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Author Pettit has remarkably derived solace, understanding, and philosophical structure as a result of a terrifying car accident. Resolving to share with others his trepidations and triumphs, he began his chronicle in 1999, a few months after his near-death experience, by keeping a journal. Torn from a career as a professor of physics at the Carleton College and from the blessings and accomplishments of that status, he found himself so diminished from TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) that, for a frustrating period, he could not perform the simplest physical or mental tasks. His journal writing revealed the morass of confusion that sometimes plagued him. Though it was a daunting and lengthy process, Pettit garnered encouragement from family and friends, including his wife Karen, who was also injured but less seriously in the wreck, and by the companionship of his toddler son, Andrew, who was in the car with his parents but was thankfully unhurt.
Readers share the minute-by-minute, month-by-month vignettes as Pettit progressed from having food pumped in and out of his body with various tubes as he lay helpless in the hospital to depending on a wheelchair, then a walker, then a cane before he could walk again. His memory patterns failed sporadically as he groped for such necessities as family names, something highly discouraging for a man who, before the accident, had studied and taught highly complex data. But as he relearned, he slowly began also to develop a newfound spiritual and intellectual outlook, ultimately leading to his current role of working on behalf of those persons with disabilities (PWD) who are sometimes less welcomed in communities of faith. He has now established himself as a commissioned minister, an active advocate in that realm of human service. Eventually he restarted his career in education and later returned to Carleton College.
Pettit’s hard-won outlook would prove an essential part of his new life direction, conceived after his slow, revealing recovery during which he questioned all aspects of his experience, even the meaning of the word “recovery,” and raked through the wide reaches of spiritual searching. Particularly striking and intellectually stimulating are passages in which he records his sometimes tormented but increasingly inspiring thought processes, acutely examines his prior beliefs, and comes to embrace metaphysical subtleties in the light of his cataclysmic experience. Especially emotive are the letters he composes to “Ms.”—the woman whose misguided driving caused the accident that could easily have killed Pettit, his wife, and his child, while Ms. simply walked away unhurt. After much inner wrestling with every possible angle of the incident, he realizes that he must try to “see (from a distance) the bright times ahead.” That emotional breakthrough is later supported by the spiritual recognition that all people, even Ms., are a part of God.
For those who may be facing some of the same challenges that Pettit has undergone and for their families, Pettit helpfully sets forth an appendix of resources for survivors and a second one for supporters. In closing, he offers his poem “Vision,” expressing his dedicated quest and concluding, “I celebrate the continuous flow of the waters of life.” His book will attract thoughtful readers who, like Pettit, wish to move beyond life’s sometimes painful circumstances toward a fresh, open pathway.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review