ON THE WAY TO CHIPOTLE
A picture I took on the way home Friday night.
Thursday March 24th. It was around 6 pm. I was driving down Pavilion with Aaron to get dinner at Chipotle and then to run a few errands afterwards. There were two elderly women standing in front of a Citizen's Patrol car waving for drivers to turn around. In all my years here, I've never seen Pavilion shut down before. Pavilion is a small curvy road with a mutual turning lane in between the opposing lanes. We get to Chipotle and I see my former Organic Chemistry professor with his family. I Snapchat a pic of him to a few of my classmates that shared his class with me to let them know that he reminded me of them. It's kind of odd to see professors in public, for me at least. I often forget that they have lives of their own. They have children. They have interests outside of their field. They have many other priorities outside of being a teacher. More than a teacher, he was a father, a husband, and amongst many other things beyond my observation, on this day, he was a Chipotle customer too. The last one is sort of a strange thing to mention, but it's true, and sometimes strange things are true. Anyways, there's a certain duality to observing things for the first time subsequently to realizing them. It is at this point, that the horse comes before the carriage. I get two burrito bowls with white rice, pinto beans, chicken, light lettuce, light cheese, and vinaigrette on the side. We eat there and head to Concord Mills to search for a gift for someone special in my life. No gift was found by the way. While I was in the area, at my convenience, I stopped by Walmart to get a few ingredients for a recipe I wanted to cook. By this point it's a little past 9 pm, and taking day light savings into consideration, the sun had just set. Driving back home, I routinely turned onto Pavilion. About 7 or 8 cars were backed up. There were a few police cars with flashing lights and within a few minutes, they were turned off. As we were moving along, a tow truck drove past us with a black sedan that had it's top smashed in. The roof of the car was leveled with where the windows should have been. It was totaled from the top down. To my surprise as I drove further up, there were two elderly ladies taking off their traffic vests in front of a Citizen's Patrol car.
Friday March 25th. It was around 5 pm. I'm driving down Pavilion to continue my search for the gift. As I'm driving, I keep flashing back to what the car looked like. When the road first curves left, I see a gold car parked off to the side. There's a couple, maybe late 30's to early 40's, setting up a memorial by a light post. As I pass, in my rear view I see them walking away from the memorial. As the lady turns around to look back, the husband puts his arm around her. By this point, the road curves and they're out of sight. I kept thinking to myself how wild it was that I was on Pavilion when they first shut it down, to when the tow truck drove off, all the way to seeing a couple walking away from the memorial. It was all so strange.
A few hours later, while I'm on the south side of the city, Aaron texts me a link to a news report about the accident on Pavilion the day before. I was in my car when I read it. 20 year old killed in a fatal accident involving one car. I can't really explain to you the emotions that go through my mind when I hear about people younger than me dying. I feel blessed, but then deep down I feel really, really bad, almost guilty in a way. I'll be 23 next month. I couldn't imagine taking these last 3 years away from my life. That would mean no building a chicken coupe with my dad last June. No shorty. No Panama trip. No raising Bagel. There would be no seeing my grandparents last summer. I wouldn't have seen Kobe play. I wouldn't have gotten closer to my older brother. There would have been no moving to Philadelphia. Athens wouldn't have meant anything to me. I would've never got into seafood. None of the people that I had met would exist to me if this was all taken away from me 3 years ago. Then I thought about her life post-seeing my Organic chemistry professor. She was somebody's daughter, a student probably, somebody's best friend, somebody's sister; the possibilities were abundant. Including her life itself, there were so many aspects of her life that ended prematurely. Her dreams. Her aspirations. Her plans. Ironically, that's the thing about people who die young. What they could've been is what they won't be, but what they were, trumps any speculation as the greatest gift to us who are living, through time, distance, and memory. I looked around for a few minutes. I saw people who were laughing. I saw people who were on the phone. I saw people who were alone like myself. I saw people who seemed to be in a rush, probably to meet other people. Then I thought to myself how everybody you see or even come in contact with is more than what they are to you. I realized that the only person who really knows you is yourself if you're able to let you in. We paint ourselves with colors through our connections with other people. That's where most of our emotions come from, connections with other people. Much like the greatest piece or art you've ever come across, we mean a number of different things to a number of different people, but only we can fully understand ourselves if we bring meaning to the colors we use. I felt sad for her family because they can only see her colors through memory now. Memories that will get distant over time. Surrounded by busy shoppers and hectic in and out traffic, I sat in solitude for a bit. I sat in solitude because life is beautiful and death is humbling. in between life and death, I'm just a stranger to all of this. We are all strangers to all of this, and as strange as it all sounds, it's all true. I put on my seat belt, turned the windows down, and started to make the drive home, in hopes that I wouldn't see two elderly ladies directing traffic in front of a Citizen's Patrol car. Thankfully I didn't.
-RDL4EVER