Two days ago, while passively watching the news on TV, something I rarely do, a live report came on that interrupted the ordinary rhythm of my day. Watching TV that day was supposed to be background noise that in a way helped my mind wander elsewhere until the news that jolted me back to reality. A road accident, involving two children. Five and seven years old.
They had just gotten down from a public bus with their father right there. He had helped them down, placed them by the pavement and turned briefly to settle the fare with the driver. To his horror, in that ordinary window of time, a lexus lost control. Brake failure according to them.
The vehicle swerved but before the father could process what was happening, his children were gone. Right before his eyes.
The camera did not need to zoom in for me to see the horror on that man’s face. It completely froze him and left him in disbelief. I watched him, on screen, try to reverse time with sheer will. His healthy children, just seconds ago, crushed completely.
When the police asked him to call his wife, he hesitated and said she would die of a heart attack. That sentence broke something in me. Because how do you make that call? How do you tell a mother that the children she packed lunch for that morning will never return? How do you form those words without your own lungs collapsing?
The story trended almost immediately. Social media did what it does best, divided itself. Some blamed the father. Said he shouldn’t have left them by the roadside. Said he should have held their hands. Said he should have foreseen danger.
But how do you foresee what has not yet happened? How do you prepare for brake failure? How do you anticipate chaos in a moment that looked completely ordinary?
Sadly, life, death, never really announces its violence and that is what unsettled me the most. It wasn’t even midnight. It wasn’t a lonely highway, not a reckless behavior. It was sadly a normal morning and a father taking his children to school. A second and that second was enough.
Since watching that clip, I’ve been thinking about how fragile everything is. How we walk around assuming the next minute belongs to us. How we plan lunch while the morning is still breathing. We argue over small things without realizing how quickly “normal” can become “never again.”
I guess we cannot be too careful with life. And yet, even with caution, there are things beyond us. That father will probably replay those seconds for the rest of his life. He will imagine different choices. Different movements. He will ask himself why he turned his back. The mother may ask the same question. Grief often looks for someone to accuse.
This story didn’t just make me sad. It made me alert. It made me want to hold people a little tighter. Cause I suddenly realize that supervision, love, presence, they matter deeply, but even then, we are not omniscient beings. We do not have fore-eyes all we have is now. And now is fragile.
So if there is anything this taught me, it is that we should all try to be present and maybe a little extra careful. But also be kind especially when tragedy strikes because not every accident has a villain. It only has victims. And the worst punishment is having survived it.