The dangers of heroin

I hope you weren't alone. That's all I keep thinking.

I hope you weren't alone when your heart stopped. I hope that you were too strung out to be scared. I hope that you were somewhere warm and safe and that you weren't in some rundown apartment or a seedy motel room.

I never thought that you would be dead at 26.

I will always remember your impatience - the way you sometimes seemed exasperated with the world. I have a clear recollection of you sighing my name, as if you could not believe you actually had to sit down and explain whatever it was that we were talking about to me. And your hands would flail through the air as you attempted to drive your point home.

We were not close, you and I. We never really were, but I considered you a friend. We had not seen each other in nearly a decade, but I thought about you often and wondered how you were and what you were doing. It never occurred to me that you'd become an addict, although I cannot say it was entirely a shock. But I want you to know that I am proud of you. Even if you did not succeed, I am proud of you for trying to kick your habit. I am proud of you for taking that first step.

It is true; it may have been nearly ten years since I last heard your voice, but I say this with certainty: you are a good person, Kyle.

I hope you weren't alone when your heart stopped. I hope that your final moments on earth were euphoric ones.

It is a tragedy, for you to die at 26. I hope your weren't alone.

T is for Traumatic Tuesday

On Tuesday, I drove into work sometime in the afternoon. I decided to primarily work from home that day in order to avoid the distractions that being in my office can sometimes cause (read: getting sidetracked by other projects).

In the early afternoon, I decided that I would briefly stop by my place of work in order to check my email (accessible only from the computer in my office) and to briefly chat with my boss. There was also a tank of helium sitting next to my desk and I had vowed to myself the week before that I would leave messages for my coworkers after inhaling some of the gas. So I grabbed my dog (if I have to go to work, so does he) and proceeded to make the 20 minute drive to the office.

As I was approaching the street my place of employment is on, I cursed the cars ahead of me as they slowed down for no apparent reason. Dog was beginning to whine (I made him sit in the back seat and he did not approve of this) and I was low on patience. Soon, I came to see what had caused the delay. A man lay on the sidewalk, a handful of people rushing around him, with blood pooling on all sides. A bicycle, battered and bent, was situated to his right and several cars were parked erratically in the gas station parking lot behind him.

The sight shocked me. More so the blood than anything else. As I sat in my car, waiting to make my turn, I wondered if I should ignore the cell phone ban and call my place of work to tell them to send a nurse to the scene. I shook off the idea as the sound of approaching sirens answered my question for me.

I spent the rest of the day distracted, thinking about the injured cyclist and wondering if he would pull through.

He did not.

At twenty-one years of age, on a sidewalk in front of an Esso and a Tim Hortons, his life came to an end. Surrounded by strangers, on an otherwise unremarkable day, he made his exit. How heart breaking. How horrible for his family, but, also, how horrible for the middle-aged man driving the car that hit him.

We often offer sympathy to the individuals who have lost a loved one under such circumstances, but we rarely offer up concern for the people who have to live with the knowledge that they were behind the wheel of a car that took the life of another human being. It is easy to place blame. It is easy to say, "He should have been paying closer attention" or "He shouldn't have been so impatient!" But, what it comes down to, is that it only takes a second. It only takes one bad choice, a glance away from the road for just a few heartbeats, to irrevocably change the world. I know that I, for one, am guilty of not paying attention as closely as I should. I have on more than one occasion uttered the words, "Wow, that was close."

I do not think I will forget this past Tuesday for a while to come.