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 “Go! Move!” yelled my friend’s husband, perched behind her in the back seat next to me.

 “I can’t; we’ll go in the gully!” she screamed, putting the gears of the car in reverse.

 “No, don’t back up! Go forward. Now,” pleaded my husband, seated next to her in the front seat of the rented white Lincoln.

How can I sit here, I wondered watching the semi approach my rear door, barely hearing the instructions ordered by the men in the car? So this is it, this is how and when Stan and I will die together, I thought.

The double semi’s squealing brakes force the fumes of its burning tires into our car, yet I sit silently awaiting my death staring in the eyes of the semi’s driver who was fighting desperately to avoid a collision.

My friend, attempting to turn left off the highway, had overshot the road’s entrance, a bridge which was flanked on both sides by a deep ditch.  She stopped the car partly in the oncoming lane of traffic to avoid going down into it.  The ditch was in front of us, the rear of the car, where I was seated, was still on the highway and the double semi truck was headed straight toward me.

Looking at the startled face of the semi’s driver, bearing down on us, seeing the smoke escaping from the giant wheels which were now locked into the asphalt, and even knowing that I would be the first to go within seconds, I continued to watch and wait in silence.

Though our plans were to leave the planet together, Stan and I had never discussed how or when we would die other than that we would leave when we wanted to.  The approaching semi made me think that this was how and when, whether we wanted to or not.

Both, men were shouting directions to go forward not back, now! Now! Now!  I remember the car pointed toward the gully.  I felt the car lurch and then shoot forward.  I expected-no I knew-we would drop down into the gully.  Yet, in a flash, we were magically on the bridge and then on the country road to the old Southern mansion we had decided to visit before continuing the short distance into Charleston.   

The truck roared past behind us on the highway, its brakes still screaming.  In contrast, the road we entered was completely quiet.   There was also total silence in our car.   No one knew what to say.  We continued on, following the winding, wooded one-lane road, finding we arrived too late to take the tour of the mansion.  My thoughts were on the semi.  What had happened to it?  How was the driver?  Yet no one mentioned him or what had just occurred.  I still wonder about him.

There had been an elephant in the car all the way to the hotel.  We needed to recognize what we had just experienced but we did not.  Perhaps we were all in shock.  Light conversation was made as though nothing had occurred among the three while I remained quiet.

At the hotel, we went to our rooms to change before dinner.  I have no recollection of Stan’s and my sharing, though I’m sure we did.  What I do remember was seeing my friend when we met at the reception.  She looked at me with red swollen eyes and nervously confessed, “I went to my room and screamed and cried for an hour.”  I was relieved to know that she had.

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