What I Couldn’t See

I was just nine years old. I wasn’t even in double figures. It was a warm Sunday morning, even for the Blue Mountains – Easter Sunday, actually – and we were at Leura Cascades for an Easter Sunday picnic. My little sister Robyn was six, and as Mum, Dad and Susan (who was seven) were busy getting lunch ready, Robyn and I were given the freedom to explore a little.

We went down to the creek, for we were kids exploring and the creek was like the creek we had at home behind our house. We went under the bridge that crosses the creek, at Leura and for some reason, I had the idea we shouldn’t walk back up the creek. We should cut across up to the road instead so we could get back to the picnic site quicker. Lunch was going to be served soon. We were both hungry.

I walked across, stopped, and turned to call Robyn over to cross the road to where I was waiting. I’d left her behind. I’d crossed without her. I was her big brother, and I had left her alone, by herself while I crossed without her. I didn’t think of crossing with her or holding her hand like a big brother should do.

“Come on over,”

I shouted to her. She didn’t get to get all the way over to where I was standing. Just as she almost made it across, a car came down the hill and around the corner. She was only inches from making it across, but the car hit her. Her body went up into the air, and she landed heavily beside the road with a sickening thud.

It all happened so quickly – one moment she was there, the next she was hit and the next moment she was on the side of the road, badly hurt.

That’s it. That’s what happened. I was there and saw it all. All of it. Every bit.
Except now I can see that God’s Grace was there, even then. I didn’t know it then.

I’m 67 years old now, and it’s only in recent years I’ve been able to even begin to understand that it wasn’t my fault. Just that – I was only nine. – still a kid myself. Surely that’s a burden I can give to Him.

I remember bending down to her, touching her cheek – it was gashed open – and seeing and feeling her blood on my hand from her cheek, gashed wide open, as I screamed for Mum to come quickly. I screamed and screamed and screamed and Mum, Dad, Susan and other people we didn’t know came running up to us. But I don’t remember the actual impact. I don’t remember seeing the car hit her or seeing her land. I was there. I must have seen it. Yet something about it has always stayed blocked from my memory. It still is. I believe that, too, was God’s Grace.

Dad told me to sit on the footpath by the roadside, and I did. Only later did I realise I’d sat on an ant’s nest. And still now, I remember the ants biting my legs while everything else was happening. It seems strange to remember something like that, but I do. I wriggled a bit and moved when Dad wasn’t looking, trying to get the ants off me.

I was just a little boy – sitting there, vaguely aware something terribly wrong was happening, and thinking, wrongly, that I had caused it. I remember the drive up to Katoomba Hospital. Mum, Dad, Susan and I were all frightened. Dad tried to hit me while he was driving, but missed – a desperate, frightened reaction in the moment. I don’t remember him ever being angry or punishing me after that.

When we got to the hospital, Susan and I weren’t allowed into the hospital where Robyn was being treated. We were left outside, on our own, while Mum and Dad were with her. I remember us standing at the window, looking in. She must have been in so much pain.

She didn’t wave.
We were outside.
They were inside.

Robyn survived. She was badly hurt, and some things about her did change afterwards, for a long time. But she lived.

I was not left with a clear, full memory of the accident. I would’ve seen it all, every second of it – something terrible that I thought that I had caused to my little sister.

My mind seemed to hold only what I could cope with as a nine-year-old: the touch, the blood, the screaming, the ants, the window. Looking back, I can see I was only given what I could carry.

I’ve come to believe that even the part that could have broken me, the full sight of what happened on that road, was never given by God for me to carry.

It was withheld. I carried one sentence in my heart for years: I called her over. And that is true. But it is also true that I was nine.
How could I see around that bend?
How could I know what was coming?
How could I judge something like that?

I was just a boy.
I had made it over.
I played a small, unconscious part in that moment, but I was not in control of it, and I was not responsible for it.

And now, after all these years, I can see what I couldn’t see then.

God’s Grace for Robyn.
God’s Grace for Mum, Dad and Susan.
God’s Grace for the driver.
And God’s Grace for the boy who thought he had caused it all to happen.
God’s Grace for me. I wasn’t at fault.
God’s Grace.
Freely given.
Freely received.
Psalm 86:15