Rough day all around. My partner got into a car accident where a man on a scooter crashed into her car and smashed into the windshield. He wasn’t terribly hurt but for a moment she thought she’d killed a man. It made me think of the time I did contribute to killing a man.
I was driving home on with my kids and then wife. There is a section of the road where cars can cur across the road to get to the other side where they can go the opposite direction. A car darted out and tried to cross in front of us and I clipped it. The car continued on into oncoming traffic and the other cars hit it. The driver died later that evening. I was at the hospital with my son when it happened. We were waiting while my son was being treated from the accident and his family was in the same waiting room. It was devastating to see them dealing with this experience, yet at the same time I held some anger because my own child was injured in that accident and my wife was also put at risk. I held anger and sadness in my heart at once. It taught me a lot about myself. It showed me the depths of anger I can reach and of sadness and responsibility as well.
She’s feeling a bit of that. She’s feeling the heaviness of nearly taking a life. I empathize with her, because it is hard to absorb. It does not matter that he lived and even was relatively unharmed, but the possibility that he wouldn’t have been still exists. In one version of reality–in one of the endless streams of possibility–that man did die just as the man in my own incident lived or I died or my child or wife did. To be introduced to the multitude of terrifying possibilities is a lot to deal with. It changed my sense of reality when it happened. I wonder still how she will grow from the experience.