Indestructible the song came out in March 9, 1998. It was the song that really caught my attention, as I had heard Matthew Good Band songs on CFOX (Vancouver radio station) prior to that single – but that one – it stuck. It was a month or two later that I started to chat online with Matthew Good – and I blame this dang song.
Died in a motor crash
I came back for you
The perfect version of myself
I died. In a motor crash on October 25, 1992.
Accidental Birthday
I celebrate this day as my second birthday. I truly should be ashes, or worm food. I would prefer to be burned to ash though, the documents with my will state that. I was 19 when I had my car accident.
I was living with Max Murphy on 1st Avenue. When the accident happened.
Max and I went to the same after hours club The World aka The Eclipse. March 1992, my 19th birthday I was downtown, shoe shopping at Fluevogs, when I ran into him on the street. He asked me if I was wearing a Dixie. We started dating.
I had taken a year off school – so I was 19 in grade 12. I decided school was a bore, and that going to SFU to become a Forensic Entomologist wasn’t my path anymore. So I quit in the last month of school leaving me 2 credits short of being able to graduate. That summer of 92 – I moved to East 12th and Commercial Drive and lived with Rhonda (one of the twins) and Lisa. Max moved in rather quickly after finding himself in a tiff with a roommate. We had an epic party or two that summer.
Trip Inside This House
Rhonda wasn’t enjoying her roommates. But we were enjoying ourselves very selfishly. This one night we found a bunch of body paints in her closet and Lisa decorated me. We were all tripping on acid. We hung with people that sold the stuff, so much of the time we got to trip for free, but seriously who couldn’t afford $5 for a tab and 10+ hours mind bending adventures. Max took these pictures of me. He liked photography.
Fernando, you remember him, he had broke my heart the year before. Turned out Max and him had attended the same high school, a few years in age apart. But they had both been in theatre. Fernando had fancied himself an actor. Thought he looked like actor Richard Grieco – and Fernando had this VHS tape of his performance in his high school play. He wanted me to have it, so made a copy.
So I had this video tape.
Of course, during the conversations with Max after a few run ins with Fernando, who still thought he could win me back, despite me living with Max, it came to light that the two men had gone to school together. So I mentioned the tape to Max.
Max was in the play.
I had had a video tape with Max on it from his childhood, before we ever met. So weird.
Fun House
Even though it was a fun house, Rhonda got sick of us, and rightly so, and she moved out. So me and Lisa, and our men, moved to First Avenue instead. That landlord didn’t want men living with us so we hid it best we could. I swear that place was haunted too. We all saw weird stuff. We were all working and partying way less. Trying to grow up I suppose. I was trying to decide what to do next in life. Working at the Deli of the Superstore wasn’t exactly the end goal.
Things looked like they were falling apart with Lisa and I – and Max and I had discussed the future. Lisa and her man were thinking of moving out. Everything was decaying as it does in Autumn.
I have a close relationship with my mom. That summer of 1992, I would drive out to her place most Sundays to watch a movie together. A traditional thing we have always done. Movie nights.
7175 Days
I woke up Sunday, October 25th, 1992. A little tired from being out late the night before. I snacked some food but not much, given I was planning to drive to my mom’s in North Delta for movie night.
I didn’t have clean pants so I grab a pair of Lisa’s jeans and my old sweater and threw on a pair of my Fluevogs. It was a cold day. I walked down the big flight of stairs, then to the back of the house. The windows of my Firefly car were a bit dewy so I rolled the passenger side and driver side, down a crack to air out the car, on the drive. No power windows. I stuck in a cassette tape of Pop Will Eat Itself and drove off.
I took my usual route. Down Victoria Drive to SW Marine Drive and headed east. The road becomes Marine Way. And just around Big Bend you pass this giant Hindu God Statue, and curve toward Bryne Road. Now, these days, the highway has dividers and the area is built up, but back then, there were no road dividers. Just 80kms on a highway, with a painted line dividing traffic.
The accident report records the time as 4:34 PM. I was listening to the song X, Y & Zee when something came in my passenger window and it distracted me. As I looked to see what it might have been for a moment, I patted the passenger seat, with my left hand still on the wheel. I guess I pulled the wheel down slightly and the car began to veer across the centre line. When I looked back, in those split seconds, I realized I was heading straight into another oncoming vehicle.
I thought, “Oh shit, I’m dead.”
Broken B
I made those old graphics about the crash, many years ago. The time is wrong by a few minutes. But everything else is correct. Typos being whatever.
Our cars collided, the front ends compacted into one another – driver side to driver side. The entire front end of my car was crushed into my legs. My legs crushed into my car seat. The impact snapped my left femur, shattering it. It did not thankfully break the skin, but I was bleeding to death due the femoral artery, along the thigh, being severed. The back of my left leg was black from the blood, for months.
My left ankle and foot was crushed. It was so broken in fact the doctors told me I was going have to have my foot amputated. Normally your heel takes all the impact, but this accident, not only broke my heel bone, but also Talus bone, that is the main pivotal bone of your foot. The doctors feared the blood supply was damaged and that the bone would die.
I had also broken my right heel and Tibia. I had fractured my pelvis. Several ribs were broken, and one had punctured my left lung. My left shoulder blade was also broken, most likely these injuries were from the seat belt. My nose was smashed, as was my left eye socket from the impact of the steering wheel.
I was doing 80kms. In a Pontiac Firefly. The car I hit was a Honda Civic, also doing 80kms. If you understand the physics of the impact – I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. We both died in the accident, but are somehow we’re still here.
I remember them trying to find a way to remove me from the car. Eventually the firemen used the jaws of life on the driver door. In the ambulance, I remember them cutting off my clothing and me being worried about Lisa‘s jeans and my Fluevog shoes. Totally unaware.
You have to consider that there are actually three collisions that happen during a crash.
The first collision occurs when a vehicle hits something – depending on what the object is and whether it is also moving — away, or at an angle, or towards the vehicle at speed — influences what happens to those involved.
In a crash where the car stops suddenly, the kinetic energy produced dissipates rapidly as the car body crumples and bends.
The faster that deceleration occurs, the worse things are for the occupants of the vehicle, which is where the second collision comes in.
While the vehicle is stopping, kinetic energy will keep the humans inside moving in the same direction and at a similar speed until they are jerked back by seatbelts, slam into inflating airbags, or hit the steering wheel, dashboard or windshield.
Finally, as the shattered body comes to a halt, the third collision takes place – this time inside the body.
Soft organs, like the spleen and liver, continue to move forward until halted. They can bruise or tear. The heart can undergo aortic rupture. The brain can receive a blow so immense it ceases to function.
Indestructible B
After arriving at Royal Columbian Hospital, all my family was telephoned. They were told to come right away. For hours the emergency team scanned me and stabilized me. By then I couldn’t see much, but I could hear everything. Every time they would find a new problem, my father had to sign off on the procedures.
A tube in my lung, a cut through my side and it was shoved through my ribs. More broken parts to repair. The surgery to fix my thigh was discussed. They informed me, I may need to have my foot removed. The doctor was amazing. He decided to wait on my left foot. And see what happens, before that drastic surgery. They inserted a camera into my body cavity to check my organs.
I was told even though nothing inside needed surgery, the way everything had moved and the pelvic break, I would most likely never be able to have children. My daughter is a miracle to me.
Just after midnight on October 27th, 1992, they told my family to go home and get some rest. I was heading to surgery to repair my thigh. It would take a lot of titanium, and a bone graph from my left hip area – and it was about a 9 hour long surgery.
My Left Foot
Days later the doctor determined the Talus bone in my ankle had a 50/50 chance. So he decided to stick two permanent titanium screws in my ankle. So another surgery for that happened. It worked. They are with me until I am ashes.
Max and Lisa visited me. Many people did, old friends, new work friends. Fernando asked me to marry him while I was laid in that hospital bed. My family helped Max move. Moved all my things into storage at my dad’s.
I had two broken legs, and was unable to walk. But I was alive. Somehow. For some reason. The full impact of my death experience wouldn’t hit me until many months later and I would be a mental wreck by summer of 1994 dealing with trying to understand My Purpose.
I left the hospital in late November. The doctors wanted to send me to Eagle Ridge to rehab, but I was done with hospitals. I moved back home to my mom’s house. I had services come to do physiotherapy and many trips to see doctors. In December 1992, I had the right cast removed from my leg and my left cast replaced. In Spring of 1993, I had the left cast removed. I walked with crutches. Then a cane by the summer of 1993. By the Autumn of 1993 I was dancing again, even if I have a tiny limp due to my left leg now being a bit shorter than the other.
Max and I tried to keep a relationship but it was just impossible under the circumstances. I truly loved him. So much so in 1993 I had his initials tattooed on me. I can’t imagine what it was like for him, for everyone, my family specially to go thru seeing me like that – right after the accident. Being on a death watch for the weeks after in case of blood clots. Me drugged to the hilts on morphine for the pain. I died that day in every way and was never the same.
Years later, I had the titanium in my left leg removed. The doctor let me keep the bits. I still have them. I have always intended to have a clear plastic femur made and have them installed to match the X-Rays. I requested to keep the X-Rays – so I still have those too. Some think it’s morbid, but they didn’t experience what I did – did they? And do I care what they think? No.
I celebrate this day a second birthday. So does Paul Burke the driver of the Honda Civic that I hit. He found me on Facebook in 2016 and we have often shared our thoughts on the events of that day we share. So Happy Birthday to him too.
Today is my second birthday, my Accidental Birthday – I am 31 years old.
Uploaded October 25th, 2023