Do you believe in guardian angels? I do. I believe that when someone we love transcends life here as we know it and their energy is transformed, they can become our guardian angel. I lost my best friend about ten years ago. Every time I saw a Monarch butterfly after that it made me feel like she was there saying hello. Two years after her passing was when the story took place. She always loved butterflies. I mean who doesn't love butterflies? They are so graceful and beautiful flying on the wind. Certainly heavenly creatures right? Anyhow, I was a passenger in a vehicle that a friend of mine was driving. He had borrowed his uncle's truck for the day. We were heading down a hill approaching a STOP sign at a very fast speed. I yelled, "SLOW DOWN!!!" He responded, "I CAN'T." I said, "What do you mean you can't?" He said, "I lost the brakes, the emergency brake doesn't work either, and we are stuck in fourth gear." As I watched him try to shift out of fourth gear, pump the brakes, and fiddle with the emergency brake, I realized that he was serious. As we went through the STOP sign, I was holding my breath and praying that would we make it through. We made it through the first STOP sign, but now we were still heading downhill gaining speed and approaching a red light. There were school buses, people, and traffic! I thought about jumping out of the truck but at 55 mph that probably wouldn't save my life. So many thoughts were going through my mind like my mom, my dad, and am I going to die now? It felt like forever. He kept a cool head and started laying on the horn to warn people to get out of the way. We couldn't stop! I closed my eyes through the red light and somehow we had made it through. We were now on a dead end street still going pretty fast. He swerved to avoid people and kept on the horn. We were now approaching an embankment lined with trees. There was no where else to go. He aimed the truck at the only place between two trees that the truck could fit, cranked the wheel, and had the truck land on the drivers side into the embankment. All of the glass shattered out. I looked at him and then at myself expecting the worse. To my surprise we were alright. We got out of the truck and the ambulance was there. Of course one is in shock when something like that happens, so the responders were asking me questions like, "Who is the president of the United States?" I knew the answers I was just slow to respond because I kept thinking, "What just happened?" As I sat there on the ground, a Monarch butterfly was circling around me.
