Moment of Solidarity

I was running late for work as I have been for what seems like everyday since we moved. We literally moved down the street, but for whatever reason, I’ve been running 10-15 minutes late everyday since the move, basically the last 4-5 weeks. We are not any farther from my work, actually maybe a tad bit closer. 

I was freaking out, stressing because I hate being late, yet I’ve been late most of my life and often speed somewhat recklessly to get to where I’m going. And that’s when traffic slowed to a crawl on the dangerous two lane highway that I travel to get to work everyday. Which made me even more anxious and irritated. At first I was upset because it was causing me to be even later. Then I saw it. I saw why traffic had slowed to a crawl. Just moments before I was passing the scene, a compact car headed the same direction as me had crossed over the lane and into on-coming traffic hitting a luxury sedan head on. People were pulling over to the side of the road to assist the drivers that had been in the accident. Immediately I felt guilty. I had been so wrapped up in my own problem of being late that I was not allowing myself to be in the present moment. I wasn’t being as cautious of a driver as I could have been.

It was in that moment that I debated as to whether or not I should also pull over to be of assistance. The emergency vehicles had not yet arrived, I didn’t even hear them on their way yet, which made it even more clear of how this had just happened a moment before I arrived. Ultimately I decided to stay in my car and drive to work. I didn’t really have any skills to be of any help and saw there were already a lot of people that had pulled to the side of the road and were getting out of their cars to help. 

As I slowly passed by I saw there were a couple people that were attending to the driver of the compact vehicle who was lying on the road next to the crash. I also saw the driver of the luxury sedan weakly rest her head on the air bag that had just deployed. She was an elderly woman and ghost white, with the driver’s door wide open I could see she was still buckled in but was obviously hurt. I knew in that moment I was driving by, that somebody had lost their life in that accident. I didn’t know who, but I swear I felt it. It was an eerie feeling that I couldn’t shake all day as much as I tried to throw myself into my work.

I tried to look at the positive of witnessing such a horrific accident and take it as a necessary reminder to always stay in the present moment, because the future is never guaranteed.

Later that day, when I got home from work, I found out more about that accident. My oldest son, told me “somebody died today,” which at first took me off guard. I think because I hadn’t been able to shake the images from earlier that morning and the fact that I knew deep down inside that I had witnessed a death, although nothing had been confirmed yet. Plus I didn’t expect to hear news like that coming from my seven year old. Apparently he had been listening to his grandma talking on the phone and put it together that someone had indeed died.

At that time, my mother-in-law was still on the phone clearly consoling someone. When she got off of the phone is when I found out that the person who’s accident I had witnessed had passed away and it was my mother-in-law’s coworker’s nephew. He was a young man just 20 years old, headed home after a graveyard shift at work. He was only 2 miles away from home, when he crashed and lost his life. 

The next day at work during lunch, I found out that the young man who died was the older brother of one of my students. That’s when it really hit me hard. They were brothers just a couple of years apart. The older one was headed home from work just like any other day to give the car to the younger one so he could be on his way to school. I cried when I learned who it was and who it affected. Those images of the accident flooding my mind again. I couldn’t help but immediately think of my own two boys and how the loss of one of them would devastate the remaining one and destroy our life as we know it now. I felt so incredibly helpless and overwhelmed. 

Throughout the rest of the week I began to realize how tight knit the community is in the town that I work in. They mourned the death of this young man as a community. And a week from the day of the accident they laid him to rest with the support of not only the majority of the town but the entire high school too. Students and faculty were encouraged to wear red the day of the funeral in honor of the young man (an alumnus) that lost his life. We also participated in a special moment of solidarity out on the baseball outfield. 

The whole school was walking out to the baseball field when I saw the church located directly across the street from the outfield was where the funeral was being held. As the hurst and the family arrived to the church the whole school stood on the outfield in silence and support honoring the family and young man who lost his life. That moment of solidarity was so incredibly intense. I honestly have never experienced anything like that before in my life. Tears welled up in my eyes as I stood among my coworkers and students honoring the young man I never got to meet. As I attempted to blink away the tears, I watched students release red and silver balloons into the gloomy sky. As sad as it all was, that moment of solidarity did bring me some peace and allowed me to let it be.