The headline from the Amsterdam Recorder was your average tragedy: Drunk driver kills newspaper carrier.
He hit a 68-year-old woman, a newspaper delivery person who was making her rounds, in the early hours of the day, killing her. The name, and his age (two years younger than me) had me wondering if I knew him. Then his mugshot came up and I remembered. We had orchestra together. He played bass. At a time in my life when I was extra-surly and combative, he was always nice to me. He was a freshman, and went out of his way to laugh at whatever I said. He included me in conversations when I didn’t want to be included, and extended a disarming friendliness. In return, well, I wasn’t mean to him. That was a lot in those days.
I went to his FaceBook page to see what clues there might be to his life since I last saw him all those some thirty years ago. How he got to be where he was in such a state at that early morning hour. How he became the person he was when things fell apart. How do any of us get to where we are? It isn’t usually in grand, singular events – it’s a cumulative climb or descent, a series of ups and downs, the general trajectory of which isn’t necessarily seen or understood until an average slope can be gleaned. Sometimes we never see. As expected, FaceBook offered only the merest glimpse at the life of a stranger.
He had a wife who recently died of cancer. Shortly after that he apparently posted this song.
He lost his dog for a while and posted how it nearly drove him crazy with despair before it was found.
There is so much sadness in this world.
There is no excuse for driving drunk. This shows why.
There is also no excuse for not trying to understand someone else’s pain. Maybe this shows that too.
Back to Blog
