Our middle-daughter, Lindsay, was in town for the holiday. She is a freshman in college, going to PSU in Oregon. It was great to have her and her older sister Erin at home.
Before she left town on Sunday, Lindsay was checking Facebook and saw some news that disturbed her. Darby Gilbert had been in a car accident and died.
Lindsay hadn’t known Darby all that well, but well enough. By all accounts she was a lovely girl who was well-liked in school and the community. As a senior in High School, the future was hers…
It gets you to thinking, you know? How horrible to lose a friend like this. To lose a child like this. I can’t even imagine what it feels like to be her parents, or the parents of the others who were in the car with her. My heart goes out to them.
Hitting so close to home, it made me step back a bit. To consider where I’ve been, what I have, and where I’m going. It could happen to any one of us, at anytime. We have this precious gift, life, that we don’t know how to handle sometimes. We take it for granted. We don’t to it purposefully, it just happens.
How often do we have tiffs and leave the house angry? Or to be so wrapped up in work that we forget to say goodbye when we leave in the morning? How often do we say things that we really don’t mean in anger and leave in a huff? How often do we have”grass is greener” thoughts without putting additional effort into what we have?
Incidents like this get me to thinking, for the person in that crash could have been the person I neglected to say goodbye to, whom I never saw again…
I’ve been fortunate to not have this happen to me. And I don’t think about our propensity as humans to take things for granted a lot – although I’m sure I’d be better off if I did.
But I am thinking about it now, and it is a harsh reminder that one of life’s realities is that it is far to easy in this hectic world to let what really matters slip into “take it for granted land.”
A fact not lost on the parents of the three teens in that car.
So take a moment to give that extra hug, won’t you?
