scene.  It took the response teams approximately two hours to get the father out from underneath of the 6,000-pound vehicle.  Seeing the EMS workers frantically running around made me realize how horrific this scene really was.   Walking away from the accident, the driver of the Impala held her very young baby, wrapped tightly in her arms. Because of the hard working people, there was only one death to report that day.  Once the ambulances left, only silence filled the air.

People on this Earth aren’t guaranteed anything; they only have today to live for.  We aren’t guaranteed another day on the job; we aren’t guaranteed a successful marriage, and we aren’t guaranteed another day.  Life is full of rejoicing and, unfortunately, heartbreak.  A person can never know what the day will bring to him or her; it could be a great or terrible day.  Each time there is a tragedy, such as a car accident, we are reminded of the shortness of life.  Everyone knows the basic statistics of a normal day: Twenty-four hours, sixty minutes each hour, sixty seconds each minute, but do we know how to live each and every one of those moments to the fullest?