We'd been Christmas shopping in Morristown., and then we had to pick Liz up from work.
So inside the car, the front seat was mom driving, Kim in the middle, and Granny F-I cannot remember if Bill was in the front or the back.
The back seat was me, Billy, Liz, and Aunt GG—or Bill was in the front.
At the time, I was 10 years old, Kim was 12 and Bill was 7.
Normally, no one wore seat belts, but that day Mom decided to put hers on.
No one else was wearing one.
We were coming back from Morristown when a drunk driver slammed head-on into us.
He was swerving and weaving on the wrong side of the road.
We were spun around three times, then we hit an embankment, and it turned the car all the way around, so it was facing back down the road and not up the road as we had been going.
It was bitterly cold; I think it was snowing a little. We were in the middle of nowhere; there were no houses for miles of us, all country.
Eventually, someone would stop, and they'd drive until they found a house, and they would call for help; that didn't happen fast though.
Somehow, we all managed to get out of the car.
I remember them screaming at me when it first happened to crawl out the window and see if I could get help, but my knees were pinned down by the front seat; it had somehow wedged itself back and was holding my knees tightly.
I had cowboy boots on, and I managed to wiggle and slide my feet until I could yank the boots out and wiggle out of the window.
By that time, I don't know; I know eventually we were all standing in the road.
My grandmother had her first heart attack and stroke at the scene; she was in bad shape.
My great aunt and aunt were pouring blood from their noses; both managed to get a broken nose, and my great aunt also had broken ribs.
Somehow, miraculously, no one else had any visible injuries.
Me, Kim, and Billy were crying; we were so scared, we were just bawling.
The grownups yelled at us for crying.
In hindsight, I realize now that my grandmother was dying, and they couldn't do a thing about it; the nearest house was probably two-three miles away.
Here they have a woman who is clutching her chest, moaning, unable to talk, lips turning blue, skin turning grey, and three kids are wailing to add to the ruckus.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, this completely white woman popped up, and she told the adults to leave us alone and let us cry that we were scared, and it was alright for us to cry.
And she huddled us together and put her arms all around us.
When I say a white woman, I mean white
She had pale white skin, she had white hair long and a little wild below her shoulders, she had a white long dress on—it went to just below her knees, she had a white shawl on, and weird for a snowy December—she was barefoot.
Remember, there were absolutely no houses in sight; it was in the middle of nowhere; the closest house would have been miles away.
There was no traffic, there was us, and there was the car that hit us, and we thought the driver was dead.
We are in the middle of nowhere.
She stayed with us until the ambulance and the police came; eventually, there were several cars that stopped and people saw her; they commented about her.
She was not a figment of our imagination; other people saw her.
But then she disappeared into the crowd.
Eventually, the accident was brought into court, and they tried to find this woman; she was the very first person on the scene, and they needed her testimony.
No one knew her; no one could find her.
It was as if she had never existed.
Was she an angel, or was she the lady in white that we often saw walking around our house, especially right before someone died?
If she was the lady in white, why did she hug us and comfort us?
Our lady in white was an omen to death, not comfort.
My grandmother did survive, but it was the start of a long downhill climb; she'd eventually die in 1988.
As is common in small towns in the 70s and 80s, who you knew who you were determined what happens to you.
The drunk driver was the son of a very rich, very well-known town lawyer, and despite almost killing a carload of people, despite having bottles of booze in his car, despite smelling like a brewery, he walked off without even a slap on the wrist.
My cousins and I never received any medical care after the wreck; I don't know why.
Common sense would dictate that we at least be checked out, but we weren't.
I've had serious knee problems ever since; my knees ache, buckle, and swell.
