Nic Tinworth / Jevad
Out of context: Reply #4
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- mg3318
I had a moment like this for a complete stranger over the summer. A young woman was hit by a truck and killed a block for my office in downtown Chicago. She was out on her lunch break two blocks from her office, and a large flatbed truck making a left turn didn't see her in the crosswalk. I walked past probably 10 minutes after she'd been rushed to the hospital.
I later learned that she was pregnant, recently married, and following the story learned that the baby survived for a few days. They thought the'd be able to save her. I was devastated. For her, for the baby, for the husband who remained. I had this intense hope that the child would live and bring some kind of comfort to the father, and it was awful beyond belief to think about him and how much his life was irreversibly changed. From articles in the paper, they were an amazing couple, met in high school in Chicago, were already heavily involved in their community and full of charitable actions in their lives.
I had to talk to my therapist about it extensively during a couple sessions. It really hit me hard and I got pretty depressed any time I thought about it. It really fed into an occasional dark rumination I do about our fate, the fate of my children, the unknowns in our lives and the blessing it is to make it home safely to my family everyday, and the sheer unpredictability of that. I mean, this woman was doing a typical thing on a normal day, excited about her future and having left her husband in the morning expecting to see each other again.
It's the first time in as long as I can remember that I felt such sympathy and sadness and empathy for a complete stranger. It was brutal.
I think we all have to try and find the strength in others' loss to really appreciate what we have and how precious life is. Jevad was two years older than I am. I've thought a lot about my own life this week after the news of his passing. I hope that many of us can honor him - even as a physical stranger we never knew in person - by realizing the same things about fate and the beauty that each day is in this world.
- Beautiful words. Like most of us I didn't know him personally, but in my qbn inner garden, jevad means something, as do so many of you guys.spl33nidoru
- Thank you for writing this.shellie
- This is one of the most intensely human things I have ever read. Very moving.zarb0z
- his passing really shook me. Made me wish I'd never come back to this forum, which i know is stupid, but i've not had many losses in my life, and this was hardKhurram
- fuck me. We are all precious and virtually no control over most of the shit. take care mg.bezoar
- i hope you feel better bc now I'm depressed.hotroddy
- touchingOBBTKN
- It's shameful that this is the first time in a long time. Gotta do better.robthelad
- We've all been together a LONG time... jobs change, roles change... yet our collective friendships here have lasted almost 2 decades.exador1
- some of us have met, but most of us are just 'names' on a page to each other.
and yet....exador1 - after almost 20 years, i find myself thinking of you all as good friends. I think many of you probably feel the same way.exador1
- We all know Nic was in a bad way, but I think we were all hoping that somehow he'd pull through. Waking up the other day to the announcement...exador1
- truly shook me. I'd known the guy for SO long... we'd been joking and chatting with each other for so long, I'd followed his career, looked at photos ofexador1
- his family, his long distance running etc, ...
so. doesn't feel like it's possible that he's no longer with us.exador1 - so. just so's ya know... we may not have met, but after all these years, you're all friends of mine... take care of yourselves.exador1
- Thanks guys. :) Glad you all appreciate this. It was rough. I'm an intensely emotional person, more in a "wear my heart on my sleeve" way. Emotions and themg33
- power of them have always been a catch-22 thing for me - positively and negatively powerful all at once.mg33
- But with what happened to this woman, my mind unfortunately got far too detailed in terms of imagining trauma, the baby, etc.mg33
- I don't know how to turn that stuff off sometimes. I was just crushed to think how little newborns are, how beautiful they are, and this one's suffering.mg33
- Anyhow, don't want to bring anyone down but happy what I wrote is meaningful to all of you.mg33
- I lost my sister over 24 years ago tragically in a car wreck. Ever since I've been acutely away of the vast range of emotions that exist in the time during,mg33
- after, and well after losing someone. It changes you intensely. I was only 17 when I had to figure that out.mg33
- thank you for so eloquently stating what we feel when experiencing grief: hopefully it's helped you because we grieve better when we do it togethertimeless