The Box

The other day I took a small black box out of my closet. I've had the box, and it's contents, for 10 years now. It has accompanied me on 5 moves.  I used to open the box much more, but I haven't looked inside for several years. I figured the 10 year anniversary of when I started adding to the box might be a good time to take a long, reflective, (maybe last) look at everything the box holds. 

The box contains love, care, and worry. It holds prayer, hope, and faith - much more than I have ever held inside myself. It encompasses the sadness of a community. The box is the resting place for the fragmented pieces of lives broken, some forever. The box holds mementos representative of pain, struggle, and frustration.

The box is my accident box. Inside are all the cards I received when I was in the hospital, rehab center, and when I was recovering at home. A few ziplock bags of dried flowers - a small sampling of the hundreds I received from friends, family, co-workers, and strangers. Newspaper clippings, obituaries, memorial programs. A video of the news reports from that night and first week. Stacks of medical forms, disability leave balance forms, correspondence between my lawyers and insurance companies. Hospital bracelets, the screws that were removed from my knee, my wheelchair gloves, my handicapped parking placard. My personalized "BARIGAL" license plates, once clearly mangled, now pounded back to their original flat license plate shape. A few pieces of the clothes I was wearing that night - my "favorite" outfit at the time - the clothes that the EMTs cut off me at the scene. The empty case for my Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane CD, the one that was left stuck in the player when my Jeep was taken to be crushed. And even a satisfaction survey from Jeep dated March 8th, 2004, thanking me for my purchase, and letting me know they hoped I was enjoying my certified pre-owned vehicle.

A pack rat from an early age, I kept all these things out of habit. I've always kept birthday cards, movie tickets, sugar packets - mementos of important events in my life. Tokens of significant things that have happened. I like pulling out my little boxes of things and recalling the associated memories as I turn each item over in my hands. I didn't keep all these things in the hopes that I would pull them out on a random day 10 years down the road and remember the associated moments with fondness. It's not like I need my hospital bracelet to remind me of the month I spent at Roanoke Memorial. Some people might find it weird to have kept all this stuff for so long, but I think I kept everything because it just felt wrong to throw it away. 

The most important thing I realized about what was in the box when I took my last look through everything, was actually what was missing from the box. All the things that were not in the box. 

The box doesn't hold all the memories of the good things that have happened in my life over the last 10 years. There aren't trinkets associated with my triumph over the things that caused me to struggle. My wheelchair gloves are in the box - my first unassisted steps are not. The license plates from the Jeep I got when I started driving again are on the Jeep, not in the box. 

The life that I live now, though impacted by the day associated with everything that's in the box, doesn't exist in the box. Of all the things that are in the box, the thing that matters most, isn't there. I am not stuck in that box. I think that part of the reason I kept those things, and kept them in that box, was not to be constantly reminded of that day but so that I wouldn't completely forget about it either - not that I ever could. 

For the last ten years time has existed in segments - things that happened before the accident and things that happened after. At first I counted the days since the accident. Then weeks. Then months. It's hard not to remember something that happened on the first of the month. Every time the calendar flipped I knew, it's been a month since the accident, it's been 6 months, 9 months, 11 months. Then I started to reflect yearly on the accident. Every year on March 1st I would think back to that day, how excited I was to get my Jeep, how I spent the rest of the day at work stealing glances out the windows at the bookstore to look at it. I couldn't wait to drive it home. I would think about the moments I can remember surrounding the accident, and the smell in the helicopter, and crying outside the OR with my Mom before I went into surgery. I think about the kids that died and I always get really sad, basically for the entire month. Taking my last look through the box, I think I'm finally ready to stop living with my sense of time constantly focused on that day that changed my life.

Ten years later I am able to move on with my life because of what's in the box, and because it's in the box. Because the box is something that I can put in a closet and not carry around with me every day. I think the parts of that day that I do carry with me, those I can't put in a box, are important to the person I have become a decade later. My scars, the rods in my legs, the memories I'll always have of that day, the roadside memorial I have passed thousands of times - those things are easier to handle, because I have the box.