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Screams of agony

When Jim and I were first married, he owned a small business.  There was a young man who worked for him who had two younger siblings.  One day, his younger brother was riding his bike to school and he decided to go back to the house.  As he crossed the highway into his neighborhood, he was hit by a semi truck.  He died there, in the road.  I have salient memories of that time now over twenty years ago.  I remember seeing the picture in the paper.  They had the audacity to print a photo of his body on the ground covered by a sheet with his foot hanging outside the sheet.  I can see his tennis shoe in the picture.  I was so angry at the newspaper for printing such a horrific photo, for denigrating his memory, for putting such horror in his family's face. 

I had no frame of reference for this grief, I wasn't a mother.  But I did know death, I did know pain, I'd lost people in my life. But this struck me as being so deeply, painfully awful; it wasn't something I could fathom.

We went to see the family. At all of 24, it was the most excruciating thing I'd ever seen.  Their house was so dark and thickly covered in sadness.  As we walked in I heard his mother wailing and screaming. I cried for her, I cried for them, I cried because it was so senseless.

I'll never understand it.

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