“Seen the news?”
It was an innocuous enough IM to receive at work the Friday after Thanksgiving. Companies often announce things the day after a holiday, especially as it gets close to Christmas time, but this was no ordinary news. It was followed by a link that I followed to a small town newspaper in East Texas. It described a van that had pulled to the shoulder of the road, around 10:15 Wednesday night, and then made a u-turn directly in to the path of an 18-wheeler. A 35 year old man who’s name I didn’t recognize was killed, as were his 4 year old son and 3 year old daughter, and a 14 year old boy with a different last name. The man’s 28 year old wife survived, as did the 51 year old woman who was driving the van.
As it turns out, the driver is my coach, at work. The 14 year old was her son, and the 3 and 4 year old babies were her grandchildren. The woman who survived is her daughter.
She is a natural blonde with hair to her waist. I know she only ever lets her sister cut her hair, because she told me so when she was sitting with me last week, and I know that in all of her 51 years it has only been “short” once, and even then it was shoulder-length. I know she doesn’t trust the H1N1 vaccine, because she told me so the other day. I know she spends all of her free time taking her son to band practice, and shuttling him back and forth to football games and little league, because she told me so, many times, when she sat behind me my first several months on this job. Her cubicle is filled with toys. She is that unique combination of both kindness and hipness, traits that are not commonly found together. She is vivacious and grounded, and if you met her you would probably think, “earth mother”. She is a much-beloved member of our community, at work.
I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t stop thinking about the wreck, can’t stop wondering if everyone died instantly, and hoping that they did and that she and her daughter were knocked unconscious. I can’t stop feeling horrified about the pain she and her daughter must be encased in right now, and I think everybody at work felt the same way. Of course, she has friends at work who have known her for years, and I’ve only known her for a few months. Someone is talking about starting a fund drive, because her son-in-law didn’t have insurance. I don’t know how helpful a fund drive would be for her, but I know it would be helpful for all of us at work. There isn’t a person who heard the news today who wouldn’t gladly have joined forces with everyone else to take some small part of the burden of her loss and her pain and her grieving on our collective shoulders. Having something to contribute to would be a relief to all of us, I think. I know it would be for me. And maybe it would help her, as well, when she comes back to work (if she does) to know that we all had a way to pay our respects without infringing on her grief or privacy.
David is out of town tonight, and I am here with my feelings, which is probably just as well.
I watched a program tonight that touched on the Buddha and his initial search for enlightenment, and the general conclusion he came to that all things are impermanent. There must be something very profound about that understanding, and it certainly is the nature of things. Why, then, does nature bring so much pain along with the most final of facts none of us can escape: death? Is the death of children equally painful across all cultures (I’m guessing it is)? Did this type of catastrophic accident wipe families out all at once because of a simple, split-second accident a hundred years ago?
No conclusions tonight, just observations. Please say a prayer, if you will, for my coworker and her children and her grandchildren. Please take a moment to close your eyes and imagine yourself to be part of that collective that would take on some small percentage of the pain and the grief she is currently drowning in.
Popularity: 1%
