As alluded to in earlier entries to this blog, I recently moved across country, from Georgia to New Mexico (with a pesky side-trip to New York to pick up the vast majority of my possessions that had been in storage for two years). I had the help of my parents (which meant more mom and dad time than I'd had in the last 28 years of my life... and I will be eternally grateful, but ugh), their truck, and their church's 6x10 trailer. The last saved a ton of money as we didn't have to rent from U-haul, but we were "Sharing God's Love" through north Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia... through Brooklyn's less savory neighborhoods (Brownsville, yo!) and then throughout the Midwest. As a card-carrying atheist and someone who prides herself as independent, it was quite the identity crisis.
Upon arriving in New Mexico, mom and dad went to Seattle to tie up other loose ends for my move, and my sister came down from Seattle for a quick visit. When mom and dad came back into town, they had sad and horrible news: the 17-year-old daughter of family friends had died in a car wreck the previous weekend.
My sister and I did not know the young woman in question well, although we had just seen her at our home for a holiday party. I knew her parents much better, and still cannot imagine the hole in the lives of her mother and father, her sister, and all of the people who love her. Such sudden, non-sensical loss. Devastating, and my thoughts still go out to that grieving community.
