One of your Thingmeister’s collection categories is “Slice of Life.” These are Things that capture a moment or an event. One of the longer but more powerful Things I’ve read is this one:
I witnessed a man killed when a truck ran over his head, in the 1980s. We were heading home from a summer day at Benbrook Lake, in a procession of vehicles. The park was closing for the night. The guy was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, two or three cars ahead of us. It was a happy scene, random smatterings of laughter and playful verbal ribbings from our parade.
The cars were moving along slowly, bumper to bumper, maybe 10 to 15 miles per hour, slow enough to allow us to talk to each other without shouting and the ambient chatter from other cars to drift out into the night air. But the cars weren’t moving slowly enough to allow the Jeep with the monster wheels to stop in time. The guy rocked back, lost his balance, fell backwards off the tailgate, and hit the pavement. It happened so quickly.
Before we could assess fully what happened, I had hope for him. Then there was the blood, a lot of it. Everyone was silent, except for the folks who had CBs calling out for help. The summer breeze had conspicuously disappeared. I think everyone was in shock. I know I was. I remember wondering if he was looking down on us now, like I’d read about in near-death experiences before this night. It seemed like the helicopter EMT landed within a minute of the accident.
The collective shock was starting to thaw, but the only voice I heard in the crowd was from the woman I assumed was his girlfriend. She had been talking to him, praying over and over, trying to get some response. Even with the crowd, and the bustle of the EMTs doing their best, I felt I was trespassing on this woman’s awful, unanticipated pain. Then, it was official. The EMTs said he was gone.
She released a guttural howl that resinated into the vastness of the night, the likes I wouldn’t hear again until years later. I wanted desperately to comfort her somehow immediately, this stranger who had just lost her love; but suddenly I felt an over-riding respect for the sheer loneliness of her moment, and my own helplessness to offer any meaningful assistance to her. Her friends surrounded her. She would have to go through this, as anyone would have to do, alone. Her friends and family (and strangers for that matter) would have to wait to help, when she was ready to accept it.
