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It’s Been Two Years Since the Day My Life Changed Forever
Reflections on a tragedy that nearly robbed me of the will to carry on
A friend of mine called me up after he heard. He offered to take me out to breakfast. I didn’t end up going, but it was enough that he reached out. There are moments when you can’t leave people alone.
He’d been through something similar. A few years before, there’d been an accident with a school bus. He was among the first on the scene. At least, in his case there had been survivors. He walked away knowing that, despite the horrors that he witnessed, a few kids were alive because of his actions on that day.
All I did was direct the police to the body.
The girl had been a year older than my youngest daughter. She went to the same school. Often, as I’d sat in my office writing, I’d look out the window and see her riding her bike down the sidewalk.
Now there are only faded yard signs wishing her peace and the memory of a child who was robbed of the opportunity to grow up.
First, there was numbness, then there was pain
Even now there are things that I cannot say. The trial hasn’t happened yet. Justice, if you can call it justice, remains in purgatory.
There are streets and sidewalks and nearby paths, some less than a mile from my house, where I will not go. I can’t go there. When I’m walking with my dog, he puts his body across my knees to bar the way. He knows. People don’t know, but the dog does. It’s real.
I didn’t feel anything at first. I called my wife. I cried, but it was like another person was crying. My response was superficial. It took a while for the grief to sink into my bones and take control completely.
It was as if I’d suffered an exposure to a toxic agent that takes two months to kill you, but nobody knew. So, I went about my life as we are expected, but the pain became unbearable.
A room with no windows or doors
Imagine you feel on the verge of a sneeze, but it never comes, and you’re perpetually in that uncomfortable state of anticipation. You need the release, but…
