{"id":1530,"date":"2015-03-12T07:47:22","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T13:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1530"},"modified":"2015-03-12T20:00:19","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T02:00:19","slug":"a-death-literally-too-close-to-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/03\/a-death-literally-too-close-to-home.html","title":{"rendered":"A death (literally) too close to home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This, from the local news yesterday: \u00a0\u201cArlington Heights woman dies from crash injuries<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story: \u00a0mere blocks from my home, a 16-year-old, on his or her way to school, hit a 57 year old woman out walking her dog, and she subsequently died from her injuries. \u00a0Terrible news.<\/p>\n

Checks are being done on the speed and they\u2019re pulling the phone records, to see if the teen was on the phone or texting at the time. \u00a0In any case, this was the first school day after daylight savings time, so this may have been\u00a0the first time the teen had driven to school in the dark, or at any rate the first time since October. \u00a0Based on the time given, the kid wasn\u2019t late for school, so would have had no objective reason to feel it necessary to speed.<\/p>\n

The particular intersection? \u00a0On the south\u00a0side of the street the driver was on is a large park, where it\u2019s quite popular for dog-walkers to circle around once or twice. Based on a check on her address, her house was to the south of the park, so it\u2019s not obvious why she would have been crossing the street there.\u00a0 \u00a0There isn\u2019t a stop sign at that intersection, so it\u2019s not as simple as \u201cthe kid blew the stop sign,\u201d which makes it harder to imagine what combination of inattention on the driver and the pedestrian\u2019s part (do you really step out onto the street if there\u2019s a car coming?) caused this.<\/p>\n

Yes, that last sentence makes it sound as if I\u2019m blaming the victim. \u00a0I really don\u2019t mean it to be, but yet, in a way, bad as this sounds, part of me would like to hear that she had dashed out in to the street unexpectedly, or that some other mitigating factor meant that it wasn\u2019t really the kid\u2019s fault \u2014 even though it\u2019s far more likely that it was, due to texting or just plan inexperience.<\/p>\n

(Update: \u00a0my husband suggested that she might have been not crossing but walking in the street due to puddles on the sidewalk, as we did on a walk around that park a couple days ago, since the melting snow \u00a0had created quite a number of puddles\u00a0on the sidewalk.)<\/p>\n

Because (though I knew neither the woman nor the teen) that could have been my son. \u00a0Or could be my son \u2014 a year and a half from now when he gets his license \u2014 on his way home from band practice.<\/p>\n

And as devastating as this is for the victim\u2019s family, it\u2019s just as unfathomable for me to be in that teen\u2019s shoes: \u00a0to know that you killed someone, not intentionally, but still, it was you behind the wheel \u2014 and you can never, ever undo that.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re headed to my parents in a couple weeks. \u00a0(Most recent backstory here<\/a>.) \u00a0It\u2019s been nearly a year since the fall that started all the trouble, the rehab, the confusion, the brain surgery. \u00a0And my mom\u2019s updates are discouraging; mentally and physically, he still has significant ongoing problems \u2014 and he\u2019s only 76. \u00a0But the thing is: \u00a0the fall was his own fault, and not just in a \u201cyou should have been more careful\u201d sort of way (but no, I\u2019m not going to share the particulars); this wasn\u2019t just ordinary consequence-of-aging sort of fall.<\/p>\n

And again \u2014 no one can undo this. \u00a0And I think the fact that this was already on my mind when I read about this accident, means it hits me differently emotionally.<\/p>\n

[update: \u00a0for what it\u2019s worth, my husband pointed me to a prior article<\/a> with more details: \u00a0she was indeed crossing the street, with headphones on, and she was in the middle of the street when she was hit.]<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This, from the local news yesterday: \u00a0\u201cArlington Heights woman dies from crash injuries.\u201d The story: \u00a0mere blocks from my home, a 16-year-old, on his or her way to school, hit a 57 year old woman out walking her dog, and she subsequently died from her injuries. \u00a0Terrible news. Checks are being done on the speed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58,230],"class_list":["post-1530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family","tag-teenagers"],"yoast_head":"\nA death (literally) too close to home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This, from the local news yesterday: \u00a0"Arlington Heights woman dies from crash injuries." 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