Summarized from Stitched Soul by Ryan Polly
A 6 AM phone call from my son. “I got into a car accident.” The words hit before I could process them. My pulse drowned out everything else. He lived four hours away, and I was two and a half hours in the wrong direction. Six and a half hours from my son who just survived what sounded like horrific.
I turned around immediately. Every mile felt endless. When I finally arrived and he showed me the photo of his SUV, the breath left my lungs. The vehicle was completely destroyed. The driver’s side caved in entirely, windshield spider-webbed, metal twisted where he’d been sitting. Looking at the wreckage, one thing became crystal clear: he shouldn’t be alive.
But he is. Somehow, impossibly, miraculously. And I drove six and a half hours to sit beside this miracle. This is the reminder we all need: there is no yesterday, no tomorrow. There is right now, this breath, this heartbeat. Life is chaotic, and time is an illusion. The crash that could have taken my son didn’t. But it reminded me that every phone call could be the phone call. Every goodbye could be the one that sticks. Stop storing up your love for someday. Spend it today, now, in this moment that’s the only one we’re guaranteed.
