Yesterday I told you about the funeral of my husband's aunt. Our intention was to drive north two hours for a short visit, and get on the road before the snow came. You know how that goes, at funerals. You haven't seen people in ages, some family members have flown in from distant cities. It's nice to see them again, and chat with them. We started out for home much later than we had planned, and the snow event turned out to be much, MUCH more than "the little town of Bellefountaine" was able to keep up with. (And, if I spell that town differently every time I mention it, please pardon my French. It's beyond my spelling skills, and way too long of a name for such a small town.) At any rate, the town was snowed-in. The only proof I could find of this was a short summary from a Columbus news station, which had this to say,
"Good morning, Central Ohio! Many places are shoveling out from Friday's snow. Snowfall totals ranged from 2-6" with higher amounts from Bellefontaine, Delaware, and Coshocton."
Notice in particular that line about 2-6", with HIGHER AMOUNTS in Bellefontaine. Yep! It was bad, very bad. And lots of hills. At one point, we noticed a long line of traffic on the other side of the road, all trying to drive up a gently sloping hill, with one police officer out there bravely pushing cars up the sharpest part at the top of the hill. What a brave and good officer he is! He actually tried to stop my husband, for more room I guess, but our downhill direction, along with snow and ice, kept that from happening. My beloved car, Louie, just could not stop, so on we went. For a while, I took photos and made videos and said, "wow," several times, but, with my propensity for stress meltdowns it wasn't long before I was hyperventilating.
I was a whimpering mess on the way home. My husband did his best. He's always calm in difficult situations (I'm sitting here writing this with adrenalin starting to pump through my chest again, just thinking about it!) You would not want to recruit me as a member of your "Surviver" team. I would let you down the first day on the island, rolled up in a ball on the sandy beach and calling for my mommy.
My husband calmly carried on, encouraging me to slow my breathing down so that I would not hyperventilate. I started praying Hail Mary's out loud. That made me feel better, but it stressed out my husband. He asked me to pray quietly in my head. By that point, we'd been on the road for about 20 minutes (of what should have been a 2 hour drive home). My husband carried-on steadily, occasionally needing to stick his hand out the window and grab the windshield wiper to try to snap the ice off of the wiper. My headache spread to the back of my head, and my knees began to shake.
When we finally made it to the interstate, which we thought would be well treated, with traffic helping to break up the ice, we found it in even worse condition than the side roads had been, because on the interstate, people thought they should be able to drive faster (even though the ice sludge was significant, and we had no idea where the driving lanes actually were. Husband stayed to the right and followed the slow-but-steady driver ahead of us. We saw DOZENS of cars off the side of the road, down in the slope of the median. Visibility was so bad that many drivers turned on their flashers and drove that way.
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Once on the highway, we had to keep watch for safe places to stop (off to the right, under a bridge, on a downhill slope with a dry spot, where we could pull over to deal with the icy windshield wipers. That was stressful, having my husband outside of the car, while crazy, semi-truck drivers raced by like it was a summer day. (I am not making that up! I'm sure there are safe and polite drivers of big rigs, but they were few and far between last night!, and when those big tires hit the slushy mess on the road, and it sprays all over you windshield and blinds you, it's enough to make an old lady cuss!)
We finally did make it home, the conditions doubling our drive time. It took us two hours to drive to Bellefontaine, and four VERY LONG hours to drive home. I think I put in enough suffering last night to qualify for extra blessings during the rest of Lent! I sure hope that the rest of my husband's family members got home safe May Aunt Ethel rest in peace, and her family be blessed in their time of loss.
(And, note to self: never plan a funeral on the same day that major snowstorm is predicted to hit!)
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