Accidental: Rebuilding a Life after Taking One

By David W. Peters

How do we rebuild after causing accidental death or injury?

Accidental injury is the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of forty-five. From fatal traffic accidents to firearms injuries to casualties of war to a deadly virus passed to an elderly loved one, accidental harm dates back almost as far as our human stories go. When these accidents occur, they pose profound and agonizing questions: What do we do when a death falls somewhere between a murder and an insurance claim? What if we are responsible for such harm? Is healing even possible?

Rooted in research on moral injury, religious rituals of confession and cleansing, and psychology--as well as the hard-won wisdom of someone who has been there--Accidental explores the complicated reality of accidental death and injury and offers companionship to those affected by these tragedies. Author, military veteran, and Episcopal priest David W. Peters walks with us through his own lonely journey after he unintentionally killed someone in a traffic accident and the journey of his family, as his brother was killed by a bus. Peters investigates the cars, guns, and systems that put some people and communities at more risk than others, and then draws wisdom from ancient cities of refuge, where accidental killers could find asylum. Accidental helps readers accept responsibility, see themselves in the stories of others, be open to mystical experiences, and find absolution and community. We can begin the journey of accountability, forgiveness, and restoration by asking spiritual questions of grief, penitence, trauma, and tragedy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Broadleaf Books
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781506487175

David W. Peters

David W. Peters served as an enlisted Marine and Army Chaplain, who deployed to Iraq in 2005. He is the author of several books, notably Death Letter: God, Sex, and War and Post-Traumatic God: How the Church Cares for People Who Have Been to Hell and Back. Today he serves as the vicar of St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church, a new church plant in the diocese of Texas.

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Praise for Accidental: Rebuilding a Life after Taking One

"David W. Peters’s Accidental isn’t just important—though it is important. It gives voice to a pain too often stifled. More, it is a useful and provocative addition to the very small shelf of books to give to people after tragedy befalls them. And it is written with grace and empathy."

—Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life: A Memoir

When telling the story becomes difficult or too painful, the voice may be suffocated not only by the grief caused by the event but also by the strong hold of unresolved trauma. David W. Peters makes use of the powerful impact of narrative as an invitation to tell one’s story while embracing the healing journey.

—Rev. Ardella Gibson, owner and director of Serenity CPE Center for Experiential Learning

"Riveting and powerful, Accidental is a personal story that is well woven with solid academic research. David W. Peters does a great job of telling his story in a heartfelt conversation, being true to his faith and convictions, and being authentically human, with good theological and biblical scholarship. A definite read for those suffering or working with others suffering from the moral injury that results from accidental killing."

—Colonel Mark C. Lee, director of the CPE Center at Brooke Army Medical Center

"Accidental is a book of extraordinary grace and compassion, full of helpful, hopeful theological reflections and deeply affecting personal meditations, and utterly lacking platitudes. While David W. Peters’s book is about people who have accidentally killed another person, it seems to me that it will be a balm for anyone who struggles with knowing they have accidentally hurt or harmed someone else. It certainly was for me."

—Kerry Egan, author of On Living

"I found Accidental to be deeply moving, an intellectual tour de force, psychologically sophisticated and introspective, and by far the most in-depth consideration of accidental killing I’ve ever seen. It is so difficult to write from the heart and soul and mind, but David W. Peters did it. The concept of a post-traumatic God is important and powerful on so many levels, especially these days, and the blessings and personal stories offer solace. The interweaving of historical analysis, psychology, and theology is so well done and offers a rich framework for consideration. He did not shy away from difficult topics, yet provided a nuanced perspective that neither condemns nor excuses. Peters has created an important and moving book that explores the experience of accidental killers and offers a deeply spiritual exploration of what such tragedies mean and how those who harm others can themselves heal from moral self-condemnation. This is essential reading for anyone who has ever caused harm or cared about someone who has caused harm—that is, all of us."

—Maryann Gray, PhD, social psychologist, and founder of the Hyacinth Foundation

Accidental

Accidental

Rebuilding a Life after Taking One

David W. Peters

Broadleaf Books

Minneapolis

ACCIDENTAL

Rebuilding a Life after Taking One

Copyright © 2023 by David W. Peters. Printed by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [e-mail] or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Sections of chapter 1 were previously published in an article What Happens to Your Life after You Accidentally Kill Someone? The Guardian, November 29, 2018. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Library of Congress Control Number 2023017255 (print)

Cover image: shutterstock_285240719

Cover design by Faceout Studio, Amanda Hudson

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8716-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8717-5

Contents

Part I

1. They Are Us

2. City of Refuge

3. Moral Injury

4. Post-Traumatic God

5. Silence

Part II

6. Drunk Drivers

7. Cars

8. Guns

9. Systems

Part III

10. Seeing Yourself in the Stories of Others

11. Inviting Others into Your Story

12. Making Art

13. Being Open to Mystical Experiences

14. Coming Home

15. Finding Absolution

Resources

Litany of Penitence after Causing Accidental Death

For Further Reading

Acknowledgments

Notes

Part I

1

They Are Us

There’s never a time, even when I’m laughing at a party, when I’m not thinking about it, Pam says. It was a hot summer day a few weeks before the end of her junior year of high school. Pam and her friends had spent the afternoon at a swimming hole near their central Texas town. She was driving home on a country road, two friends as passengers, when her front tire slid. She overcorrected. The car spun. A car coming over a blind hill slammed into her passenger side, and everything went black. She woke in a hospital. None of the doctors or nurses would say how the two boys in her car were doing. Finally, her dad arrived and told her: they were dead.¹

Years later, after Pam married and had three boys of her own, she found herself consumed by the thought that her three young sons would die as some kind of cosmic payback.

I nod as I listen to her story. It sounds a lot like the other stories I’ve heard over the years about accidental killings. Immediately after the event comes shock. Then the shame-filled memories of what happened. Then thoughts of impending karmic justice, which hang over the accidental killer’s head like the sword of Damocles at every moment—even when you’re at parties, laughing.

Can people move on after an accidental killing? I think about this question a lot. I am an Episcopal priest and a military veteran, and I’ve talked to a lot of people who have caused, by accident, the death or physical harm of someone else. I frequently talk to parishioners and other veterans about the shame and guilt that hang on them in the wake of a tragedy for which they were responsible. But I’m not just professionally interested in this question. I am an accidental killer, too.

I was nineteen, just a few weeks out of Marine Corps boot camp, and had just begun my first year at a Bible college in West Virginia. It was Sunday evening, and my roommate and I were dressed for church according to college rules: jacket and tie. We were two young men steeped in the fundamentalist-evangelical world of our youth, heading for the holiest of services, Sunday night.

I was driving my recently fixed-up 1973 VW Super Beetle. Around 5:30, we rounded a curve in the highway into the glare of the setting sun. I squinted and tried to shade my eyes with the car’s visor. I felt vulnerable in the passing lane, so I attempted to move to the right. As I began to change lanes, I saw a red Jeep already there and I swerved back, but I swerved too far. The driver’s side of my car slammed into a steel plate on a small concrete median curb, crushing the front of the car, locking the tires in place, fracturing my kneecap, and throwing the Beetle into the oncoming traffic. Once I entered the oncoming lane of traffic, I saw a motorcycle coming straight toward me.

The next thing I remember, the car was stopped and I was checking to see if my roommate in the passenger seat was alive. He seemed to be all right. I got out of the car and felt a sharp pain in my leg. Traffic had stopped. I saw another car smashed up on the side of the road, and then I saw a motorcycle lying on its side. A woman wearing a helmet was a few feet away, her neck bent at a strange angle. Somehow I knew she was dead. Then I saw a man lying on the ground and I went to him. He was lying on his stomach. I could see blood flowing on to the asphalt from between his legs. He looked up and swore violently at me. I said I was sorry. I must have said it a thousand times in those few moments. I took off my red necktie and attempted to stop his bleeding as the emergency personnel arrived.

When I remember these minutes, the minutes where my life profoundly changed, they are surreal snapshots of memory. I had to tell the story so many times in those first weeks, to everyone from insurance agents to lawyers to family and friends, that it eventually solidified into what I say today. But there will always be memories below the story, like splinters under the skin. A pair of sunglasses with blood spatter. The smell of the old plastic sun visor. The eerie silence of that busy highway as I walk toward the motorcycle. These memories, too, are part of the story of that day. They remind me that shards of memory live both above the skin and below it.

When I got to the hospital, nurses used medical tape to remove the particles of windshield glass from my hand and put my knee in a stabilizer. They said it would hurt for a while. It did hurt. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted to feel something other than the feeling that I should be dead instead of that woman.

I went back to the dormitory that night. My roommate was shaken but not badly injured. I slept.

In the next few days and weeks and months, I didn’t go to any counseling. None was offered. In those days and in those circles, we didn’t know much about mental health or avail ourselves of therapy. In fact, I didn’t talk to anyone about what had happened. I felt guilty for surviving when a young woman had been killed—by me. I knew I would carry that weight with me forever. I remember staring at a white wall and feeling like I was rushing toward it. If I took a nap, I would jerk awake from the sensation of hurtling uncontrollably toward the motorcycle. Most of these symptoms were gone in a couple months, but the low-level, unabated dread and anxiety persisted.

I hobbled around on crutches for a couple of weeks. A month later, I was driving again. The first time I got behind the wheel, I experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress, reliving the helpless, locked-in feeling of the crash as I drove through a construction zone. Several months later I was sued for $2.5 million. I gave a deposition about what happened. Perhaps because I was a poor college student, or because my father was a poor pastor with six kids, or for other reasons I do not know, the suit was dropped. It may have been because I had not been drinking or speeding at the time of the accident.

But I knew what I did was wrong, maybe even evil on some level. I had killed a woman. I knew I could do nothing to undo it. There was nowhere I could go to get away from the feeling that I was no longer good.

One thing, though, gave me a tiny glimpse of hope, or something akin to it. The morning after the accident, the dean of students from the college had come to see me. I was still lying in bed in my dorm room. He pulled a chair up, opened his King James Bible, and read a passage from the Old Testament, Numbers 35, about cities of refuge: ancient safe havens for people who had accidentally killed others. The perpetrator could flee the avenging family of the deceased and escape to a city of refuge, where they could live until the Jewish high priest died. After the death of the priest, the accidental killer could safely return home, no longer at risk of revenge killing.

After reading the verses, the dean said, God made provision for what happened to you.

I don’t remember my response. I only remember being confused about why he read that passage to me. I didn’t have a city of refuge, and it didn’t seem likely that I’d ever find one. Yet something about that image—of protection, provision, and sanctuary in the middle of tragedy—has stayed with me all