Dearest Readers,
Warning: This post is serious, like bone chilling serious. No normal adorkable quips and witticisms…just a college girl trying to think about a horrific accident. I won’t be offended if you close this window.
Sometimes, when awful things happen, you get in a funk and all these big abstract ideas and questions and values and thoughts swim around in your brain and you feel like you have no constructive way to deal with them. I try to use words. Black and white soothes me. Syntax. Rhythm. Catharsis. Please know I am not trying to take someone else’s pain and use it for my blog’s benefit…I am using my blog as a personal outlet for the unexplainables that are quietly filling my mind.
At an intersection right by my house, a 20-year-old boy was driving a car high with seven traffic violations over the past few months. He turned a corner without stopping at a stop sign and hit a jogging mother who was pushing a stroller with her 1 year old and 3 year old children. He hit her. The kids were fine, but she died today (a day after the incident). A mother died, and so did the driver’s dreams for the future. I didn’t know any of the parties involved personally, but when a horrific accident like that happens so close to your home, you can’t help but be shaken. (read the full story here) Here are my rambling thoughts that hopefully will help verbalize some of the local readers’ thoughts readers or will at least remind you to be thankful for your life.
My mom used to walk that same street with my brother and I and my neighbor with young toddlers. I turn out of that intersection every single day. It could have been me; it could have been her.
My friend brought up the point: the woman was just going for a jog. She left her house and as she was crossing that street, she was probably thinking about dinner for that night, she may have been annoyed with her kids, or trying to get home in time to change one of their diapers. Menial things. Death was the last thing on her mind. Imagine that. She was 36.
The driver is what keeps catching me up. He was 20. A year older than me and he went to my high school. He was known for drugs, but I never heard about him being a bad kid. He was stupid for driving that way. Obviously, but his future died that day too. He has to live forever with the guilt that he killed this woman…I can’t even imagine the weight of it all on him. He will probably go to prison.
Last year, when I was driving home from the beach with friends, we pulled off as we were lost, and entered a not well-marked intersection. I went slowly, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stop or not, when a bicycle came from out of no where (or so I attest). I screeched on the brakes and he swerved, making it to the sidewalk and falling off of his bike only to stand up unharmed. It was one of those moments where you just can’t believe what almost happened. We pulled off into a parking lot and I was shaking. I wasn’t sure I could drive anymore, and then the biker came to the window. He told me he was the father of 8 and what if I had killed him? He limped off. What if it had been me? What if it had been me?
Another friend and I discussed this: Think of how many moments built to the accident near my house. The mom left a few minutes after her normal time, because the 1 year old was fussy. The driver decided to go a different way home. She stopped to say hi to a neighbor on the way. The driver was changing the radio station and looking down. Every moment lined up to create this. I feel like my small almost incident was my one get out of jail free card, and look at how easily it could have been this.
The hard part for me is that I have nothing constructive to do. So people change their driving habits for a week or a day, what does it take to make a lasting impact? How do I help a family I don’t even know? I can’t help. I can only stare at the lives of strangers, almost shake at the horridness and move forward.
Lesson to be Learned: These events shake you, but they remind you to live each day and appreciate every moment. I know it’s totally cliché, but how can you not think that after hearing something like this? Can you blame me?
So I guess, all I can do is say R.I.P. and I hope everyone who reads this is more aware, because really, it’s the least we can do.
Sincerely,
Adorkable
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