He asks: “So can she call you, then?”<\/p>\n
And you reply – because you’re polite – “Sure, go ahead and give her my number,”<\/i> because you don’t really think she’ll call. And what would you say to the mother of the man who died riding the motorcycle that crossed the centerline and caused the head-on collision that almost killed one of your good friends? The entire mass of modern society – from the cell phone that dialed 911 through the computer network that dispatched the Life Flight helicopter to the emergency room and medical team that saved his life, rebuilt his bones with titanium plates and bolts, and then cared for him as he recovered from three major operations – saved my friend. <\/p>\n
Now it’s time to deal with the losses.<\/p>\n
Through the Internet, the other rider was identified, and the message came across that his survivors – his widow and parents – wished to talk to the injured rider, his girlfriend, and his parents. <\/p>\n
I wound up as the message-bearer back and forth, and after a long discussion with my friend’s parents, eventually conveyed the message that they would be willing to talk with the bereaved parents. As I passed the message, my counterpart – a close friend of the deceased rider – asked if they could call me as well.<\/p>\n
And I said yes, and didn’t think about it until today, when my cell phone rang and a strange, sad voice was there when I picked up.<\/p>\n
She called me as I merged onto the 110 South and we spoke until I left the 110 for the 405 North…maybe twenty minutes. And as I spoke with her I suddenly wasn’t just a friend of one of the riders any more; I was a parent, imagining a call like this about one of my sons and how I know my heart would be tearing its way out of my chest with every word I spoke. And we talked as parents.<\/p>\n
“He was so happy that morning when he left to go for a ride…”<\/i> And then the phone rings and the Sheriff’s car, and a mountain of grief that – in the best of all world – becomes a hill of sadness you’ll climb every day from now on.<\/p>\n
My friend is looking at a hard year to become what he was one corner before his accident – and knowing him, and watching his girlfriend lovingly sit holding his fingers – I know he’ll come out on the other side of it.<\/p>\n
We all will. All of us except one…<\/p>\n
We’ll come out of it but we will be changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He asks: “So can she call you, then?” And you reply – because you’re polite – “Sure, go ahead and give her my number,” because you don’t really think she’ll call. And what would you say to the mother of the man who died riding the motorcycle that crossed the centerline and caused the head-on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}