Last week marked the year anniversary of a devastating event that shattered the lives of the students and faculty at my high school. Several students had been driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, drunk, at speeds close to 90mph. They hit the side of the road and their car spun out of control, flipped, and crashed. I remember going to school that morning; only hearing about a horrible car crash on the news. The realization came that the people in the car were students from my high school once I got there that day. We watched the news, only to hear that the driver had died, and it was unknown what the fate of the other passengers were. Tears, sorrow, grief filled the room, the school. That day was silent, quiet; just an unspoken common acknowledgement of what had happened. It was heard that one of the passengers went into a coma. The others survived but were injured. A simple mistake, but there it was. Our school was a media frenzy that day; news reporters were circling the school. The event became just another statistic to the arrogant police chief who was more than happy to use it as a shameless way to spread the "problem of teenagers" on the news.
Sensitivity seems to escape those on the outside looking in. There was a candlelight vigil for the driver that night. I watched the news: one reporter said that they wanted to respect the privacy of the students and wouldn't ask for comments from them. I later found out from another student that the same reporter had been harassing students for comments, none would, and our principal had to ask him to leave. Other reporters were shoving cameras into students' crying faces. Everyone had an opinion about what happened: everywhere from "it was an unnecessary tragedy" to "they deserved it". It didn't matter though what it was. It was there, and it affected our lives.
I bring this up, because this past week, one year from that accident, a student who graduated from my high school a few years ago crashed on a street not far from my house and died. I can never hear a story about someone dying without me being affected by it; especially those who die young. I don't know why. I guess I always think that it could be me. Maybe not in the crash that happened last year because even if I were to drink, I would never drink and drive. But that doesn't protect me from being hit by a drunk driver, like the Anaheim Angel's pitcher, Nick Adenhart, and his three friends, Courtney Stewart, Henry Pearson, and Jon Wilhite, this past week. In fact, it almost did happen. Just a few months ago, my friends and I were driving and we were going through an intersection, the light was green, everything was fine. Suddenly a speeding car comes through the intersection headed for our car, I was in the back right seat, and my friend was in the front passenger side, the car came from the right; the two of us were in panic thinking it was going to hit us. My other friend who was driving didn't notice, which was a good thing; if she had, she probably would have braked and the car would have plowed into us. It just missed our car, we were lucky. Some aren't.
Why though? Does luck have anything to do with it? I mean Death can be so random; it is the reverberating effect of the very fabric of life itself. Are events ever just coincidental or part of a greater enigmatic design, unknown to anyone except for the very force controlling the universe? I guess we’ll never really know for sure. Do I just keep on living knowing that death is imminent, I guess I have to, but do I live in fear or live in joy, or neither. Where does death bring us, why does it happen? I guess it gives life meaning, but what is that meaning for? Do we live to die or die to live?
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