I rarely write long pieces. If something can be said simply, I would rather not say more than necessary.
But this story was worth keeping.
It happened on Qixi, the Chinese festival of lovers, which made the timing almost too perfect. Some people spend a lifetime wishing they could be together and never get the chance. Others are fortunate enough to share a life and quietly begin to treat that as a given.
It isn’t.
What is twenty minutes?
In the span of a lifetime, almost nothing.
And yet, for someone else, twenty minutes can be the distance between an ordinary afternoon and a final goodbye.
We had planned the day well in advance. On August 5, we would drive from home to Vancouver, enjoy five hours on the road through the mountains, then catch a 10:50 p.m. flight to the East Coast of the United States for the start of another adventure.
As it turned out, the adventure began before we had properly left home.
The moment we started the car, the dashboard warned us that the key fob battery was dying. Not exactly what you want to see before a long drive. Fortunately, there was a dealership along the way. Fifteen minutes later, with a new battery in the key, we were back on the road.
Apart from a sudden shower, the drive was beautiful. Summer in the mountains has its own way of making a highway feel like part of the landscape—wildflowers along the roadside, deep green trees, open sky.
Then the traffic stopped.
A line of cars stretched ahead of us.
On a highway like this, that usually means an accident. The only question is how bad.
At first, everyone stayed in their cars. Then the afternoon sun began testing our patience. Doors opened. People stepped outside. Someone walked a dog. Someone else went for a run. The highway slowly turned into a pedestrian zone.
The people in the car ahead of us had bicycles with them, so one of them rode off to see what was happening.
I checked the time. Seven hours before our flight. Less than two hours to Vancouver airport.
Surely we would be fine.
The cyclist eventually returned. The accident was less than ten kilometres ahead, he said, and the scene looked like a battlefield. Wreckage everywhere. Debris across the road. He thought he had seen blood.
The mood changed immediately.
Not long afterward, the traffic began to move. For about two minutes.
Then police started turning vehicles around and directing them back the way they had come. Some drivers stayed parked on the shoulder, apparently determined to wait it out.
A police officer farther ahead was holding up his fingers as he spoke to each driver. At first I thought he was indicating seven o’clock.
Tight, but possible.
Then I saw helicopters overhead. Ambulances were trying to work their way through the gridlock. And the officer was no longer holding up seven fingers.
Now it was five.
Five what?
Something inside me said: Stop guessing. Go ask.
The officer looked pale and exhausted.
“Five hours,” he told me.
Fuel had spilled across the highway. No traffic would be allowed through until the road was safe.
“But I have a flight to catch.”
He looked genuinely sorry. There might be another route, he said. I should ask the traffic controller nearby.
The controller explained the detour. His accent was strong and the details came quickly, but I caught the essentials: drive two hours back, find Highway 8, connect to Highway 1, then drive another five hours.
I looked in both directions.
Wait five hours, then drive two.
Or turn around now and drive seven.
Mathematically, there wasn't much difference.
But another thought had already taken over: Turn around. Find an airport. Maybe there is another flight to Vancouver.
Then came the counterarguments.
Maybe the road will reopen early.
Maybe the flight will be delayed.
Maybe there won't be any seats from the other airport.
Maybe turning around will turn out to be the stupidest thing we could do.
But staying where we were guaranteed one thing: we would miss our flight.
Leaving gave us no guarantee at all.
It simply gave us a possibility.
So we turned around.
Sometimes “doing what you can and leaving the rest to fate” sounds beautifully philosophical. In reality, it can look like driving very fast through the mountains while trying not to get a speeding ticket.
For a long stretch there was almost no cell signal. The road ahead seemed endless, and the doubts kept travelling with us.
What if the highway reopened five minutes after we left?
What if we were racing toward nowhere?
The car became very quiet.
Eventually the signal returned. We began checking flights.
The 7:25 p.m. WestJet flight to Vancouver was impossible. But there was an 8:20 Air Canada flight. That one, perhaps, we could still make.
We reached the little regional airport just after seven.
There were only two people ahead of me at the Air Canada counter. I was ready to throw myself at the mercy of the agent, but she was in no hurry. She finished with the passengers before me while I stood there trying not to explode.
To introduce a little healthy competition, I sent my husband to the WestJet counter at the same time.
It worked.
The Air Canada agent began making calls and eventually told me she had found the last two seats to Vancouver.
Then, almost as an afterthought, I asked:
“Is the flight on time?”
Her expression changed.
There would be a one-hour delay.
Meanwhile, my husband returned from WestJet looking defeated.
“If you'd come ten minutes earlier,” the agent had told him, “we could have put you on the flight. Twenty minutes ago, no problem. But now it leaves in ten minutes. There's nothing I can do.”
I nearly fainted.
We had arrived at 7:05.
Why had we given up on WestJet so quickly?
We went back and explained the whole story—highway closure, accident, missed connection, Vancouver, onward flight to the United States.
The moment the agent heard “United States,” everything changed.
“You don't actually have to go through Vancouver,” she said.
There was a 10 p.m. flight to Calgary. From Calgary, we could take a red-eye to Toronto and then continue to the U.S. We would arrive only about four hours later than originally planned.
Did we want her to look for seats?
Of course we did.
After all the rebooking was finally done, we sat down in the terminal and looked up the accident we had encountered.
A large container truck had suffered brake failure and crashed into thirteen vehicles ahead of it. Ten ambulances and two air ambulances had been sent to the scene.
The accident had happened approximately twenty minutes before we reached that stretch of highway.
The road did not reopen until 9:45 that night.
Twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes earlier, and we might have been in the middle of it.
Twenty minutes later at the airport, and another possibility had already disappeared.
Twenty minutes can separate tragedy from escape. It can close one road and open another.
Life remains endlessly fascinating precisely because it is uncertain. There is no standard answer and no way to control every turn. Sometimes all we really have is the intention with which we act, the clarity to make a choice, and the willingness to accept what follows.
By midnight, Calgary airport was packed with stranded and connecting passengers.
Young people were playing cards on the floor and laughing loudly. Children bounced around as if midnight were the middle of the afternoon. Two airline agents made overlapping announcements until no one could understand either of them. Eventually the man stopped, let the woman finish, cleared his throat theatrically, and started again. Everyone laughed. So did she.
Nearby, a nervous young woman refused to board her flight. An Indian father ate while lecturing his two sons; the older boy struggled to explain himself while the younger one tried very hard not to let his father see the mischief in his eyes.
Life, everywhere.
Our red-eye to Toronto departed on time.
Next stop, the United States.
What happened after that no longer seemed very important.
We were alive.
The question was what we would do with it.