Road Kill
Death is a lesson for the living.
When I was young and unable to distinguish the world’s wonders from its terrors, I came across the carcass of a black cat that had been killed by racing traffic and thrown carelessly to the side of the road. Every day on my way to school, I studied that corpse with youthful fascination and growing dread.
Day after day, the sight of this cat became more and more gruesome until my second grader mind could no longer cope. With simple childhood magic, I decided to just look away from the horror of that corpse. With that simple act, the desiccated body of that cat disappeared.
As I grew, I became quite proficient with the childhood magic of looking away from life’s dark underbelly. I manufactured a charmed life of roses without its thorns. My life was always half full and never half empty.
And life was good.
Until that Monday in January of my sophomore year. My homeroom teacher quieted our class and then solemnly notified us that Neil had died in a car crash.
I heard those words but had no place to put them. I had left no room in my half-full life to put his Death—no ability to see the monstrosities of life.
After my best friend’s death, I walk the campus alone. Walking and remembering. I relived our times together, our discussion about the newest albums, new movies and what we’d be doing over the weekend, and who we’d be doing it with.
Yet that all changed on that one Saturday night in January when Neil was the sole passenger in his older brother’s car.
Speed and a slick corner caused his brother’s small car to slam into a concrete light pole.
Neil’s dying breathe fluttered out in sync with the last rays from that streetlight.
In my grief, my imagination could not control the urge to relive the last moments of what would be Neil’s ninth life.
I imagined Neil’s body coursing with the thrill of speed as his brother sped through the narrow streets. Then suddenly, his body was filled with the indigestible poison of fear as the car began to skid. The squeal of tires followed by the thundering reverberation of an impact, an impact that would crush Neil, crush his family, and destroy his surviving brother.
No longer able to look away, Neil’s Death shattered my glass-half-full life.
At his funeral, much of my school turned out football players, other school athletes, and his closest friends. Flowers, pictures, and tears filled the church, yet my mind kept flashing back to the eyes of that dead cat on the side of the road.
Was I going crazy?
That horror that had fascinated me so long ago flowed into the horror that I experienced at Neil’s Death. Standing in that church, I forced myself to look deeply into the shattered soul of Neil’s brother. I looked deeply into the lives Neil had affected and deeply into my own grief.
Unsteadily, I rose from the church pew and took the long walked up to his casket. With all the courage I could muster, I looked down at Neil in his final repose. As I stared down at him, in much the same way I had stared at that dead cat all those years ago. Now, for the first time, I saw the lifeless eyes of that cat and realized how much of my life I had excluded.
The visceral experience of Neil’s Death and my love for him broke my blindness.
I vowed never to look away again.
To never be reluctant to make lasting connections.
To never wish away into the cornfields of my mind anything that I did not want to see, hear, or feel.
To never forget that Death is a lesson for the living.
Regardless of what wonders or horrors that life offers to you, take the opportunity and:
Look deeply, feel deeply, and never ever look away!
Life has brought you a most precious opportunity,
learn everything you can about it because everything you experience will be on your final exam.
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