Death. It comes at the most inconvenient times. It was about a year ago, I think. I was driving to work. It was a beautiful morning. Most of my drive to work is freeway. The traffic usually isn’t bad. On the morning in question, I saw a few police cars stopped in the median, their lights flashing. As I passed them, I noticed a small pickup truck also sitting in the median. It was pointed in the opposite direction from the way I was going. Policemen were standing around the vehicle, and a man was seated behind the wheel, his face calm in the brief glimpse I had of him.
But it was obvious from the damage to the pickup that the vehicle had rolled. And I had no proof of it, but I had a sense that the man behind the wheel had died or was at the very least seriously injured. I drove the rest of the way to work thinking about that unknown man. Thinking about his day. How normal it was. And how quickly it had changed.