I saw a dead man today. Splayed out on the roof of the car that killed him.
Two minutes earlier, he had been a living, thinking, feeling being, probably full of plans and hopes and concerns for his future -- maybe with a lot on his mind, or maybe just looking forward to getting home from work and relaxing. In the blink of an eye, all of that died with him. gone, in a blinding flash.
Two minutes earlier, the person who killed him may well have been heading home after a day's labor, too, perhaps thinking about plans for the evening, perhaps trying to cut a few seconds of the commute, perhaps just enjoying a song on the stereo. But now, he or she will spend the rest of their life reliving that moment, wondering why they hadn't been paying a little more attention, hadn't been a mite more patient, a tad more cautious. Living with it, living with the knowledge that willingly or not, culpably or not, they had killed another human being, snuffed out another life of possibilities and dreams. And wishing - wishing passionately, desperately -- that they could have that moment back, to do it right, to make it right, knowing they cannot, and knowing they will always live with the regret, the guilt, the remorse.
I didn't see it happen; I arrived a tiny bit later, to see the dead man lying in a position no living person would hold yet looking strangely peaceful and quiet in his deathly repose; lying alone while good citizens diligently directed traffic and talked into their cell phones (to the police? their friends?) while others stood by and took photographs ("my, what an interesting story to share over the dinner table!") or ran about, trying to help but doing nothing. The dead, lying alone, untended, as though none could summon the courage to approach something that moments ago had been so much like themselves but was now forever different, forever foreign, forever, until they themselves reach their own unimagined and unimaginable terminus.
In a flash of a moment, it all changes. A moment that should have been unremarkable, and even was, for people going about their daily business only a few hundred yards away. A moment that should have been unremarkable but wasn't, a moment that utterly changed forever those two people, ruining the life of each, one instantly, and one over interminable moments that will haunt his or her existence to the end of time.
Life is such a fragile thing. Beautiful, and precious, but terribly fragile. We hold it in the cup of our hand, all our lives, in everything we do.
It would be well if we held it with care, always mindful of our awful responsibility.
