It was October 16th, one of the hardest days of the year for me.
I took off from work, partly to be alone, partly because I didn’t know what to expect from myself and my emotions. I dropped my daughter off at daycare, feeling a twinge of guilt only for a moment that I wasn’t spending the day with her. I didn’t want to run out of patience with her that day, and I didn’t want her to bear the brunt of my October imbalances.
Besides, we had a big weekend. My brother was getting married in two days. Hank’s birthday was the first evening of the wedding festivities- a big Shabbat dinner for guests coming into town.
We were skipping dinner. I was skipping dinner. No way did I want to face thirty people who were happy and celebrating. I couldn’t. My heart couldn’t take it. My eyes were too full of tears. I didn’t want to be a distraction. It would be easier for my mom to say that I’d be coming the next morning, bright and early.
After the daycare drop off, I needed to run an early morning errand. The normal rush hour traffic zoomed around me. For once, I was not in THAT much of a hurry on a Friday morning. I did not have the radio on for the traffic. It was eerily calm, that moment.
I was stopped at a red light, and the car in front of me was stopped too. We were stopped for more than a minute. Then, the car went into the intersection. At first, I thought the car was just jumping the light. But, the light never turned. The car moved further into the intersection, with purpose.
The car was hit, and hard, by a BMW going very fast. The BMW sailed over the intersection, bounced on the ground a few times, and slammed into a boulder on the opposite side of the intersection. The boulder separated a gas station from the road. It’s where the kids stand on Saturday mornings with their brightly colored posterboards, glitter and glue shining in the sun, yelling to cars passing by about their high school car washes.
I got out. So did a few other people. A group ran to the BMW. A group ran to the car in front of me, now with its front end tattered in the intersection. I saw a girl who was a nurse, her badge dangling around her neck. The woman who went into the intersection on the red light was elderly. She was responsive and talking and didn’t seem to have any apparent injuries.
Bystanders were saying the driver of the BMW didn’t, either.
It wasn’t until a few hours later that I realized something. Not everything has to die on October 16. Some things live. A lot of things live. A friend had a granddaughter on October 16. A few friends (also a bereaved mother) celebrated the birthday of her child on October 16. Thousands of people around the world had uneventful days on October 16.
My husband was surprised to come home from work that afternoon to find me packing for the three of us. Puzzled, he asked me what I was doing.
“We’re going to the beach. I want to go Ben and Laine’s Shabbat dinner.”
My husband asked me gently if I was sure.
“Yep, I’m sure. We have a lot in our family to celebrate. “
Oh, I love this! What a beautiful tribute to Hank, my friend!
lovely
awww, sweet