Crushed by the Weight

I'm okay financially. But many people I know are not. The main toll of the past year is less financial than emotional. Father-in-law, mother, aunt, and cousin of mine gone since last year. I meet friends and relatives and almost everyone is emotionally struggling to find balance in these times. We all know people whose lives have been torn apart in one way or another in the past year. Yes. We will get through all of this(at least those of us who eventually survive all this.

I titled this article "Crushed by the Weight" because this is how most people feel right now, including me.

I friend of mine was dropping off his granddaughter at his daughter's in Bakersfield. In the next 15 minutes while driving home to the California coast from inland Bakersfield he witnessed a girl about 13 years old while she was pushing her bicycle across an intersection. The drunk lady ran a red light and mowed the girl and her bicycle down and drug her lifeless body under the car about 150 yards. There wasn't much left of the girl after this under the car. My friend is a retired Navy Fire Chief and so was the first first responder to reach the vehicle. When he reached the car the driver was throwing up.

But the carnage seems to have given my friend mild post traumatic stress disorder. He can't seem to stop the association of his granddaughter and the dead bicyclist. He said he slept 30 hours this past weekend and kept telling people he would be there but then just falling asleep. I told him this was temporary post traumatic stress and hopefully it would pass soon. But one never really knows about this sort of thing.

My son and his wife were walking a mountain trail a week after getting married right next to their university in southern California when someone shot at them about 4 times. When they reported it to the police the police said that this particular mountain canyon and trail had been known for drug deals and prostitution for about 40 years. How were they to know this ahead of time? They too, experienced later post traumatic stress disorder and had trouble sleeping regularly for over a month and finally both decided to withdraw from the university for one quarter.

Life can be emotionally and unexpectedly troubling at times for all of us. Most of the times these troubles pass and we can eventually resume our lives almost as good as new. However, "NO one gets out of here alive." Accepting our mortality sometimes is the beginning of our immortality here on earth.

I write mostly for those as of yet unborn. I write to try to give hope and a future for those who are still coming up in the world. You all are the hope of the future.