I've been meaning to write about this topic, car accidents, but haven't had the time, then yesterday two car accidents happened near our street and I thought I really need to write that blog.
The first day of my new job as Library assistant was the day before school began in September 2008, and I was welcomed by a librarian whose future in - laws had the night before been in a terrible car crash. Fortunately everyone survived and although the father had serious injuries from what I know today he is doing well. This started a two year (School year) cycle of hearing about horrible car accidents.
The next accident unfortunately was that of our friends teen son. No one knows for sure what happened other than in the middle of the night he lost control of his car on the way home and hit a huge tree. When the news came it was quite shocking, and I think I walked around in a daze, my husband just curled up in a ball on our bed and cried. The cat seemed to know of our stress and sorrow for this family as she curled right up next to my husband and stayed there with him most of the day. I remember being scared that night as I drove my daughter and some friends to a sleep over party from a movie. I can not imagine all my friends went through, and pray for them still daily. Their son has had a miraculous recovery, but still I'm sure has a long way to go, and has many obstacles ahead of him. It seems a second can change things so drastically.
Then this October another car accident came to my life through our school community. This one did not have any type of happy ending. A young second graders life was lost at the scene and then a few days later his mother passed away. Leaving the father. It was shocking to walk into school and to be told that a student had passed away. I couldn't quite picture who the student was, as I had only begun to see the students, as the library had just started having the classes come in and take out books. It was very hard to come to terms with this loss. Many things have been done in honor of this child this year. One that affected me was that his father donated books to the library that had been his. I was in charge of putting the books into the computer system and then deciding on a special way to denote that they were his books. It had to be something that we could let the kids know about but could not be to obvious to the average person(they didn't want lots of questions asked or have other children traumatized by it). I choose to put a purple smiley stickers on the spine of each book.
Months have gone by and children have stopped asking for his books, and yet each day I'm reminded of him as I put the books away. Each day all over the library I see these little purple smiley faces and I think of a little boy in Heaven, he is safe and happy and free of the cares of the world. Although I would not want to leave yet, I'm at peace that he is in a beautiful place. I sometimes feel as if he is smiling at me. I know that for the most part many people will forget about this. One reason I wanted to blog about it, as when I leave, I'm not sure how many other people will even remember what the purple smiley faces were for. In some ways as I look at my job lately I see all that I have helped to change. It will be left as I go forward to something new. Pieces of me will still be there even though I am gone. And a little boy although he is gone will always be remembered by me anytime I see a purple smiley. The Photo at the top is of one of the spine labels that I put the smiley faces on. There are quite a few children's books that deal with death and dying. I've actually read a few that were I thought good. One was even about a little boy who died in a car crash. I happened to find it, and we gave it to the counselor in case they wanted to use it to help the boys class mates deal with his loss. There are also some books on the loss of pets. I haven't seen any books and I'm going to do a search about people who have been in car crashes and suffered brain injury. Perhaps if there is not one, one should be made. It would be a good tool to help younger siblings or family members understand about this type of injury. As I would think that there may be quite a few people who suffer from this type of injury. I know we had a neighbor who suffered from it, and I remember a few customers at the bank I worked at. If there was a way to give knowledge and let these people gain compassion and acceptance it would be a wonderful thing. My mind is already spinning a tale.
I've got quite a few stories stuck in my head, so I'll have to either type them out soon, or get the pen to paper. I hope someday to just type some on my blog so others can give their opinion, perhaps it would get this reluctant writer out to try and publish something.
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