It would be easy to suggest you were extremely lucky to survive that horrific incident, but once those two aircraft collided was it luck, was your guardian angel hovering over you? Did the grim reaper have their greedy paws on some other unfortunate soul, who knows??
You have said many words that have described this incident, the unbelievable injuries which should have seen you presented with a new set of virgin white angelic wings, but to me what has not been written is the other type of equally painful ordeal you no doubt went through.
One minute you were a highly qualified instructor in a position us mere mortals can only ever dream of and within a blink of an eye that career had ended! Coming to terms with that must surely not have been as 'easy' as waiting for bones to mend and I am guessing there were more than one or two very dark days on your road to recovery?
I dread to think of the anguish your next of kin had to go through, not knowing hour to hour whether you would survive and then when you found out your career was over! That to me is possibly the bigger issue to come to terms with. We tend to think about the casualty but without the support of those 'back seaters' then perhaps we might not have this same ending.
Finally I commend your ability to accept what happened, 'happened' and life moves on. Your attitude does you immense credit and in my opinion it is the only attitude to adopt, feeling remorse, angry or bitter is always a recipe for a very poor quality of life, and no matter what we have been through, what we have suffered, there is ALWAYS a whole host of people far worse off.
I wish you every success with your books, the after dinner speaking and who knows, maybe even a film. Respect to you, to the gentleman farmer that must have seen a sight that he had never seen before but somehow managed to deal with and respect to ALL the docs, medics etc that stuck you back together again.
Yours very sincerely,
John