Tonight was one of those times when pulling into the driveway after a round of evening errands to find the cars your children drive safely parked, floods the heart with relief.
Jimmy and I enjoyed our little shopping excursion just hours earlier on this Wednesday. Though not feeling energetic, he kept his promise to escort me on the balance of my appointed daily rounds when he returned home from work as I'd not completely finished my To-Do list. There's something a bit lonely about running around town alone in the dark. I'll do it if push comes to shove, but I don't like it.
We had only to maneuver the slightly curved and haphazardly lit stretch of Haynes Drive between Thompson Lane and our house in the eight-count cul-de-sac subdivision named after a local farming family. It's a 30mph road. A touch narrow in spots. Easy to speed up without realizing one's right foot has become leaden.
"What happened?" my husband asked. I didn't immediately see what he discerned just ahead and to the left . . . and I was driving. Two cars were pulled over. A teenage girl ran across the street to three other cars pulled into a side road. A woman spoke into a cell phone next to one of the cars and we asked if help was on the way. She mumbled something. As I was thinking to myself that things didn't look so bad, despite the scrim of smoky haze in the air and the greasy smear of skid marks on the pavement, our point of vantage changed as the truck cruised slowly forward.
And there it was. In a darkened yard, beyond the crushed mailbox, in front of a maple or oak tree, with more teens milling about in various states of being (where did they all come from?) -- sitting, standing, on the phone, quiet, dazed, chattering things like, "It's bad. Really bad!" -- the shadowed bulk of an overturned vehicle sat front and center. I later recalled it as a dark small SUV; my husband remembered it as a small black car. As they say, it all happened so fast: seeing it, digesting the images. Loud music thumped and threatened to drown out everything. It was coming from the wreck. The driver, a high school boy by the looks of him, lay perpendicular to his upended auto, unmoving, while an unknown person spoke to him at his head. Some of the people in the yard were residents of the homes. The carried home phones and wore shocked expressions. A few of the kids' faces appeared so slack, I wondered if they were involved somehow. Though it didn't seem feasible that anyone had come out of that pile of wounded metal and fiberglass in a safe manner. We must have missed the accident by less than a minute, two at the most. No emergency responders could be heard wailing in the distance, though by the time we got home, their siren calls broke the crispness of our fair fall night.
There's this thing I do whenever I come across such scenes as this. Or when I register the sounds of ambulance, police, fire, or medic. It started soon after my niece and nephew died in 2003. Because once you experience the unexpected tragedy, the kind which results in late night knocks at the door or unpleasant phone notifications while at work, you find that you are forever connected to every other tragedy by wit of unwillingly joining a sadly elite club. Tragedy ripples the pond, resonating to the far edges without fail, touching more than just those at the epicenter. So, I pray. Out loud. In the car. With or without the children or husband. For His grace and calm, His protection and comfort, to be present and in control. To halt any further trauma for everyone involved. I ask that He prepare families, emergency personnel, doctors and nurses, pastors and priests and the like, and even the auto and medical insurance companies. I thank Him. In the name of His son, Jesus. Amen. And then I move on because I can do no more.
Tonight, as I reel in the gratitude which accompanies the sure knowledge that my children are in the house and safe, I also wonder after the boy and his family. I cried for him. For me there is only a slight comfort in knowing it is another address where shock and pain will reside for a time. I want him to be okay. I wish I knew if he was alive. I contemplate what the good Samaritan who kept him company may have said or done. I am reminded of a very late-night scene upon which good friends of ours happened many years ago in Broomfield, Colorado. Two boys raced their cars down a deserted stretch of wide open road. When they crashed, our friends, a married couple with no kids at the time, discovered them before the EMT's arrived. While the entire story eludes me, what does stay fixed firmly in my mind is that the husband held one of the boys in his arms while he lay dying. Our friend realized that the boy's scalp was not attached to his skull; he tried to keep it on. Surreal. Unexpected. Heartbreaking. As you can imagine, this horrific chance encounter deeply impacted our friends for quite a long time.
There are no promises, folks. Because I have faith in a power outside of myself, I daily entrust my children to the Lord. Reminding them not to text and drive, stop for red and go for green, stay with the speed limit, etc. does not guarantee their safety. A deer or coyote, even a cat, could alter their trajectory in a hot second. I can't be next to them for every mile, each outing, all challenges. The picture I continue to see in my head of those tires in the air, no solid ground beneath them, urges me to forget not the swiftly changing nature of life.
But I didn't really feel I needed that reminder tonight.
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