In a moment that seemed frozen in time. A woman, sitting in the back seat of a small sports utility vehicle, took her last breath and just like a leaf dancing in the wind, she was gone.
They were returning home from the Farmer’s Market where they had shopped, ate fish tacos from little baskets covered in black and white checkered paper. Most of all they had laughed. There was always laughter when she was with her mom and her Aunt.
It may have been a lapse of judgement or perhaps a slight distraction that caused her to pull out into oncoming traffic. Whatever the cause, it created a series of events that would result in a young girl to be forever traumatized. Badly injured herself, she had reached out to her mother who was in the passenger seat, and felt a sense of relief flood through her body when their eyes met. There was blood, lots of blood but she was alive and thankfully, the adrenaline coursing through her body had masked the pain for moment or two.
The relief of seeing her mom had slowly turned to terror when she suddenly remembered that her Aunt had been sitting in the back seat behind her. She struggled to move but the steering column and seat belt had pinned her in the driver’s seat. She desperately wanted to find her Aunt and make sure she was okay. She had to be okay. With each movement a sharp pain cut like a knife so deep that she didn’t even know where the pain started or where it would end. The silver particles expelled by the airbags were floating through the air, creating a haze that made it seem like she was in a dream and then darkness enveloped her.
She faded in and out of consciousness until she heard him. Someone was there. She could hear his voice and felt him pulling on each door, one after the other but they weren’t opening. Why weren’t they opening? She closed her eyes and from somewhere behind her, she heard a loud bang and glass shattering.
She caught a glimpse of him as he reached in and sat next to her Aunt. She knew he was talking but she couldn’t make out what he was saying, almost as if he was whispering. She turned her head slightly and saw that he was holding her Aunt’s hand, and then realized that he was trying to find a pulse. Finally, after what seemed like forever she caught his eye, and she knew, deep down she knew, her Aunt was gone. She had taken her final breath while he held her hand and now she was gone.
He reached over and placed his hand gently on her shoulder and quietly asked her to stop screaming. Had she been screaming? She didn’t know, all she could hear was the deafening thud of the blood pounding in her ears. He told her she was going to be okay, that help was on the way and to try not to move. Moving seemed like an impossible task anyway so she allowed herself to melt into the seat and wait. She didn’t really know what she was waiting for but there was something in the way he spoke that reassured her a little. Had she stopped screaming? She couldn’t tell.
She felt a softness on her arm and as she turned her head towards it, her eyes met her mothers. Tears were streaming down both their faces and they both knew in that moment, that life would never be the same again.
Many lives were forever changed that day. One of them being that man who had held a dying woman’s hand while she took her last breath. He is my son.
Life is fleeting or so they say, but you don’t really think about it until it disappears right before your eyes.
If life is made up of a series of moments, then let us all try our very best to make each moment count. Not all our moments will be happy ones, some will be filled with frustration, sadness, illness, loneliness, and anger, but they are just moments and for most of us, if we’re blessed, another moment will come along very soon to take its place.
Today, one brief moment ended a life. There was no warning and no time to say goodbye. If we can take the smallest lesson from this then let it be to spend each moment as best you can, seeped in compassion, kindness, and love. Because one day, when you’re at the end of your moments, you’ll realize that love is the only thing that mattered.
