Thursday, May 26, 2011

AN INSTRUMENT OF DESTRUCTION






AN INSTRUMENT OF DESTRUCTION

It was just as Mary Piper had written, which I had the pleasure of reading.  “Life has never been easy, but today the scope of problems that befall us is greater than ever before,” is what she wrote and I am now taking it to heart.The stress was building up, but there was no relief valve.  It was just another day, and yet, it wasn’t.  It was a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon.   A time when everyone should be attending church, including me, the way things are today.  Giving thanks for how ever our mundane life was going. 

Isn’t it funny how one person life can have such an impact on someone else life, and to top it off, a total stranger.  As I held her hand knowing that there was nothing I could do for her, with tears running from both of our eyes.  I could barely make out the syllables from the gargles of blood spilling from her month.  The pain she must have been in was all I could think of and how sorry I was to be the instrument that she had chosen to end her suffering.  She was thanking me.  I should have been what I would have under normal circumstances, upset.  I wanted to kill her, or telling myself, that’s what I wanted to do to her or any moron, putting me in the position I’m facing now, but she had already solved that issue for me.  She was dying in front of me.  Cheating me out of the opportunity to tell her what I would have done to her if she ever tried to pull a stunt like this again, on me.  Her choking quickly brought me back to reality.  I just set while she lay, with her head resting within my forearm both helpless.
 
            Eidetically my mind race back and forth into a futile attempt to piece together what has happen here, out of one incommensurable second.  While there are so many eyes upon on us, probably asking and wondering the same thing as I am.  Yet it is my gibing that I can hear echoing in my head, “Look what you have done now!”  Over and over it plays like a bad Bootsy Collins’s, track, that have been scratched and the words “Stretchin’ Out,” is the only ones being repeated.  At I could have been easily noted as the author of schadenfreude for those I thought have done me a great injustice, but here in this fragile moment, this space in time, I’m in a heuristic state of self pity.

Doesn’t that just beat all?  I’m suddenly thinking of Dr. Kevorkian, aka “Dr. Death,” who was known for assisting many suicides.  As my hand is pried from her hand and I’m being ushered to a patrol car, covered in someone else blood, even he would have had sense not to commit this act, which is why he was never convicted of actually having his hands on the instrument that committed the deadly deed.

            I was on my way to work, and there she was, just standing there.  Looking normal as a typical pedestrian is supposed to appear, when they are waiting for the light to change, which the traffic was moving at a good pace for this time of day.  Heading north on Kingshighway, crossing Vandervender, with the speed limit of 35mph, I admit I was doing forty.  Just as I had traveled into the intersection, the light turned yellow.  So I gave the black Rav-4 engine what any motorist would have done in my situation.  A little more gas, to get out of the intersection, just as I did so, the stranger looked at me.  Our eyes met and she knew I was the one.  She deliberately stepped off the curb and walked into my path.  There was no way that I could have stopped, even though I tried too.  The time was , a day and time I will always remember.  I had to be at work at and I would have made it with minutes to spare, but not today.
  
Now I’m seated in the back seat of a police car labeled as the Angel of mercy, waiting for the verdict.  If I will be arrested and charged with vehicle man slaughter,  though my mind is in  shock mode, I can still hear the arresting officer speaking into a radio that is attached to his upper right shoulder, “White female, age 26 years old, of Saint Louis Mo., name Margaretta Meeks.  She’s a DOA, time of death between and .”  She was no longer a stranger to me, she was no longer just a label or a nut I chose to refer her as, but a human bean, just as Mary had written.  It makes all the difference in the world, when you don’t know what another person is experiencing.  Sure you say, “I feel your pain, or I can just imagine what you’ll feel about now,” but you don’t and you can’t until you actually experienced it for your self. Then, maybe you can use those golden words, “I’ve been there.”
So I try to wonder what burdens that she could have had that would make her want to end her life before she had a chance to live it, by hurling herself in my path at her age, as I await my own faith.  Knowing that we all have our own hopes and dreams and often fears of tomorrow, but I don’t think anyone waist much time or looses any sleep over rather or not if they are going to hell.
I guess the fear of living any longer in this world became such an idée-fixe for Margaretta, that she could think of nothing else but dying, and leaving behind only the worlds from Stereophonics, “You Gotta Go There To Come Back,” on both of our lips.

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