Life

Yesterday we picked Alex up early from work due to some extended car trouble. We headed out to Long Beach where his loaner car was waiting (rather than his actual car...*sigh*). After a spontaneous test drive of a car we really, really shouldn't buy but are obsessing about, we caravaned home on the 405 North. I was feeling pretty happy about the low traffic and my carpool lane when we came upon the scene of an accident in the southbound lanes. There were a lot of motorcycle cops, a large stopped truck, a motorcycle, a pair of boots, and a pile of white sheets, the top layer rustling a bit in the breeze.

Of course, those sheets weren't just sheets. It was the body of a 42-year-old motorcyclist who'd gone under that truck.

I told Alex when we got home, "This is just a normal day for us. But for some family it's the worst day ever, and they probably don't even know that yet."

I remember going to a park in Berlin the afternoon after getting the phone call from my mom telling me she'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I walked around, looking at other people, realizing that we never know what is happening in other people's lives. No one observing me that day could have guessed my life had been changed hours before. I resolved then and resolve now to be more empathetic and cut the people around me some slack.

Last summer I was so grateful for the nice, patient Subway employee who took my large order of sandwiches, never flinching at the growing line, my kids running around, or my occasional indecisiveness. The sandwiches were for Alex's family back at the hospital where we would spend one last night in an intensive care waiting room.

It's a cliche, but also a truth, that life is fragile. More gratitude, more patience, more love can make that fragility bearable.