On August 5, 2016, a car lost control and plowed into a woman who was on the sidewalk. She was a loving wife, an exemplary mother, and a beautiful soul.
She was a Jehovah’s Witness who was sitting on a sidewalk of a busy intersection next to her display accompanied by her two daughters and another church member. The car that was already billowing out smoke careened down the road and swerved onto the sidewalk. With the prowess that only a mother protecting her young could possess, she managed to shove her daughters and the other woman out of the car’s path. Her two daughters were completely unharmed and the other woman suffered a broken bone. She lost her life saving the lives of those with her that day.
Scarlett was my mother’s cousin’s wife. Despite that genealogical complication, she was family in every sense of the word. She was my aunt. She was the mother of my cousins. She was family. She handled her business at home. She handled her business at church. She was involved in her daughter’s lives. She was kind and gentle with my great aunt. She had her flaws but strove to be a good woman and mother. She had plans. She had aspirations. She imagined what the future would hold for her two daughters. She’s gone now.
Scarlett woke up that morning and packed her husband’s lunch for work. She hugged and kissed him as they said goodbye. She went to the kitchen to marinate some meat she was going to cook later on. She hung her wet laundry outside. She cleaned the kitchen and living room. She got dressed and walked out her door for the last time.
Meeting up with family at the hospital was the hardest part. Scarlett’s husband sat slumped in a waiting room chair with his hand covering his face. His eyes were swollen from all the crying. A group of about 20 stood and sat in silence around him, each combing the depths of their conscious trying to find the magical string of words that would somehow alleviate his pain.
He held onto his lunch bag despite the many pleas for him to put it down so that he could sit more comfortably. It was 11:30am. Unbeknownst to most of us in the room, Eduardo had tearfully and painfully eaten his lunch. He slowly ate his sandwich and sipped on his soda. He sobbed with every single bite because for him, that sandwich and that lunch were the last his wife made for him. That lunch was her last act of love, and he wanted to prolong her last meal.
We moved to another floor assuming that we would each get a chance to say our final goodbyes. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. The van that crashed into her and pinned her against a brick wall had left her almost unrecognizable. The already uneasy tension of the emergency waiting room eloped with a silence so profound that even the doctors began whispering amongst each other. Every person that passed by felt the disturbing weight of the pain and sorrow we all felt. Scarlett’s mother was outside the trauma room and had only been told that her daughter had been in an accident. Scarlett’s oldest daughter was the one to break the news to her grandmother. Heart attack. Luckily we were in a hospital and she was quickly attended to.
When we found out she was ok, the family made its way to Eduardo’s house. Still in shock, the youngest daughter walked out of the bedroom when she heard us coming in. She leaned back on the wall and just burst into tears. To watch a 13-year-old weep for her mother makes you feel insignificant. A love between mother and child is so insanely strong, and this child had the most important person in her life stolen from her. She kept reliving the accident. She kept reliving the last turbulent seconds before the crash when her mother was able to shove her out of harm’s way.
I sat in silence in the kitchen alone trying to make sense of what just happened. How would my uncle handle being a widower? How would my cousins take this? How would this affect the youngest one as she starts going through puberty? What exactly could we do as a family now, and later on, to help out my uncle? A billion, trillion, centillion questions raced through my mind as I sat in that empty kitchen.
People assume that the most devastating aspect of death is, well obviously, the death. But with time, you start realizing that what hurts the most are the smallest things. When you cook, you put out one less plate at the dinner table. When you make coffee, you always end up making twice as much. Perfumes, colognes, deodorants, shampoos and conditioners all have the possibility of reigniting memories of those we’ve lost. We dream with them and wake up having to come to terms once again that they’re gone.
For Eduardo, his first and only love was killed in a freak accident. He walked into his house to find a clean home. He opened his fridge to find meat being marinated. He looked at the wall to see a calendar where bill due dates were lovingly written to remind him of upcoming payments. He walked into his room and lay on a well-made bed. Everything, absolutely everything, in his home reminded him of his wife. He would never be able to hold her again, but he felt her presence in his home.
No one can prepare you for death. No one can prepare you for the pain. And for those of us who serve as emotional support, there’s little to nothing that we can do to honestly make someone feel better after the loss of a loved one. I can’t imagine the trauma my two cousins have suffered after witnessing their mother being crushed by a car and watching as passersby pulled the lifeless body from between the wrecked van and brick wall. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to lose the love of your life, with 19 years of marriage. It must be extremely unnerving to remember that just a week ago they had gone to Yosemite, an annual tradition of theirs, and Scarlett had asked him to dance the waltz that they had danced at their wedding.
I’ve always hated the saying, “Live each day as if it was your last.” It’s basically the PC version of YOLO. But there’s so much truth to it. It’s not about being reckless and endangering your life. I think it’s more enjoying and experiencing each day of life we have to its fullest. From the day we’re born, we start dying. We make plans, we hold grudges, we put things off, we waste days and we become bitter. But you never know for sure that you’ll make it back home when you walk out your door. You never know if the last time you spoke with someone will be the last conversation you two have.
Life is so perplexing, frustrating, exhilarating, depressing, exciting, and everything in between. It truly is a gift to be alive. It’s almost the norm to take life for granted. But don’t get caught up in the nothings of life. Don’t let the crap get to you. The pains of life are overshadowed by the finality of death. There’s nothing more that can be done once you take that last breath. Whatever creed you live by, whomever it is that you love, whatever it is you believe, just live. You never know when that stray car will come tumbling toward you.
