READ AN EXCERPT
I died this morning on a winding road in the Ohio Amish Country. Rainy daylight spilled around me while heaping clouds piled high into the sky. In the distant west, the sky bore a giant bruise, sending a curtain of stormy green and black over my head. When the winds became sudden, a howling gale blew leaves and twigs across the road like a child throwing a tantrum. That is when I should have slowed down. That is when I should have eased into the turns and the sharp curves. But I never let up on the gas and marched forward without giving it a second thought.
The weather fronts played together in thundery efficacy while sunlight peered in through a closing blue window, hinting that the storm might soon pass. A torrent of rain and hail came then, pelting the road and ticking off of my windshield and roof. The hollow sound bounced in my car and rang in my ears like an old mechanical phone.
Slow down.
I never saw what was coming.
When lightning forked across the sky, needling between the clashing colors, I didn’t hear the air sizzle or hear the sound of the thunder rolling away. Or maybe I did, because there was something—not exactly a sound, but a feeling; a sense that something was about to happen. My heart’s rhythm had changed too, like the changing tempo in a movie’s score just before a dramatic scene.
Is that what this was?
Was I about to experience a dramatic scene?
The sunlight winked at me, darting in and out from behind the sudden storm. I felt the car move, a push by the wind, and then another. Power. It was as if God put his finger in my path and dragged it across the road.