Northern_Lights_2014

Don’t Fear the Reaper By Mattie Hoyle People like to theorize things like life after death, or Heaven and Hell, and all the various beliefs of what comes after. I grew up with a Roman Catholic basis, but now I consider myself agnostic. My mother was distraught when she first heard me tell her that I don’t know if I believe in God. However, I don’t think that a person should decide how they should act based on a fear of retribution by a higher power. It is my firm belief that you should make choices based on what you see as being right and good. Think what you will of it, but what I believe and what you believe won’t change what I’ve experienced. In February 2011, on a clear but windy day, I rolled my car in the ditch on my way to work at a bar. I was in a hurry, like any other day, and the night before it had snowed; however, not enough to make me think twice about my speed. The road was clear, up to the end of a band of trees just about a mile north of town. I saw the snow drift over the road and started to slow down. However, my tires didn’t line up with the previous tracks. My car hit the center drift and turned at a diagonal angle, sliding as I watched in horror and hopeless to stop what I could see was coming. My car slid along before finally going off towards the ditch and into the banked snow, driver’s side first, at the edge of the road. For a tiny second I thought that I would just get stuck, and it’d be ok, but then my world flipped upside down. I remember the bright blue of the sky, the loud roar as the snow managed to break the passenger window and rushed in and the icy chill it brought me, the sound of crunching, twisting metal, the feeling of the ceiling as I pushed myself up, and finally, the car being righted. I sat there in awe as I looked over to where my passenger window used to be, now fragmented and scattered throughout the inside of my car. I reached into my pocket and tried to find my cell phone to call for help. Fumbling and hands shaking, it took a couple minutes to finally find my phone and figure out how to call again. Eventually able to make some coherency, I called my dad in a panic so he could get some help and then my friend so she could let my boss know—I didn’t have his number at the time—that I couldn’t make it to work. Afterwards, I sat there and looked down, blood covering my coat and splattered on my pants. Lifting my hand to see it drip down, I started to bawl. After my dad helped me out; I looked at my car. The driver’s side was nearly untouched while the pas- senger’s side was dented and distorted. The cop arrived and I continued to cry. He ended up letting me off with a verbal warning, and everyone there believed that I was crying my heart out because I was afraid. But the truth was, I wasn’t. Somewhere in that twisting and turning and crushed mess of my car, I felt at peace. It was as though half of my soul was on the other side. I was complete and whole for the first time for as long as I could remem- ber. The truth was that it tore me up inside to leave my other half behind again. I wanted to go there, to be- come whole again. However, I also came to realize that it isn’t my place to decide when to join that other piece of me, and I want to be able to share this world, both the good and bad, with me. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been afraid of death, because even when I was younger, I would dream of 35