My alarm was set for 3:45 this morning. My son and granddaughters had a 5:35 a.m. flight. I managed to wake my son up shortly after I got up, and the girls were soon up and doing their best to get ready. I kept trying to rush everyone along. We left a little later than planned, and as we got to the light leaving my development, we saw about eight emergency vehicles just to the east. We were going west, so it didn't interfere with our travel, but it was disturbing nonetheless. My son was driving, and usually he is a bat out of hell. This morning he was poking along at 60 mph on a road with a 65 mph speed limit. I told him to kick it up a notch. I dropped them off, did hugs and kisses, and headed home. Within five minutes of leaving the airport, I got a call from my son saying they had missed the half-hour cut-off for their flight. I turned around and loaded everyone back in the car, and headed home again with everyone on board. My son had talked to someone at United who said they could take the same flight tomorrow morning. I was fine with their staying another day, but my granddaughter had to get back to school, my son had to be at work, and it would be much harder to find a ride on the other end on a Monday than on a Sunday.
We headed back home, and when we got close to the turn-in for my neighborhood, three police cars were still there and two (of three) lanes were blocked off. I said, "I'm going to be a nosy old lady and see what's going on." My son said, "Yeah, me too." So we drove past the entrance and toward what turned out to be an accident scene. My son asked if I saw the yellow bag next to the wrecked car. I hadn't, but when we turned around to go home, I did see it as we passed on the other side. It was a body bag, which I always thought were black, but its purpose was obvious. We could tell from the size and shape that there was a person inside it. This was so sad. I later found the article on a local news site and discovered that there had been only one person inside the car, a twenty-one-year-old man, and he had died at the scene. My son and I had a few moments of personal reflective time about this. While my thoughts turned, as they often do when I see car accidents, to my students (I always figure if one of my sons were to be in an accident, I would hear about it rather than see it), and then to the parents of this young man and the incredible grief they would be experiencing. My son's thoughts were more along the lines of the impermancy of life, how that kid (yes, I know the victim was technically a man, but twenty-one is very young) was living his life one minute and half an hour later he wasn't. Any way you look at it, it's nothing but sad.
A little later in the morning, I had a rather selfish thought: If we had left when we had intended, that car could have hit us rather than the tree. It had happened within ten minutes before we left home (which was our planned leaving time). Sure, it sucked to have missed a flight, but we were all alive and safe. That way of looking at it gave us a different perspective. As far as the flight, I urged my son to call United again and throw himself on their mercy, humbly asking if there was any chance at all they could get home tonight. It worked. They got a 7:30 p.m. flight tonight (I just got back from dropping them off and they have boarded), nonstop to a different D.C. airport at no additional charge. I'm missing them already, and the quiet of my house seems simultaneously serene and boring. I'm going to try to focus on the serene, and I will light a candle for a young man I never knew, who was no doubt someone's treasure. My precious babies aren't with me at the moment, but I know they're fine wherever they are. This kid's parents will never have that again.
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