If you want to know how much you value your friends

consider losing one, even if it's only for a few minutes.

I was just on the phone with Dana.

She was driving home from Dumas. Her stepson had a game there.

All of a sudden, mid conversation with me, I hear a HUGE crash, glass shattering, squealing tires, screaming, then nothing.

Dead silence.

"Dana?"

"DANA???"

by now I have chills.

"DANA ARE YOU OKAY?"

in a whisper, I hear: "please call my daddy, I had a wreck."

then it cuts off. I am hoping, that it is a lost signal.... but I am feeling that it wasn't. There are a lot of bridges on that highway.

I grab the phone, dial her parents number, which I know by heart, because I have been calling that house for almost 20 years now.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Earl, this is Shelley, Dana's had a wreck. She is out by Pine Hill, and all I know is that it was loud and I could hear her car sliding out of control, and what sounded like glass busting"

He says "Is she ok?"

I then have to say that I don't know.

Silence.

So I say "I think so Mr. Earl, please go get her, and hurry."

FIFTEEN LONG MINUTES later, I find out:

A deer hit her WINDSHIELD, and busted it out. She is cut up, and swallowed glass, hence the whispering.

She is okay though. And she is alive.

And I will tell her as soon as she calls back what she means to me, corny or not. I have lost one close friend to an accident, and I don't like things to go unsaid. You shouldn't either. We have no tomorrows promised to us, remember that.