ALIGNING LIFE WITH THE STARS

(This is a very true story – names have been changed to protect the innocent)

It is May 31, 2014. The day started much like any other day.

We got up, readied ourselves for the drive from Salt Lake to Ogden, then off to Edwardsville, Illinois to deliver our freight. That's what we do. That's what we have done for the past 24 years. Many things have happened during those years, many things best remembered, others best left behind.

Today was a day to be remembered, although we didn't know it would be etched in to our memories so deeply.

I started out driving since I do the morning to mid-day shift. All went smoothly up in Ogden and we were on our way to Illinois without incident. The weather was perfect. Warm, dry and the sky was covered with beautiful clouds with strong personalities of thunderstorms in the brewing. However, the weather remained calm and dry.

We make our way through the canyons of Utah in to Wyoming. The port of entry is open, but we get the green light to stay on the freeway, so I gladly keep up the pace.

Up in the distance, there is road construction. Traffic is beginning to get a little thick, so I back off the pace a little as I notice signs indicating that the right lane will be closing soon. It always amazes me to see how many people either don't pay attention to those warnings or push their limit to the very last moment and make a last second dash in to the remaining open lane, cutting off traffic behind them like they weren't even there.

I approach the construction area, but I also notice a little blue Toyota Prius that is staying in the lane that will be closing soon. I keep an eye on the car because for whatever reason, they are running full speed and have their 4-ways on. It may not be anything at all, but when something is a bit out of the ordinary, it usually gets a persons attention, and this little car got my attention.

Just as I enter the lane open for traffic, I look in my passenger mirror and notice that little blue car was bailing to the shoulder at the last second. The driver ran over remnants of debris left behind from a previously blown tire that was all over the shoulder. Bits of rubber was bouncing everywhere as that little blue car bumped over the debris to a halt.

I rounded the bend on the road and the car was now out of my sight. A moment on the road has now become history...behind me...to be forgotten and probably never seen again...so I thought.

I continued down the road. The sky was a painters delight with all the clouds in different shades of white, gray and nearly black. A streak of lightning could be seen off in the distance. One cloud was emptying its contents of rain off in the distance. You could see that the wind must have been blowing pretty good since the rain was making a slight curve before making its way to the ground below.

Rob had just woken up from a morning nap to sit in the passenger seat with me. He looked around at the clouds and stretched a bit. A huge yawn and then one of the dogs came up to greet us both. Rob reaches down and picks up Gizmo to hold on his lap for a little while. A few seconds later, then Kali came up to be held as well. So Rob picked her up and had both of them on his lap for a few moments until they became too restless to sit still. They wanted treats more than sitting still on a lap.

Conversation filled our morning regarding different topics of interest. Nothing in particular, just whatever came to mind as we visited for a few moments. Then that little blue car passed us...yep, the one with the flashers on. The flashers were still going and the driver was going the posted speed limit of 75 mph. I mentioned to Rob about how the driver stopped back in Evanston just before the construction, but clearly caught up to us without much hesitation.

I had wondered why the driver was going so fast with the 4-ways on. Rob said, "Maybe the driver doesn't know they are on." I said, "you would think you could hear them clicking in the car." The car was gone from sight, once again to be just a moment in time and now a memory on the road.

We were approaching another construction zone. Everyone seemed to be following the signs a little better this time as everyone got in to a single file fairly smoothly. Our speed went down only because of the posted speed limit being lowered.

Little America could be seen in the distance and it was decided that we would stop for a short break since it would be quite a while before we could stop again.

I slow down for the exit and notice something very familiar. That little blue car with its flashers on. Yep, the flashers were still going. The driver had taken the exit as well just in front of us. We follow as we watch the little blue car drive right up to a truck fuel island and stop. We park in the island right next to the car. It is a woman, by herself, in the car. She just sits there, not moving after parking her vehicle.

"Should we see if she is okay?" Rob asked.

"I need to go to the bathroom first," I tell him. "Then we will see if she is still sitting there."

It struck us both odd that she for one thing, pulled in to the truck area and two, parked on the fuel island and just sat there doing nothing but staring straight ahead.

I go in to the truck stop and take care of business. I was thinking of getting a snack for the road, but when I saw the line of people at the register, I quickly dashed that idea away from my thoughts. That's okay. I didn't need to eat junk right now anyway. I will eat lunch later instead.

I walk back out to the truck and notice the lady is still parked on the fuel island and still just sitting there. Rob is sitting in the passenger seat of our truck as he looks at me and laughs a little.

I shrug my shoulders as he gets out of the truck and joins me to see if this woman is alright.

"She hasn't moved," he says as we walk up to her car.

The woman looks to be in her mid 40's. Fairly well dressed in a black and white striped pullover shirt and black stretch pants. She is fumbling around with something in her passenger seat as we notice her back is to us on our approach.

"I don't want to startle her," I say as I gently tap on her windshield in hopes to get in to her field of vision and get her attention.

She looks up at both of us and smiles. She has beautiful pale green eyes. Her hair is a soft dark blonde neatly combed down to her shoulders.

We motion to her the question, "Are you okay?"

She opens her door and says that she is fine. We engage in a short conversation to convince ourselves that she is truly okay. Something about her dimeaner told us that she wasn't really okay, but that she needed to have someone near her if only to be sure that our suspicions were merely nothing to worry about.

I ask her where she was headed. The woman hesitates as she puts her finger up to her lips. She smiles slightly looking at us both one at a time. We both smile back at her as we ask her a new question.

“What is your name?” I ask her. Rob steps away for a moment at this time. I crouch down to her level and use the drivers door to prop myself up against it.

I look at her waiting for an answer to my new question. She taps her finger on her lips, looks around and then looks back at me. This time I notice a tear in her eyes. This woman has clearly had something happen to her. Did something happen so horrific that it wiped her memory away? Amnesia? Things like this has been known to happen before. What made this woman catch my attention? Why did she cross our path? We made it a point not to leave her until something was resolved with her.

She looks at me again, “I have 12 children,” she says with a proud smile.

“You do? Wow, that is awesome, I tell her.” The thought crosses my mind of a friend that I know that also has several children. A few of my friends children are still young enough to need their mother at home as well, so what brings this woman out here on her own like this?

“What is your name?” I ask her again.

“Eleanor,” she says with a smile. Then she says, “I'm not well.”

“You're not?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I'm mentally ill.”

Just then I slowly get up from my crouched position and notice Rob returning to the car. I whisper to him, “Call 911, she needs help.”

Rob looks at me for a second then turns away to make the call. He returns several moments later and said that they are on their way.

He leaves the two of us alone so that he could notify the truck stop of the situation unfolding in the parking lot and that we would be taking up the two fuel islands until things got resolved. They were understanding of the situation and let us handle it as we saw fit.

I remained with the now known 'Eleanor' at her car. She began babbling about the moon, sun and stars and how she needed to contact them. Her story became quite interesting as she was telling me that her husband was sticking her with a needle.

“He was?” I asked her. “Why would he do that?”

She laughed and then said, “You want me to take my clothes off?” She kind of jumped around a bit as I stepped back a little.

“I have to pee,” she said.

“Okay, I will walk with you in to the bathroom. Let's go.” I slightly tug on her shoulder and she smiles to join me in to the truck stop.

“Let's hold hands,” Eleanor says as we walk in. I look back and smile at Rob. He stands in front of our truck waiting for our return.

Eleanor and I walk in to the bathroom and she goes in to a stall. Two other women enter the room as well. Eleanor begins to talk about how things don't look familiar at all. How life is a game. “It's a sub-game,” she says. “Life is just a sub-game, and I'm dead!!!” She says a little more demanding.

Her voice echoes in the bathroom. One of the women is at the sink washing her hands.

“I know that woman,” Eleanor says of the woman washing her hands.

The woman looks up at me and smiles with a shrug of her shoulders. I smile back at the woman at the sink and give a little nod that the woman clearly understood immediately. She knew right away that things were not right.

Eleanor backs in to the bathroom stall and closes the door. I lean back on the bathroom sink and let the woman know that I don't know this person at all....just that we happened upon her and she said that she is mentally ill. I whispered to her that we are getting her help.

Just then Eleanor lets out a quick scream from the bathroom stall. I reach forward to try to open the door, but it is locked.

“Did she just scream?” I ask the woman at the sink. I get a nod of confirmation that I did indeed hear Eleanor scream.

“Are you okay?” I ask her....”Open the door.”

Eleanor opens the door with a big smile on her face. “Life is a sub-game” she says again with a bit of a laugh in her voice.

“Did you go to the bathroom?” I ask her. She answers no like a child playing a game.

The woman at the sink finishes up drying her hands and pats me on the shoulder as she gets ready to leave the bathroom and just whispers, “You are a good person, God bless you.”

I smile at the words from the stranger thinking that I just want to get help for 'Eleanor' now. It is very clear that she is not well at all. Could she really be mentally ill like she said? All signs point in that direction which also means that I now need to be very careful as to how I word things with her or even the tone of my voice. If she is truly mentally ill, what triggered that in the first place and what could send her in to a possible rage?

Eleanor then turned to me and like an energetic child said, “you want me to take my clothes off? I will do that right now...I have to pee.” She steps in to the bathroom stall again, lifting her shirt and then quickly doing what needs to be done to finally go to the bathroom. She left the door open for anyone to see her on the toilet. I step out of her view just enough to give her the courtesy and privacy that I feel she needs. Eleanor continues to have an elaborate conversation about the moon, sun and stars and about her children and how life is a sub-game.

She comes out of the stall, her wallet had fallen to the floor. She reaches down to pick it up and screams again. A quick scream that last only about a second. Then she looks up at me and laughs. “I'm dead!” she says. “We are all dead and we are all in hell right now!”

I coax her in to washing her hands, but she seemed to not understand how to complete that task. After a few brief moments, she finally washes her hands and points to the paper towels and tells me how everything is not real at all.

“This is not real,” she points to the sink, “that is not real” she looks down to the floor.

I just smile thinking that it has been so many years since I have studied about the mentally ill, but remember the story of “I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.” The story was quite extraordinary and interesting regarding how a persons mind can turn without control.

We finally finish up in the bathroom and walk back out to her car. Rob is out there waiting for us. He has his headset on and said that he had just got off the phone with someone at 911. he assured me that they are on their way and trying to get here as fast as they could.

Being that we were basically out in the middle of nowhere, it could take a while for anyone to show up. Rock Springs was the closest town to the east of us and Evanston was about 60 miles to the west.

We stop in front of our truck because I wanted to get the keys to the car from Eleanor. I didn't want her to try to drive off at this point. We had help coming and she needed it.

“Okay,” she says, “call 911. I need help.” she looks around as she is trying to take a small silver key off of the front of her wallet.

“We have already called 911, Eleanor. They are on their way right now.” she hands me a small key that looks like it goes to a personal diary instead of to an ignition to a car. She then just hands me her entire wallet and keys.

“There, you have my life, you have everything,” she says as she raises her hands after handing me her wallet. She then squats down real quick and yells out once again.

Just then she startles me a bit by grabbing my chest and saying, “There, right there, you see that?”

I step back a bit holding her wallet in my hand and the little silver key that she had handed me.

The three of us walk back to her car and she proceeds to tell us of how her husband was sticking needles in to her arm. She rolls up her sleeve and shows us a small wound on her arm that clearly looks more like something that may have been removed as opposed to needles being inserted.

Her story was taking a new turn as we both stood there listening to this now elaborate story of how her husband would hook up a line of blood from his leg to her arm. Rob and I just looked at each other and only acknowledged amazement with our eyes as we both knew that we couldn't really say much at this point. This was beyond both of us now and we only needed to keep her calm and entertained until help arrived.

She sat back down in her car and I got back down in the crouched position next to her.

I re-engaged her in small talk just to bide the time now.

“How many children do you have?”

“Three,” she says. Then a small tear shows up in her green eyes again. Could it be that something happened to her family?

She turned and reached in to her console of the car and pulled out a greeting card. She hands it to me and says, “this is from the.....” she hesitates and talks about the moon, sun and stars and how life is a sub-game and we are all dead.

I read the card. It is signed from a Francis and talks briefly about the bumps in the road of life but how this person clearly loves whomever it is written to. The card wasn't addressed to Eleanor, but I could only think that maybe this Francis was her husband, or was this really even her car?

Just then I felt a sharp sting across my face. What just happened? I look up at Rob who was standing there next to me.

“Did she just slap me?” I asked him. I was astonished at what had just happened.

I looked at Eleanor and she sat there looking at me like I deserved what she had just done to me. The look in her eyes was as if she was beginning to get angry.

I told her gently that we couldn't let that happen again, that what she did was not nice. I was as gentle as I could in letting her know that what she did was wrong.

All of a sudden I could see her eyes twitching a little. Her personality was taking a turn and a rush of fear began to overcome me. What could she be capable of doing next? All she did was slap me across the cheek...what next?

I stood up slowly. Rob then whispered to me, “watch for weapons.”

Just then the law enforcement showed up along with an ambulance. Things seemed to be going fast forward at this point.

I looked back at Eleanor as she was reaching back in her console. I heard the words again in my head that Rob had just said, “watch for weapons” as Eleanor turned back more quickly than I had expected and screamed while grabbing my hair. Our eyes locked for a moment and fear ran straight through my body like a shock.

I stepped back away from the car as the officers approached to take over. I was clearly shaking for a moment as things began to really take a turn.

Rob and I both sat down on a cement divider between the fuel islands to watch as the officers began to question Eleanor.

She stood up out of the car and screamed quickly. One of the officers asked her to calm down and spoke to her again. She raised her hands at them and then hit the taller officer. As quick as she screamed and hit, she was down to the ground, both officers on top of her with her hands behind her back. The younger officer was putting cuffs on her.

Eleanor looked up at me with tears in her eyes, screaming, “Look what they did to me!!!” She screamed about life and then laughed a bit. I was crying at this point. All I could think of was I had gained the trust of this woman who I thought had been a victim of some tragedy. She trusted me and I threw her to the wolves. Her eyes penetrated mine as she lay there on the ground with the officers on top of her while they subdued her.

They stand her up and move her to one of the vehicles waiting to process her. She screams out a few more times. By now I am calmed down after a few brief moments of tears watching all of this unfold in front of us.

The officers take down information. One of the paramedics goes through her car and find many bottles of drugs related to psychiatric medications. That explains so much now. She clearly had issues, but what brought her out here? How did she get that car? Why did she snap like that?

One of the officers asked if I wanted to press charges for being assaulted. Rob and I agreed that we wouldn't.

Rob said, “think about it, honey. Her family will more than likely hear about this and come back to thank us for not pressing charges. She is already sick, she doesn't need this on top of things.”

I agreed. We watched as Eleanor was being loaded up on the stretcher bound for the hospital in Rock Springs and then more than likely jail for assaulting an officer. I was saddened to see her in such a state of illness but was glad that she was going to get the help that she needed.

We finished up the brief statements to the officer and turned to continue on our day towards Illinois.

What started out as a normal day of driving ended up with us trying to care for another human being that just needed someone to redirect their life for a moment to get help.

The Moon, Sun and Stars are now back in alignment and we are well and alive.

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Here is the post that my husband, Rob, put on Facebook about the day.

So yesterday my wife Jenni Reynolds-Kebler most definitely saved a lady's life, the lady definitely unstable and confused ,off her meds was all over the road, ironically she parks right next to us at little America, observing her for 20 mins we decide to see if she is ok, she is wanting to kill herself Jenni says call 911 so while we wait for state patrol and ambulance 45 mins ( we are in Wyoming) things become very intense. But to be able to watch my wife demonstrate the compassion she showed this lady, was amazing. She got that from her mom, then once the amb and deputies arrive it really turned. Details of all this she can explain, but I'm so proud of who she is.