24. A Simple Cycling Accident
I had a close friend in my Physics program around 5 years ago.
During summer break, we would chat every day or so about our lives, what we were doing, and what our plans were coming back to school.
I was really into cycling at the time, and I was encouraging her to get a mountain bike or something similar to we could go riding when she got back into town.
I encouraged her enough that she told me the next day she was going to go riding.
That was the last thing I ever said to her.
That next day, while she was riding with her father, her tire hit her father’s and she lost control and swerved into the road just as a large truck was passing. They had to have a closed-casket funeral.
I know people are going to tell me that it isn’t my fault, but I’m always haunted by the belief that if I hadn’t encouraged her to go riding, she never would have, and she would still be here today. Her parents wouldn’t have lost their only daughter.
25. One Death Creates A Domino Effect
My grandmother who adopted and raised me (she is who I call mom) because of my parents dying….She means everything to me. She drove a school bus for almost forty years and When I was like four she ran over a child with the bus. It was a spot where several kids got off at once and she watched the two walk in front of the bus to their doors and when she turned around she saw what appeared to be the storm door closing of the boy that didn’t have to cross the road. It turned out it was his 2-year-old brother hitting the door from the inside waiting for his brother to come home. Kid had dropped a pencil and crawled under the bus to get it. Well she ran over the kid and killed him. She is now 82 and scared of driving and blames this curse of killing the kid as reason for five of her 8 biological kids having died. 2 drownings 1 motorcycle wreck 1 cancer 1 drugs. She still drove a bus for 20 more years after this but it weighs heavy on her daily and is really worried about going to hell as the gets closer to death herself.
On a side note…… I was young and the accident was kept from me but I grew up very athletic and strong and tall compared to my family and really most other people….. I was a d1 basketball player in college and very protective of her in general.
One day (I was 18) she ran into the father in public and since it was kept from me all I saw was a 5’7″ man yelling and cursing my mom and my mom crying so I come flying in and beat this man to a bloody pulp before I can be pulled off him. So I grab her and put her in the car and quickly leave and this is where I learned about who he was and why he was angry at her.
He committed suicide like two months later after I beat him up……. The mother committed suicide like 2 years after the accident and the younger brother OD’ed on drugs like 6 months after the dad suicide.
So yeah pretty fucked all the way around!
