2 weeks ago. Wednesday, July 1, 2026 at 1:07 AM
Sometimes you have to air the thing that haunts your dreams.
This is mine.
They say it’s called an accident but you run it over and over in your mind trying to remember if there was anything you could have done differently. Your memory though still has gaps. Like what did you eat for breakfast that morning? Did you tell your daughters you loved them before walking out the door? What you do remember is this…..
You loaded the two year old quarter horse into the livestock trailer, to deliver him back to his owner after his eight weeks of training. You hopped in your truck and pulled out for the five hour drive. It was a sunny day, actually perfect temperature outside. It was an uneventful trip, until it wasn’t.
The semi was halfway around you, going 70mph on the interstate, when two of his tires blew. You heard the bang and flinched. It all happened so fast, yet was in slow motion at the same time. The semi’s trailer swerved into the side of your livestock trailer. All you could think was how spooked the horse was. You held the truck steady but the trailer came around and you jack knifed, throwing the truck sideways in front of the semi, the last thing you remember was seeing the front of the semi coming straight at you.
You were in and out of consciousness but remember a kind man’s voice saying they’d get you out, but another sound kept piercing your mind. What was that? You couldn’t pinpoint what was making that horrible sound. Then you realized, it was the horse, he wasn’t dead, all you could think was someone put him out of his misery, please.
You woke almost 3 weeks later. Broken pelvis, both femurs broken, 3 cracked lower vertebrae, 6 broken ribs, a broken wrist, severe concussion, spleen removed and about half your teeth missing. The semi had went up over the top of your truck crushing the cab down & pinning you bent in half around the steering wheel.
It’s not the pain of the injuries that haunts you. People helped fill in the gaps of your memory. It’s the flashes when you were in a coma, the horse’s dying sound, the metal screeching, the thought that you were going to die. The fact the doctors weren’t sure you’d walk again.
So 3 years later, every time you get up in the saddle to ride your horse, you laugh at those doctors. Not that it was easy to get here, not that you don’t still have pain, but that somewhere you found the strength to defy the doctors words.
Now if someone could take away the part that haunts your dreams.