our seudas hodaa is today, miracles our car accident

micki

Sun, Dec 07 2008, 7:25 am

I feel I have to share a special miracle that happened to us, today 5 years ago. sorry its a bit long.

my husband had a dream once- which in itself wa weird cause he sleeps so deep he said he never does. anyway in the dream the rebbe marash whom he is named after was coming to our city. my hubby was part of the group that organized a frabrengen and at the farbrengen the rebbe was saying l'chayim to everyone. but when he got to my husband he smiled a brilliant smile and said l'chaiyim. then he called him back and made him say another l'chayim with another smile. and nodded as if to say- everything will be OK. whats odd is there are no pictures of the rebbe marash in curculation, yet my hubby saw him and his red beard clearly.
the next morning he told this to his co-workers, and then he told it to me in the car on the way to NY. we noticed some snowplows sitting idly waiting for snoww to plow, and as a joke I said look they should be learning rambam- they must be bored. and we were talking how my hubby made a hachlata to learn 3 prukim rambam in depth which the siyum ends on my hubby's birthday which is also the rebbe marash yartzeit.
and he told me this dream and then said "isn't amazing that so many years after the rebb made a takana to sya rambam we still do it with a chayus. how special it must be to the rebbe that we are following his words then he said "es shimcha lo shachnu" (your name we have not forgotten)
and then seconds later we began to skid and slide and so we are skidding accros the highway lanes, there were 4 at the place we were plus a median coming up on our right where a major highway the 80 merges with the 380 where we were. we are in the left most lane when we began to skid. my husband is asking should I brake and I said no just try to steer. as he is trying to correct the skids I saw how wildily the van was moving, not even responding to the steering and I thought that we are not gonna make it out of here with out crashing into something. well we skidded accross 4 lanes of highway, and onto the grass median and then on my right I see a huuge 18 wheeler truck coming in to merge. all I thought was please truck move out of the way. our first nes was that as we skidded accross the 4 lanes, not one car hit us. then we slammed into the side of the truck kind got stuck underneath it- were dragged abit until the truck fishtailed and flung us out from under him. wwe then flew accross the same 4 lanes of highway backwards and slammed into the trees that were there. if we had been one second earlier the truck would have slammed into us. instead of us into him.
then the same 4 lanes again , no one hit us as a side impaact.
when we came to a stop, I looked over at my hubby andd said are you ok. he's like what about the kids. we didn't want to turna round to see what happened. I was too scared. I looked down and saw that the entire front section where my feet are supposed to be was smushed till the seat. I was sitting with my legs folded underneath me. chas vesholom if they were down as normal people sit...
someone pounds on my window and he is trying to open the door. its jammed shut. so he gos to the sliding door and leans in saying are you all right? and I say we are but the kids... its earily silent in the back. so I tell him I am afraid to look. and he said how many kids are back here- I say 4 K"H and he says well I see 4 pairs of eyes looking at me. I started to turn around but my neck was so painful that I couldn't fully turn. suddenly someone screams fire! and the I don't know how pushed the sliding door open and they literally threw the kids out of the car into a waiting van. then we came outt and when I looked there was no fire- but smoke was at the hood. so I on't know but it got us out of the van fast enough.
my son was bleeding on his face but otherwise everyone else of hte kids had not a SINGLE scratch o them. the boys were COVERED in shards of glass that shattered from the side windos but not a scratch aside from his face. turned out later to be a small cut that missed his eye by 1 milimeter. they ttok the kids with their car seats and put them in the other van.

I am sitting there and the heat is going when I am turning to sooth them and I see everyone start running for the trees and my hubby running twards the van. I turn more and see anoterh 18 wheeler swooshing by us trying to get control of itself and missed us. everyone else was running to not get hurt- hubby was running to tey to prtect us. the conditions were sooo slippery and they moved the van we were in closer to the trees off the shoulder, and they flagged downa truck who I saw parked itself in an angle to protect the van if anything were to happen to skid agin. well not a second after it rolled to a stop, I see the whole truck jump into the air and I saw an impact theat the angle would have hit our van had the truck not been there. I look forward and see a jeep flying through the air landing a few feet in front of us. finally the police and ambulance came and they put us in. they collected all our suitcases and put them in a seperate ambulance. the only injuries were my sons cut, a cut that they had to glue shut on my leg and sever whiplash for me and slight for hubby.
I don't know if I mentioned that it happened on yud kislev- the day the miteler rebbe was released from prison. (this was never celebrated because the mileler rebeb passed aaway on tes kislev a day before his first anniversary)
we stayed over shabbos at a wonderful shliachs house- isn't it nice that there is always someone frum close by? and we were in the middle of nowhere. moitze shabbos wonderful friends came to pick us up- my kids refused to get into the car- I was a little apprehensive myself.it took weeks for the physical signs to heal, and months for the emotional. my kids would jump everytime they heard a loud noise, but B"H with time they all healed.
I never cried. my husband and kids did- they were all emotionall in the telling and retelling. and one day maybe 6 months after we passed the spot where the crash was and we said the brocha sheasa lanu nes bemakom hazeh - and I got so emotional and cried- but not too much because I had to be strong for the kids. and then one night out of the blue I just started cying and crying - with no provacation. I was finally able to let go and heal too.

well- the year was up, and my husband and I were travelling back from NY on tes kislev- it was late at night when my hubby brakes sharply to a stop . in front of us on the highway a huge truck side swiped a smaller car which spun out of control and into the trees. B"H since the accident my huby has ee driving slower so we were able to brak in time to avoid hitting the car too. so we pull over and we are both shaking because how often do we SEE an accident happen? at the time of our accident we had no cell phones. since then we have got them. another person who stopped came running to us to ask if we have a cell phone because noone else at the site had one... so we called 911 and the dispatcher asks where are we? so I say on the way back from NY - he's like thats a big road. so we asked the other guy wherer are we and he says we are at the junction where the 380 meets the 80. (if you don't remember this was the EXACT spot that we had our accident a year before but going the other way) well I managed to compose myself enough to tell the dispath and they told us to stay and wait until the police came. well good thing cause we were the only vehicle with lights on tho show where the accident was.
the police come as do the ambulance and we went ovver to see how everyone was doing- turns out somehow he was only lightly injured and as I look at the EMT's I saw that one of the women looked familiar. I look again and ask her- did you take care of us a year ago at our accident? she looks at me and says are you the family that had those little kids witht the smashed van?
I burst into tears again and just the emotions of the whole evening the accident, a day before our seudas hoda the same place, the same emt's- but this time we are the ones helping. I just hugged her and thanked her- she said she always wondered what happened to her- I tolld her that my kids held on to those stuffed animals she gave them for a very long time- and her partner also came over and it was very emotional.
once we got back to our car, all I could think is that somehow this was OUR turn to give back.. the same place, same people- it was really and trully amazing. and the significance of the day was not lost on us- that the miteler rebeb never lived to see his first seuda- the next night we made a big party and it was once again an emotional evening- with recounting all the nisim, and what happened the ay before too.