This entry was posted on Sunday, January 16th, 2011 at 7:37 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I watched three people die today. Rather, I watched them get killed. My wife and I, heads hung low, had traveled to Newport Beach to meet a friend for coffee to discuss our financial future. While business has been encouraging, the past year of scrimping and scraping has most certainly taken its toll. The car ride was silent; each of us wrapped in our own thoughts of uncertainty and doubt. We were both positive that we had reached the very bottom, and were convinced that things simply could not get worse.
As I sipped away at the last few drops of my unsweetened iced coffee, I heard it. A crash that made my heart jump into my throat and shook my body to the core. I whirled to look under 100 feet down the street at the corner just in time to see a gold Lexus SUV, sailing 15 feet through the air and twisting onto its back. I watched in horror, my eyes glancing to the motorcyclist and pickup truck sitting at the red light directly in its path then back to the airborne vehicle, and instinctively tensed and raised my hands to my eyes to cover my face. I had barely gotten them above shoulder level before the SUV landed on them both in an explosion of twisted metal, smoke and death. For three seconds, no one on the busy street crowded with sidewalk bistros and cafes moved. Then it erupted.
The driver of the SUV, a girl of about 24 was killed instantly. The driver of the pickup truck, who had been innocently sitting at the stop light next to his wife seconds before, was also killed. His wife had just enough time to realize she was crumbled on her side next to what used to be the man she loved before she lost the fight and passed as well. The motorcyclist lay on the ground, motionless. To this day I have never seen so much blood.
I stood there silently on the sidewalk for a long time, watching, similar to a time lapse shot in almost any motion picture where a complete day goes by while the subject of the shot stands motionless in the center. I scanned the wreckage for my friend, who also happens to be a CHP officer. He had confidently run off into the heart of the accident the very second it occurred while I had stood there, mouth hanging open. After a few more minutes of looking for him, I slowly returned to our sidewalk table with the big green umbrella to find him sitting there, reclined casually, finishing his black coffee. He looked at my pale white face and said one sentence.
“There’s nothing you can do, dude.”
I didn’t want to hear that. Not at that very moment. But I knew he was right. The on-duty officers, who were already on the scene, were working in organized chaos with the fire department to save who they could, the streets had been blocked off, other victims were receiving CPR. He was right. There was nothing I could do.
The drive home was silent as well, but in a different way. What had seemed so important on the previous trek – income, 401Ks, health insurance, mortgage payments….was, this time, eclipsed by thoughts of those people in that accident. Their families, mothers, wives, husbands and, oh god, their children. In a few moments, if they hadn’t already, their loved ones would be getting a short, to-the-point phone call that would change their lives for the worse. Forever. And in that few moments any one of those people would more than likely give their lives to change places with me and my so-called problems. Even for only a day.
Sometimes its easy to get tunnel vision in life. To become wrapped up in ones own challenges and worries, and to lose sight of what makes life LIFE. I have so much, so many things that I love, so many wonderful people around me. The fact that times are hard right now and that sometimes, late I night, I wake up in a panic next to my wife with a nightmare of financial instability fresh in my mind, is truly only a minor inconvenience when compared with the “what if”.
I want to hang on to that accident. I want to remember it and refer to it as long as I possibly can. I can be realistic about it, and know that this new sense of clarity will eventually fade. However, when it does, I will try to think of the families of those I saw pass so quickly in front of me and remember that, for them, there is nothing temporary about their situation at all.
I will appreciate and cherish what I have around me. I will try with all my might to make the most of each and every day. I will think about those that I have wronged or spoken harshly to for no reason other than what mood I happened to be in at the time, those who could have been snatched away from this earth in an event just like this one, and attempt to mend bridges. And I will most certainly stop sulking, pick myself up and dig my family out of whatever hole we may still be in with my head held high, smiling. Because, at the very least, I owe it to those people to get out of life what they sacrificed to provide me with some perspective.
Even when you think that nothing could be farther from the truth, things can always get worse.
-Matt
January 16th, 2011 at 11:38 am
Wow…it’s all about perspective isn’t it? Unless we see things from another point of view we have a hard time relating our current problems with those of others. I hate that you had to see that but sometimes we need things like that to set us straight.
Tyler Wainright´s last blog ..Downtown Memphis Photography Grandpa and granddaughter
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January 18th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Oh gosh, my heart goes out to those families right now… so hard
Desiree Fawn´s last blog ..The Tuesday Diptych Project- Week Forty Three
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January 18th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
I have always said, “It could always be worse,” when faced with a difficult situation. I never really had how true that is illustrated quite so vividly.
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January 18th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
It’s such a heartbreaking truth of life that loss teaches us what truly matters in this world.
Here’s to family, friends, and time enough to tell everyone what we need to before it’s too late.
Kerri Anne´s last blog ..Wherein I Take A Group Fitness Class For The First Time And Fall Into Deep Smit With It- A Bar Method Love Story
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January 18th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
I saw a guy get shot in New York a few years ago — a man from Queens walking to his second job in Midtown at 4 a.m. when we were stumbling back to our hotel drunk from a party and a shooting happened, just feet in front of us. We scrounged the news sites the next day and found him, and of course it was still sad and shocking, but it helped a little to learn his story. He’s with me always, in the back of my mind anyway.
You’re so right — it’s all ephemeral, except the human connections part. I still forget that a lot and I shouldn’t.
Laurie´s last blog ..Delurking Day
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January 18th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Whoa. That is too much perspective, too fast. I can’t even imagine being where you were, much less having it happen to me.
A few years ago, I was crossing the street in Old Town and as I was crossing, a car sailed through the air (it was going straight thru the intersection but didn’t that the car in front of him stopped in the intersection to make a left, so it hit the car and launched into the air) and hit the light pole not 15 feet in front of me. Everytime I begin to bitch about how hectic my life is, I remind myself that if I were more on top of it and walked a little faster, I wouldn’t have the luxury of bitching about anything right now.
BusyDad´s last blog ..My Middle Name
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January 22nd, 2011 at 11:56 am
I think that part of being human and being able to keep going is the very fact that we can’t hold on to these memories. They slip away and we forget and then they come sweeping to the forefront again. I am so sorry for all the tragic fissures from this event.
Amanda´s last blog ..In a minute
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March 26th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
When you read the statistics on car crashes you forget that each one was a dramatical moment like the one you witnessed. God bless those poor people.
Clarence Reardon´s last blog ..ProFlight Simulator SPECIAL OFFER
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