Dani

If you look up Dani’s book, Racing to Death, on Amazon this is what you’ll see.

Daniela Daniels was well-known in northern Europe as one of the first female motorcycle racers until a horrific accident took her life on the racetrack.
When the ambulance arrived, she was revived but stayed in a coma for the next month. When she awoke, her memory was gone.  While doctors expected her to need care for the rest of her life, this story tells about her journey to a complete recovery. Her true story recounts her thoughts coming out of the coma and during her recovery to living a second life.

What you won’t read about is her impact on me.

I met Dani in my Memoir Writers group in The Villages.   I joined the group in the fall of 2022 about two months after Ruth died.  Dani joined a couple of months later.

I was seeking input on how to publish a book. I’d been writing a blog for five years and wanted to put a book together. She was writing a book and came to the group seeking advice as well.  I shared a blog post each week and she shared a portion of her book. I don’t know if she had a title when she began, but she had a fascinating story.

She was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and lived there until she was twelve.  That’s when her parents divorced and she moved to Bonn, Germany with her mom.  Her dad moved to Italy.  After the move she became fluent in both German and Italian.  English became her third language.

Somewhere along the way, she fell in love with motorcycles and started racing.  Forty years ago, on April 26, 1995, she was leading a race when she crashed and was considered dead at the scene.  Medical personnel revived her, but she was in a coma for several weeks.  When she woke up, she didn’t know who or where she was.  It took her five years to gather all her memory bits.

She originally wrote her story in German.  She was translating her work to English when she started sharing it with us.  She struggled with her oral presentation and occasionally asked one of the group’s leaders, or me, to read on her behalf.  I hung on every word.

It was her description of death that impacted me most.  She had died in a crash just like Ruth.  She described her death as being “peaceful”.  She felt “warm”.  She “wasn’t afraid”. I found comfort in her words.  I cried a bit as her story unfolded. Many of us did.

A second man, Don, joined us last year.  He was putting a book together too.  He had been declared dead on three different occasions and was writing a book about his experience.  He died two different times during surgery and a third time when he was struck by lightning.  He, too, described the process as peaceful.

I’ve spoken to at least another half dozen people who’ve experienced something similar.  Some saw a bright light.  Some looked back to see themselves lying quietly in a bed or an operating table.  One Viet Nam vet saw himself propped up against a tree after stepping on a land mine.  I can’t explain their experiences, but I find them comforting.

I’ve written about several instances when I believe Ruth stepped back into my life or visited one of the kids.  I can’t explain it; I just believe it. She wants us to know everything’s ok.

After Dani’s reading about the moment of her death, I asked if I could have a copy.  This is a portion of what she sent.  I assume it’s in her book.

The moment of death was quite unspectacular, it was undramatic to the extent of being quite disappointing, I mean, nothing happened!

I was just dead.

There were no angels, no lights at the end of a tunnel, no tunnel at all, no soft white clouds, no harps or rhapsodies, no beautiful figures enclosed in white mist, no birds singing, no warm breeze, no special comfort – not even uncomfort nor heat nor pain – I mean really nothing – someone just turned the lights off – and that was it.

My life ended in a heartbeat, what a choice of words, but that is exactly what I remember about the moment of death. It happened so suddenly:

One moment I was alive and the next I was dead, and that was all ..…

I just simply died, my heart stopped beating, my blood stopped churning thru my veins, my systems just quit working and that was it.

It did take a moment for my brain to realize what had happened, to understand that life was over, so I did still feel something. That’s why for a few split seconds I was still thinking – I was still conscious. There was no pain, no anxiety or fear, no remorse, no longing, no repent.

I was still conscious to a certain extent.

But I had no thoughts like: “I should have…I could have…” There was no review of my life either, not even the most important moments of my life ….it was just over, life was over without any big commotion, it was no big deal, it was just over.

If you know me, and my family, you know that today is my oldest son, David’s, birthday.  He turns fifty.  Fifty years ago, was Easter Sunday. David was born at 10:07 p.m.  That moment was the true beginning of Ruth’s and my family.  When we saw him, we loved him.  That’s the first time I experienced love at first sight.  I felt it again with the births of Elizabeth, Michael, Brady, Eva, and Young Jackson James.

Ruth’s death, like David’s birth, changed my life forever.  They are distinctly different emotions, but I’m learning to accept the entire process.

Dani didn’t know it.  She still doesn’t. But she helped me get through the most difficult time in my life.  I’ll always be grateful, and I won’t ever forget.