When your nightmare comes true

All of my adult life I have lived with a very profound feeling that I was going to die a violent death.   I couldn’t tell anybody about my fears, they would have called me an idiot.  The fear became more intense as I got older.

I use to have nightmares about dying when I turned 60, but I never had a face in the nightmares.  It consumed me. I used to get so confused about my thoughts, were they real.  I could not ask anybody.

When my 60th birthday came around I just wanted to have some fun,  but I spent my Birthday looking after my Mother at the Hospital.  I thought “Not a good sign of what lies ahead”.

I had saved money to spend that day.   I was going to be daring and have a ride on a Harley Davidson.  I had accepted my fate by that time that the feelings of one day dying violently were real.  I had actually thought if I am going to die, that at least on the back of a Harley it would be memorable… not for me of course.

My Mother went further down hill, I had to move in with her.  There was no motorbike ride in my foreseeable future.   As her carer, my 60th year was full of hospitals and doctors appointments for her.  Fear of my own death was always with me.

I would never go out the door of a night, never walk in isolated areas.  It was crazy.   Then all of a sudden it was Melbourne Cup Day.  That’s when the face appeared to my nightmare.  It wasn’t me doomed for a violet death.  It was my eldest son.

He was riding his pushbike on the footpath, casually, when a moron behind the wheel of a 4WD hit him with such force he was terribly injured.  He even died twice that day.  Against all the odds, he survived.  But he has had many surgeries to fix his broken body.  And he has more surgery ahead this month, then at least 3 more after that.

My nightmares are no longer me dying by an act of violence, my nightmares are visions of my son laying on the road covered in blood surrounded by paramedics.

I know the moron that hit him.  Sadly I have known him for years.

I always got really bad vibes off him, and I could never understand why… I understand now.  Funny how we feel these things and don’t know why.

I just wish it had been me he hit.  I could have accepted that so much more than watching my child struggle with this.