Daily Archives: July 27, 2011

Hope

Community

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Today was a hard day for me.  On the one hand, I met up with an old friend for the first time in over a decade, and met her husband and 6 month old.  I’ll talk about that more in the future.

On the other hand, I spent a lot of time worried about my friend who was in the car accident.  It was a hard day for everybody who knew her.

My college was a small one, so we all knew each other.  She wasn’t one of my best friends, but I knew and liked her, and I ran into her again in March of this year and we had dinner together and talked quite a bit, about her current life, her fiancé, her wedding, and all other kinds of things.  I’m just reeling from the shock, though I know others are more personally affected and have more right to be upset.  My heart goes out to them as well.

If you want to see what happened, here’s a link to a news report about the accident.  I had a really hard time dealing with driving on the interstate today.  I kept thinking about that picture and fighting with tears.

I am completely blown away by people’s responses on facebook today.  However, sitting here obsessively stalking facebook for news is probably not helpful.

I am struck by the fact that I do indeed belong to a community of wonderful and thoughtful people who live all over the world.  I hate the circumstances that bring this realization.  Today, I am so glad I went to a small conservatory.  Today, I am happy to be still paying my student loans.  I am so proud of my friends.

I think we are all shocked.  This sort of thing could happen to anyone at any time.  We are all lucky every day when nothing horrible happens.  But we humans are so resilient that we continue to be shocked when awful things happen.

I just hope that the human body can be as resilient.

sad-cat

Please pray for Alicia Doudna and Andrew Kratzat and their friends and family. 

Deep Thoughts

Perspective

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I got home from the Harry Potter movie last night and was full of emotions. (for the record, yes, good movie, NOT great movie.  And the feel-good ending bothers me in the book as well.)  I did what I usually do, sign onto facebook (I’m so addicted) and learned that one of my friends had been in a horrible car accident.

I won’t go into too many details here, because most of you won’t know her and it’s not my place anyway.  We went to school (CIM) together, and she is a fellow violinist and Suzuki teacher.  I had dinner with her in March, and we are both engaged to be married.  She was in the car with her fiancé.  Right now it is just a matter of waiting to see what happens, and they are both in intensive care. 

How many miles do we all spend on the road each day/week/month?  I was trying to think of how many miles I have driven in my life—probably about 250,000 if recall the mileage on the various vehicles I’ve owned.  And that doesn’t count the miles I’ve ridden with other people.  We are all lucky every day when nothing horrible happens. 

I am often haunted by a vision from my childhood while on a car trip to visit family for the holidays.  We were stuck in bad traffic due to an accident, and when we finally passed the accident scene (vehicles at this point, not people) there were Christmas presents scattered about in the median.  I don’t know how much of that memory is true and how much has been distorted, but I know how I felt.

One of my friends tweeted this last night– "Please send prayers, happy thoughts to my friend and her fiance who were in a serious crash today. Then hug your loved ones."

It feels so helpless to be sitting on the sidelines wondering what will happen.  Life is short.  We all spend so much time worrying about piddling details.  In the end none of that matters. 

All we can do is be the best person we can be for the time we are given, right?  I know I try to do that, but I don’t do a very good job of it.  Then again, I don’t know.  Maybe I’m a far better friend than I give myself credit for.