The difference between life and death

Chris Fisher, center, with his brother, Nick, left, and their

father, Chris Sr.

By Chris Fisher

One day after his 60th birthday, my father was killed in a car accident that he would have walked away from...had he been wearing a seat belt. 

It was Monday, Feb. 12, 2018.  I had been off work long enough to eat lunch and was getting ready for a dental appointment when my mother’s name came up on my phone’s caller ID.

That was 1:33 p.m.

Initially, there was no voice on the other end, just the sound of her gasping for air and sobbing.

“Christopher, two state troopers just showed up to the house, they said your dad got killed in a car accident this morning…. Christopher, your dad is gone.”

In a matter of seconds, I went from dreading the dentist to wondering how life will ever go on without my dad.

It felt like somebody punched me in the gut as hard as they could, yet I felt no pain.    

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Fisher,” the trooper said after he took the phone from my mom.  I could still hear her in the background as he tried to explain what happened. “For some reason, your father veered off the road, overcorrected and rolled his truck. He was ejected and, unfortunately, died from his injuries at the hospital around 12:30 this afternoon. Again, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

My mind was racing a million miles an hour while my car felt like it was barely crawling as I headed to the farm. Once I arrived I walked inside the house and saw my mother in the corner of the living room sitting in a chair nobody ever used, holding her head in her hands, slowly rocking back and forth...crushed beyond belief.  Right then and there the complete numbness I felt in the hour drive instantly turned into overwhelming sadness and grief.  I broke down as I started to sit on the floor by her feet. 

Everywhere I looked there were signs that he was just there, because, of course he was just there.  Alive and well just hours before.

His lunch pail sat next to the door leading to the garage, with a Gatorade and package of crackers sitting inside. His glasses were sitting on top of the newspaper on the table next to his favorite spot to read and nap. His jacket rested on the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table. The big, beautiful house he worked so hard to build was the emptiest it has ever felt, knowing that he would never be coming back. 

My dad owned his own masonry business, and that particular day he set out to deliver a load of sand to a job he had been working on the past several weeks. The crash happened on a route he was very familiar with, in a truck he had driven for more than 10 years. He was less than five minutes away from the jobsite. 

A day later, my brother and I drove past the scene of the accident. Signs of the crash were just as the trooper described.

We saw the tire tracks leave the road to the left, then leave the road to the right and then skid marks, several dents in the pavement leading up to a large patch of sand and broken glass too thin for anyone to remove with a broom and dust pan.

The cab of the truck was beat up, but intact.

Traffic continued to zip by as if nothing had happened. 

First responders and doctors in the emergency room worked on my dad for almost two hours before realizing they could do no more. Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head. 

Should he have somehow survived, it wouldn’t have been a life he would have wanted to live.

His mangled Ford F-550 stuck out like a sore thumb as we drove up to the salvage yard to collect any of his belongings that remained inside.

“How’s he doing?” asked a man who emerged from a back office.  He had apparently overheard my conversation with the woman behind the counter.    

“He’s dead,” I answered.

A look of shock and embarrassment came over his face as the room instantly fell silent.  

“He’s dead?” the man quietly repeated. 

At the time, I had no idea why he would assume whoever was riding in that truck made it out alive, but it became painfully obvious when I got an up-close look at the wreckage for myself. 

The cab was beat up, but still completely intact. Both doors still opened and shut with little effort.  Broken glass, loose change, old receipts, sandwich wrappers, various small tools and several discarded medical wrappers and supplies discarded by paramedics littered the floorboards. 

We also found his cell phone, and the coat he was wearing at the time of the crash, which was completely drenched in blood. 

While I already knew his lack of a seat belt was the difference between life and death in this accident, seeing how intact the cab of that truck was multiplied the pain of losing my father a thousand times over.  

It was a crash he could have survived 100 out of 100 times had he just been buckled up - I have absolutely no doubt about this. 

He wouldn’t have even had to crawl out the window.  He could have just opened the door and brushed off the dust. 

But, that wasn’t the case. 

Instead of returning to work to write news for WIBW, I had to write my dad’s obituary and help plan his funeral.

For some reason, nothing anyone could say or do would get this man to wear his seat belt.  My brother and I both survived crashes in our teenage years that could have easily paralyzed or killed the both of us had we not been safely strapped in.

I would share with him some of the tragedies we would cover at the station and how simply a life could have been saved if and only if that person would have been wearing their seat belt. 

We talked about the myths of wearing a seat belt. How they, in fact, do not cut you in half when you’re in a crash, and they are much more reliable now than they were back then.

For some reason, none of that resonated. Clearly, old habits are hard to break. For whatever reason, he just wouldn’t do it… and here we are. 

While I will always respect, admire and miss my dad, I also will always wonder why he could never see the importance of wearing a seat belt. 

 

Chris Fisher is an Anchor/Reporter at WIBW-TV in Topeka.