What a strange, somber, frustrating, and seemingly endless day this has been.
The memorial service for Julie, my unfortunate coworker, was held this afternoon. I planned on attending — I even wore a shirt with a collar! — but as the time to leave approached, I found myself with a job sitting on my desk. And like a good little drone stationed on an eternal assembly line, I just automatically picked it up and started doing what I do.
It could’ve waited, especially considering that all the people who were next in line to see it went to the service and wouldn’t be back for a couple hours. I should have put it off and gone as well. But I didn’t. I figured I could take a quick look at the thing and have it finished in plenty of time to get to the memorial, and then the job would be waiting and ready to go when the next person on the line returned. Except I didn’t think through what other people were doing, and even though I was finished with fifteen minutes to spare, I found myself in a deserted six-story building with no one to give me a ride to a church too far away to walk to in anything less than an hour or so.
It’s not the first time I’ve been stymied by the realization that my car was 25 miles away from me and I was effectively trapped within the relatively small radius I can walk in a reasonable amount of time. I have good reasons for riding the light-rail to work, rational reasons: I save money on fuel expenses, and avoid wear and tear on my car; I don’t have to park my beloved Mustang in too-narrow parking stalls where it’s going to get covered with door dings; I’m being a good citizen by not contributing to traffic congestion or the ever-present crud layer that chokes the valley in the colder months; and the 30 minutes or so I spend on the train can be used reading. But once I reach the downtown area, I’m essentially stuck there, and that’s sometimes inconvenient as hell.
I only hope that wherever Julie is now, if she has any awareness of what’s happening back here on our plane, she understands why I wasn’t there. God knows it’s something I’m going to regret for a very long time.
Incidentally, I hear through a reasonably reliable grapevine that the police think they know what happened, even though they haven’t officially released the news yet.
The driver of the truck that killed her apparently lives somewhere near where the accident occurred. Supposedly, his neighbors reported that he’d been arguing with someone throughout the night, until about 5 a.m., when he seems to have decided he’d had enough, stormed out of the apartment house, and burned rubber leaving the parking lot. This explains the weirder details that were reported the other day: the man was wearing a jacket, but no shirt beneath it, and his windows were frosted over. Easy enough to imagine somebody in a blind rage not taking the time to get fully dressed or scrape the windows because he just wanted to the hell out of Dodge. No excuse, of course, but easy enough to imagine.
The traffic light at the intersection where the crash occurred was out of order, and Julie had done the right thing by treating the situation as a four-way stop. Her car was at a standstill when the pickup truck collided with her from behind. The police think the truck was traveling at about 80 mph. On a street that I believe is posted for 35, max. She never had a chance, in other words.
The one good thing — assuming it’s true — is that she died on impact from a fatal broken neck. She didn’t die in the flames. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve got a cynical little voice whispering to me that the police — or somebody along the grapevine — could be trying to spare people’s feelings, that it’s a lie and she was still alive as her car burned around her, possibly even paralyzed but not killed by that broken neck. But I’m choosing to slap that little bastard voice and tell him to shut up and go back to his corner. I want to believe she died easily.
The police believe the truck driver may have been on drugs — no surprise there — and the rumor mill says he’s going to charged with DUI, reckless driving, and vehicular manslaughter.
Just keep in mind that I can’t confirm any of the above is true. But it all seems about right, doesn’t it?
God, I’m tired…
