In my hometown, there are two families everyone knows. The Simmons family, who own the oldest lumber yard in town, and the Lind family, who own the only greenhouse in town. My dad owns one, my mom works at the other during the summer when she’s not teaching.
Two hours after my husband and I arrived at my folks’ house for Memorial Day weekend, the phone rang. Initially we didn’t recognize the number, so let the answering machine pick it up. “Gwen, I’m sorry to give you this news this way,” the voice of my mom’s coworker said. “Andy Lind was killed in a car wreck last night…”
There was a half-second flurry on our end–what did she say? who did she say–before my mom grabbed the phone off the cradle and caught the call before the coworker hung up. She disappeared down the hall while the rest of us, feeling awkward and helpless, looked at each other.
When she emerged, my mom told us Andy Lind, with whom I’d taken speech class as a college freshman, had been found dead, in a burned-out pickup, on one of the infinite backgrounds of southern Iowa. No other car seemed to have been involved.
When my grandma died, I hyperventilated. I didn’t do that this time.
When I learned one of my other classmates (different college) had killed himself, I was shocked. I wasn’t this time–well, I was, but in a different way.
Because grandmas die, like it or not. And killing yourself is something you have to take action to do. But winding up dead on a back road at 28… How does that happen…?
As it turned out, it happens when you drink and drive. Initially I thought I might feel better that Andy had been drinking. No less tragic, and even more of a waste–but it would at least mean there was a choice made at some point. He chose not to hand over his keys, etc. It wasn’t the universe simply fucking with the natural order of things. But I don’t feel better. Because he’s still dead at 28–whether he could have prevented it or not. His family is still devastated. And so am I, even though we weren’t what I’d call friends. He was a good guy. Good heart, if poor choices.
I read the trubute. I sent a card (and forged my younger brother’s signature :P ).I read the police report. It’s unlikely he felt anything at all when he died.
But I can’t stop seeing the beautiful spring weather and thinking how Andy can’t feel the breeze, or the warmth of the long absent sun. I can’t stop thinking about his mother, who for the first two days did nothing but pace the house, holding Andy’s hat.
It’d be a cop out to turn this into a don’t-drink-and-drive morality tale, because everybody already knows that. And it doesn’t help unless you think of it before the tragedy can happen. But if there is something to be learned here, I think it’s this: Life is precious, and fleeting, and fragile. Do something great with it today, because there may not be a tomorrow.