Re: [Paddlewise] Humpbacks and sorrow

Tord,

Your is an amazing journey. I admire you for the inner strength that 
brought you through such trauma.

I have seen people who surrendered to tragedy and others who found a way 
to endure and become stronger. You serve as inspiration for us all.
A diamond shines brightly because it was creature under pressure and 
endured the grinding. Keep shining my friend>

Bob



On 9/23/2012 2:53 PM, Tord Eriksson wrote:
> Some things we don't want to happen, like early deaths of beloved ones, or friends, or too close for comfort encounters, of whatever sort. But most of us learn to live with what Fate brings us, for better, or for worse. We have to, to survive!
>
> As a professional busdriver I have had a few too close encounters for comfort, among them a young kid that disappeared under the bus. He walked straight out - I had just no chance of avoiding him - and I was pretty sure he was mashed under the right front wheel, even though the speed had been just 5 mph, or less, you still can't stop instantly. Amazingly, only his upper lip had a cut, but as he sat up, a bit dazed, of course, he had been feeling with his hands all over his body to check if he was there in one piece, by that he had managed to smear blood all over himself, so he looked really awful.
>
> An articulated bus is slightly lighter than a humpback, but not by much.
>
> He was lucky, and I was lucky, we could both had become part of the statistics!
>
> Some twenty years ago (May 9, 1990, 15:15 UK summer time) a nurse managed to press the accelerator, instead of the brake pedal, on her car, when I happened to pass across her path. In the process nearly killing me outright. It happened a rainy day near Glenfarg, Scotland, where I had been puttering about at low speed on my SR500, but evdiently I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
>
> I did eventually make a passable recovery (still got both legs, for now anyway) - but it took years of operations (between ten and twenty - eventually gave up keeping track) and years of physio, before I was back behind the wheel of a bus, something the doctor said would never happen. But eight years had passed before I was back at work, and then I had not the stamina to work full-time, the first half year or so!
>
> But in every other way I had to restart my life from scratch, and my years of trekking and motorbiking was replaced by years of paddling, and learning a lot of new things. As our brains develope over and over, with new brain cells, replacing the old and dying, and new interconnections between the cells established every time we do something new - something like a 100 000 billion connections when we are grown-ups. I was bitter, and cynical young man, before the accident, but didn't have much to be bitter about, after, had I, as I had survived, if a bit modified?!
>
> If I had had the possibility to relive my life, I would have avoided the accident, of course, but the things around it, and the fact that I was a new, better human afterwards, I wouldn't want to miss for one second!
>
> Five weeks in a Scottish hospital was actually a great adventure for me, being a Swede with close to nil knowledge of UK hospitals, although staying in a ward for so many weeks was not without pain and sorrow - ward mates, some in for a simple operation, did die in my ward, of course they did, but that is also part of life, just as much as birth is!
>
> Life isn't fair, we're not treated equal, but we owe it to ourselves to make the best out of it! Without harming others!
>
> Tord
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