Loss

There are moments in life you can never forget—things you see that will never leave you. Today driving home from visiting a volunteer’s site in the east, we passed a little boy lying dead in a pool of blood in the middle of the highway. There were no policemen or paramedics there to tend to the body or to block the road. The flow of traffic slowed slightly but continued with the drivers simply swerving around him like avoiding a piece of road kill they didn’t want to get on their tires. A large group of people had gathered to stare, but no one was crying and no one was with the body. The dead boy was just lying there alone and the people were just staring and the vehicles just kept driving past him. I wanted to know where his mother was or a relative or a friend—anybody to cry for the loss of his life. I wanted to cover his mangled and bloody body with a sheet to shield him from the gawking crowd. But just like everyone else, we merely veered and continued on passing through a scene in less than 30 seconds that will impact me for the rest of my life.