My encounter with an angel has made lasting and important changes to my life. One of the obvious changes is associated with the nagging question of “who was that lady?” I assume that it all can be rationally argued by considering that the lady was just a normal person who stopped to help at the accident scene and that her use of the term “guardian angel” was purely metaphorical, rather than factual.
I encountered my first “angel” sometime in the summer of 1995 or 1996 in the tiny town of Zamora, California. I had recently joined the local volunteer fire department and was still quite apprehensive about going to automobile accidents for fear that I would do something wrong and hurt someone. Actually, “apprehensive” is an understatement, “terrified” is closer to the truth.
One afternoon I got a call on my fire department pager notifying me that there had been an accident on one of the main county roads just outside of town. I quickly put on my “turnouts” and rushed off to the call, but came upon the accident before I managed to get to the fire department. I parked my car and went to see what I could do. The accident was a very serious one where a small car had been hit in the driver’s side door by the business end of a “harrow bed.” A harrow bed is a large truck-based machine that is used to pick up and stack bales of hay in the fields. It has a long “scoop” device that sticks out the front of the vehicle. The scoop moves up and down so that it can slide under a bale of hay, picking it up off of the ground. The bale is then placed onto a conveyor belt that moves it toward the rear of the vehicle where it is automatically stacked. Since harrow beds are built on truck chassis, they travel on normal roads at highway speeds when going from field to field during the haying season.
The driver of the car had pulled out in front of the harrow bed at an intersection, and the scoop device crashed through the door, crushing the driver to the right side, pressing her down into the lap of the passenger. The mangled door and intruding scoop device held her down in a bent over, sideways position. Our problem was to safely and quickly get the driver and the passenger out of the car and into the waiting ambulances. The car was so crushed that both of the ladies in the car were trapped. The driver was obviously very seriously injured with massive head and torso injuries. The scoop end of the harrow bed was intertwined with the wreckage, and had lifted the front portion of the car off of the ground. This event happened before the fire department owned a “jaws of life” device, so extrication had to be done with hammers, axes, saws, bars or whatever was available. My job was to get inside of the car next to the women, calming them as much as possible while holding a tarp over them to protect them from broken glass, and do whatever I could to help them medically.
The three of us ended up in a very tight position in the front seats. We were covered up by the tarp. We couldn’t see what was happening outside, but we could hear and feel the banging and twisting of metal as the firemen worked at opening enough space to pull the women free from the wreckage. It was pretty disorienting and rather frightening being unable to see out. The passenger did not seem to have a medical emergency, but was very hysterical. She was screaming, crying and calling for her friend. Her friend’s head was smashed into the passenger’s lap so she couldn’t move. The driver was clearly in extremely serious danger, she was unconscious, bent in ways that are impossible for a normal person, and was bleeding out of her head, mouth and ears. Blood was pooling in the passenger’s lap. While it was clear that this was an emergency situation, there was nothing that I, nor anyone else, could do to help the driver because of the position of her body, the presence of the passenger, and the tangled mess of metal surrounding her. All that I could do was try to calm the passenger and hold my hands on the driver’s head in a gesture of compassion.
I quickly found myself enveloped in a very strange feeling of love and compassionate energy. It felt like the three of us had been somehow transported into a new dimension where we were in a bubble, separate from the rest of the world. The passenger calmed down and it just felt like we were somehow outside of time with the three of us joined together in a single energy field.
After some time passed (I have no idea how long it was), the passenger asked me about her daughter. This took me by surprise because as far as I knew there were only two people in the accident. I asked her what she was talking about and she told me that her young daughter was in the back seat of the car. I looked back there and found there was no back seat! It had been ripped loose. The car was crushed and mangled, but there was nobody else in the car. I had the thought that the daughter must have been thrown out of the car and was lying injured in a ditch somewhere, unattended because we didn’t know of her presence.
I decided to get out of the car and go find the little girl. As I started to do so, I came face to face with a very nice looking lady in her late twenties or early thirties. She put up her hand to stop me and very forcefully said that I needed to stay where I was, that I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and that the little girl was uninjured. She said that she was the girl’s “guardian angel” and had taken the girl out of the car following the accident. She told me that she had taken the girl to a nearby parking lot and was helping her. She also said that my job was to stay with the mother and the driver, her job was to look after the little girl. For some odd reason, I was convinced at that moment that she was just what she claimed to be (an angel), and that her directions were to be followed. I returned to my job of holding the energy and light within the vehicle.
The other firemen finally got enough of the vehicle untangled and torn apart enough to be able to slide the driver out from under the steering wheel. I helped pull the passenger out of the car and place her on a gurney. I then returned to help extricate the driver. The first task I had to do was to reach through the passenger side door, lying over the driver in order to get to her feet to move them out from under the pedals. Once the driver’s feet were clear of the pedals, the EMT lady from one of the ambulances told me to help pull and lift her out, but warned me that when we pulled on the girl (the driver) we would probably pull her in half and she would die immediately! My mind’s eye raced to the vision of seeing the girl’s guts and blood spill out as we tried to pull her free. This image just about did me in, but somehow I stayed steady and calm. Happily, the girl stayed in one piece and we were able to get her onto another gurney, perform some emergency procedures on her, and place her into a waiting ambulance.
The passenger was once again screaming and crying in hysteria. She wanted to see her daughter and wanted her friend to live. I told her that I would get her daughter for her, but that she had to become strong for her daughter, she couldn’t be screaming and hysterical or it would hurt her daughter. I held her hands and she finally calmed herself, and I went to get the daughter. I found her easily, but the lady that I had talked to was nowhere to be found. A few neighbors were taking care of the little girl, but there was no sign that the “angel lady” was there, or had ever been there. I asked around but nobody had seen the person that I had talked to at the car.
Once the ladies were taken away by the ambulances, we heard nothing more about the two young women. I wanted feedback from the hospital concerning their condition, but that was not available.
For the next few days I kept having very uneasy feelings about the driver. My mind kept going back to her, drawn somehow not so much by the image of that day, but by her in the hospital. I assumed that it was just that I was still in the drama/trauma of the event. About a week later I was sitting in meditation under a tree in the early morning as the sun came up. I felt strongly drawn to a mental image of the driver, who was in the hospital 30 or so miles away. It was as if I was being pulled that way, more than just my attention being pulled – it felt like a physical force. I was noticing that when all of a sudden my body started to shake and shiver as if something was physically shaking me about. I felt hot, and then cold, and was shivering all over. This didn’t last long, just a few seconds, and then I felt calm and peaceful. It was like a wave had come over me and then passed, leaving a great calmness behind. It felt like I was finally finished with my job, I was released and at ease.
That day we heard more about the women. The passenger was not seriously injured, as I had expected. The driver was very seriously injured with many internal injuries, broken bones, and a serious head injury. She had been in a coma until that morning, when she finally woke up. As far as I was able to determine, she woke up about the same time that I felt the shivering. I later heard that the driver survived, but was confined to a wheelchair. I don’t know what the final outcome has been for the driver, and have not seen either of the ladies since that day.
Since that encounter I have had a few experiences with “healing” events as described in other stories. I can’t say that I healed anyone because that is obviously not true. I was there when people got better, observed the changes that took place, and I felt what seemed like energy flowing from me to them – but that is all. However, upon careful consideration it appears to me that these healing events are somehow tied into the encounter with “the angel.” That seems to mark a transition in my life that opened up something in me that makes me feel more “connected” to people than I had before that day. I think maybe that “connection” has something to do with compassion, and that compassion has allowed me to be more aware of others in need – and the act of being aware helps.
As a final note, there was a lawsuit concerning the design of the intersection and the county put up a new flashing light to control the intersection. As a result of this accident, the fire department purchased a “jaws of life,” which has aided us to more quickly rescue several people. There have been no serious accidents at that location since the flashing lights were installed.