Freestyle #1

Freestyle #1 Amanda Hamblen

 

I remember back to a fridgid cold winter day about five years ago, when an incident happened that I will never forget. First of all I want to point out the obvious, my family means a lot to me. We always look out for each other no matter what the issue is. In my family like most others I have a children, mother, father, younger sister, nephew, and grandparents. I am especially close to my grandparents. When I was down on my luck about five years ago, my grandparents offered me and my children a place to stay until I could secure a place of my own. I had just gone through a divorce and I was starting my life over and I needed a little help getting on my feet again. I moved in and stayed with them for about a year. During this time I grew closer and closer to them. I was able to connect on a level I had never connected with them before. I grew very protective of them and worried about their health and safety, although they were in excellent health for their age. They had their own home on a pretty little peninsula in St. George Maine where they could see the sun come up over the ocean every morning. Some It was the most beautiful sunrise I had seen before. One day after my grandfather had a routine check up with his doctor, we received dreadful news. The doctor had told my grandmother that tests came back to show that my grandfather was positive for alzheimer's disease. They assured us that this was the beginning stage and there was medication that he could take to help for the symptoms of the disease. The doctor gave him a few prescriptions to take to help slow the progression down. Which in turn would give him more time to live the best life he possibly could. It was devasting to our family and my grandmother most of all. We took the doctor's advice to attend some local alzheimer's support groups to get helpful information on how to deal with, and maintain the best care possible for him. That really helped the family educate on the disease itself. Several months later, life had returned for the most part, back to normal. We had plenty of time because it was the very beginning and he didn't have any obvious signs that he was ill. After several months of adjusting life according to doctor's advice, we seemed to get back to "normal" life. Everything was going well with my family, and I was happy again.

    One morning my grandfather offered to drive me to work. I accepted the offer because I knew that would make him happy to do something nice for me. After all, in his eyes I'm still his little granddaughter "mandy." As he was driving me in that morning, I looked over to the driver seat in his white Ford pickup truck to see that he had a huge smile on his face. That made me feel really good inside. We struck up a conversation on the way to Rockland from St. George, Maine. We have a great relationship between my grandfather and I. He has always treated me like a princess. We were at the intersection across from the Rockland Industrial Park waiting for the traffic to clear. We were stopped at a flashing red light,. which is a driver decision on whether to yield or wait for cars to clear way. At that light there was three ways to go. Straight to the industrial park where I work, left or right. At that time we were waiting for the traffic to clear left and right before we could continue driving to our destination. To the right was a UPS delivery truck waiting for traffic, to the left there was a couple cars coming down the road about 200 feet. My grandfather leaned forward to look right, UPS truck was waiting. He looked left and seen cars were yielding to the UPS driver. I looked at the UPS driver and he put his hand up and signaled for us to go ahead and he would wait until we went first. I thought to myself, "wow that was nice of him to do that." I seen my grandfather look both ways, then proceeded ahead through the intersection. All of a sudden I felt the truck slam sideways, and heard a loud crash. In a confused state of mind I thought to myself, "what just happened?" I turned to my grandfather and he was pale white and looked confused and upset. I realized at that point that we had just been involved in an accident. I looked towards my grandfather and seen that a car had slammed into my grandfathers side door and it was crushed in and he couldn't get his door open. So I opened my door and got out and helped him maneuver out through my side. Once he was out of the truck we started trying to figure out what exactly had happened and why. I turned towards the truck and there was a tall dark-haired husky man practically running towards us and yelling profanity. He started getting closer to us and continued to go towards my grandfather. He came up to him and screamed right into his face, while pointing his index finger into his face. He was accusing him of causing this accident and that it was all his fault and he was going to pay dearly for what he did to his car. Then he threatened to start beating my grandfather within an inch of his life. While he continued to curse and make physical threats towards him, I looked at my grandfather's face. He looked very scared, started crying and was crouching into the fetal position on the ground. All of this happened with the man from the other vehicle within forty-five seconds. I felt my face get hot and my anger towards this stranger started getting very strong. I felt that it was my job to protect him from anything that could hurt him in any way. While he was lying on the ground curled up, I stood right between him and the violent man who was threatening our safety. I looked up at the man and put my hand in his face to indicate that he better stop. Then he started yelling at me and saying that we would pay for what he did to his car. I yelled back that he wasn't going to touch a single hair on his head. That it was an accident and it wasn't our fault that it happened. The UPS truck waved to us that he wanted us to go ahead before him, so that didn't mean that other guy could go ahead and try to beat both of us getting in to the intersection. I told the angry stranger that I would make him pay the rest of his life if he did anything that hurt my grandfather. I made several threats to him about very specific things I would do to get revenge against him. I actually had to physically push him away from trying to punch my grampy while he was on the ground crying and trying to protect his head from getting hit. I had to exercise a lot of control to not start beating the guy repeatably. I told him I would be calling the police to take care of the situation and they would figure out who was responsible. The police arrived at the scene and took statements from both sides and from the UPS driver. I also reported the threats of physical harm to my grandfather. We went away that day unharmed for the most part. I wasn't hurt at all but my grandfather had some bruising due to the quick snap we felt when the truck was struck in the driver side door. I look back at the accident and reflect some times about how lucky we are to be living life today. I try to generate a gratitude list from time to time to remind me to be thankful for the gifts of life itself. I call and check on my grandparents as often as I can and they are still in great health and grampa is doing well and still able to recnognize family members and still getting around even outside in the barn today. I thanked them for all the help they have given me and believed in me when nobody else would. I will pay them back someday when they need me but until then they will go on strong.