This weekend, Keith and I drove our car to Dallas to be shipped over to Hawaii. It was a quick trip--we were there and back in less than 48 hours. Just enough time to catch up with a friend and have an amazing Texas steak! It was nice to be back in Texas, if even for a small time...my hubby had never been, and even though he hates big cities, I think he enjoyed seeing the sights.
On our way home, we stopped in Amarillo at a famous steak restaurant for dinner. It was fun & an experience all it's own! 'The Big Texan' definitely served us up some of the biggest & most delicious steaks we've ever had!
The rest of our trip home was definitely an interesting one. We got pulled over for going 72 in a 70...(yes, that's two over the speed limit...I chalk that one up to boredom...) Then we got lost...like, really, really, backroads, mud on the tires, wrong turn lost (that one I DEFINITELY chalk up to Keith being the driver...) And had a random motorcycle driver flag us on the highway & try to get us to pull over. Very odd indeed.
We pulled into the Springs finally at about 2:30 a.m., so tired & ready to be home. What I saw next is something that will be forever engrained in my mind, and that I'll always wish I could erase. There was an array of emergency vehicles on the opposite side of the interstate, and we figured there was an accident. Naturally, you look when you know there's been an accident. This was one of those times where I wished I'd stared straight ahead--the two cars had hit each other directly head on, and there was barely anything left of either one. It was literally like something you see in movies--Just a giant hunk of metal, and the only way you could tell they had been cars was from the back ends. There were sheets covering where the windows would have been, but even without those, I knew that there was not much left of the people inside.
Maybe it's because I was so tired, perhaps it was because I've never been close to something so tragic, but I immediately started crying, almost like a reflex. I couldn't stop it. I think Keith was surprised at my reaction, but he's seen a lot more horror in his life than I have. He tried to calm me down & explain to me that stuff like that just happens, & there's nothing you can do.
All night all I could think of was those people. Did they have time to think? Did they feel anything? Who were they, what type of families did they have, where were they headed? Did they have any idea their lives would end in a split second that night? My heart is still sad at the thought that someone's mother had to wake up to news like that.
I know it seems maybe naive that I would think so much about people that I probably never knew... People die everyday, every second even in terrible accidents. But it's just different, it hits you differently when you have to see it.
I've been super duper stressed lately about different things--school, our big move, logistics, etc. Stressed to the point where I've developed a horrible canker sore in my mouth.
My husband really put it in perspective for me when we finally fell into bed at 4 a.m.
Is it worth it? Is the stress worth it when you know that life is truly but a vapor?
How right he is. It's not worth it at all. Why not enjoy the time we have & treasure the people we love, because life truly is fragile. Everybody can break so easy & I don't want to take any single second for granted.
It could be gone in just a whisper....
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