Another summer of hanging out and loving each other. Another anniversary of the accident. Verão '25

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    

     

     

31st August '25.

Another year passes since the day of the accident. I consider all that could and could not be communicated by those two words, the accident. Vague, general and yet somehow the easier title, the default, anything else too much. The day that I nearly died but didn't die. The day that Meirion did die. The day that a lorry crashed into my car. The day that I broke my back. The day that I broke six ribs, my pelvis, my foot, a collapsed lung and a gone ovary. The day that the baby in my tummy burst through the wall of my uterus and into my abdominal cavity. The day that I nearly bled to death. The day that my life was saved by strangers and the day that the life of our baby could not be.

As if the two words, the accident, sit neatly on top of it all, the lid to the container. Vague in description but also accurate because, 'An accident: an unforeseen or unplanned circumstance or event, lack of intention, an unfortunate event resulting from carelessness'.

Life rolls through us in moments, a continuous cascade of decisions and indecisions, intent and lack of, every moment a result of all the millions of moments before it. What about the specific cascade of decisions and indecisions attempting to pass through the funnel of life at the same time, that collided the lorry with my car? It seems so fragile, so absurd, such an unlikely collision of coincidences. Just a small change in the cascade of moments that lead to the occurrence of the accident, and it would have been a nonoccurrence. If I had left home a little earlier, a little later, etc, etc. It feels reassuring and terrifying at the same time that something so significant, so life-altering, can occur as a result of our insignificant little decisions. Could it mean then, statistically, that we're moving through life having close-calls with terrible accidents all of the time? Everything we do, meaningful and meaningless.

A lorry driver looking somewhere other than the road in front of him. I wonder what it was that stole his attention. I still don't know what he looks like, his eyes, his hands. I wonder if he too, notices, when this date comes around again. I wonder if we've passed each other in the street, would he know what I look like? Did he look at me, after it happened? I have been told that he did not leave his lorry for some time, but when he did leave, did he come over, did he look? 

People ask, does it get softer with time? Because I think we hope for that, we hope that all terrible things could be eased by the balm of the passing of time. But sometimes time doesn't heal, I think we just get better at compartmentalising, putting it aside, for a while. On the 31st of August 2023 we lost a full-term baby, but each year that passes we lose another year of that potential child, Meirion. On the 31st of August 2025 the void in our life is shaped like a two year old son, Frida's brother. He grows, alongside us, if I imagine him hard enough could I make him real? 

We contemplate all that what we don't have, and all that we do have. So much that we do. We repeat the same routine as the first anniversary, the steep drive up to a national park on a limestone ridge, the walk through the misty chestnut forest. We pick early blackberries, we attempt to name wildflowers from memory and birds by their song, we scramble rocky paths and follow ant trails, we take a portrait of each other. We talk about the human urge to mark a day of significance by mounting the tallest bit of earth around. Are we trying to bring ourselves closer to the sky? Is it a need to get a vista on things? Do we need to turn our backs on it all, to scramble up and away from it, to reach the top and turn to get a better perspective. As if once we reach the top, turn and look back down on everything, it will all make sense again.

Here, our physical bodies, alive here, earth, sky, just breath between us.