Because I could not stop for death/She kindly stopped...

Okay--truthfully?

Maybe the best part about almost dying is not getting a new car, last post aside.

It's the coming back to life part.

This is a slow process that I'm speaking of, gradual, like falling in love with someone shy. It may take years, even. I tangle with death as I sleep through yet another day, in bed with no visitors. I sigh, forlorn, looking out the window at the sun as it falls across the spruce trees. I wrestle with the shell of my former life, now empty of all of the places I used to go, people I used to see, things I used to fill it up with in the name of keeping busy.

What is left?

Freedom. Like making it onto the plane just before they close the cabin doors. Like getting the heck out of dodge.

Maybe I exaggerate a little about the almost dying part; some would say no, but who could tell really? Maybe I wasn't actually that close to what Mary Oliver calls "the cloud-boat" in that moment when my car was hit. No doubt, though--I was living, before the accident, under death's thumb day by day, wasting away.

If something good comes from tragedy

I get a shiny new car. Not brand new, but new to me.

My head is still spinning, I am extremely exhausted, and I feel like I’m going to puke or pass out, maybe both. But still, there is this Subaru Impreza before me, pulsing and gleaming in the July heat the way no car has ever done before. I imagine I know what a 16-year-old boy with a new sports car must feel like. Here she is, perfect and dentless and royal blue, only very gently worn. My body fits her seats like favorite clothes. Her engine doesn’t rev, it laughs.

Rose. I shall call her Rose, The Blue Flame.

Rose and I shall venture now, off into a new life.