When I was a reporter, I had to work on Christmas. I wasn't married then, so I didn't care. It's not a bad shift, really, not much to do. The hours pass pretty quickly and you get paid double time for it.
One Christmas, I brought a book to work to pass the time. But I never got to read it because of the accident.
In the old newsrooms, the police radio was on all the time and through familiarity, you trained your ear to hear only certain calls and ignore the drone of mundane traffic. Police jargon is sterile and professional, with no trace of emotion because it has to be. So in the dead calm of a Christmas newsroom, a flat voice that sent two cars to an accident with injuries followed a few seconds later by the code "10-31, coroner notified" meant this was no longer a quiet Christmas.
The accident was on a stretch of road that was empty then but is full of houses and Starbucks and Panera, now, where happy people laugh and talk and share their lives. It had been snowing earlier that day but the road was pretty clear, except for patches of what they now call "black ice," wet spots that freeze over dark pavement and are nearly invisible.
From what they could piece together, she was on her way home to see her mom, from some university a couple of states away. She was driving a Volkswagen Beetle that kids used to have before Toyotas and Hondas and Ford Fusions.
I owned one once. Mine was red and rode like a carnival ride. In the winter, it was always cold inside and sometimes it was too cold to start so we'd have to push it down a hill, pop the clutch and hope she would turnover. One time, I skidded on an icy road and piled into a snow bank. I pushed it out by myself and drove on like nothing ever happened.
This girl spun out as well, but unlike me she skidded into the path of an oncoming truck instead of a fluffy snow bank. The engines on those things were in the rear so the only things between her and the grill of the truck was about 2 inches of metal and 2 feet of air. We all stood around the wreck, flares whistling, stomping our feet to stay warm. She died immediately, the cops told me.
I went to the accident scene because that's what we did back then. We went places and talked to people and told stories that made you feel like you were standing right next to me when you read them. "Put me there" my first editor told me. Good advice, only I couldn't imagine who'd want to be where I was right now.
The cop who stood with me figured the girl left school on Dec. 23 and drove pretty much straight through with a few stops here and there for coffee, a sandwich and a little nap. He figured she slept in the car because there was a red plaid blanket on the pavement a few feet from where what was left of the car settled. The body was gone by the time I got there and I was glad of that. Dead people look so small and sometimes, their faces stayed with you awhile.
"Tough break," I remember him saying, like the home team had just fumbled as it was driving for the winning score. He was sincere enough, I guess, however "tough break" didn't exactly put it in perspective, being Christmas and all.
But that's the suit of armor you put on when you go to one of these accidents. You just look past it so it doesn't become part of you. Or you go to a safer place, like religion. Religion is a comfortable place to hide when you just can't explain something as child as dying in a car crash six miles from home on Christmas Day.
The cop doing the paper was a friend of mine. He asked me if I wanted to go along when he made the death notification. Sometimes people in shock are easier to talk to then than after they have a few minutes to realize the magnitude of what has occurred.
I thanked him but said I'd better be getting back. I really didn't have to, and I think he knew it. But if he did, he didn't let on. The death notification didn't bother me. I'd been on those before. You just be someone else for a while and you don't feel a thing.
I didn't want to go because I knew the car she was expecting on that Christmas afternoon was supposed to be her daughter's, not a cop coming to tell her that her daughter was dead. I wanted to avoid the cruel destruction of the illusion of happiness. The event that would bring the overwhelming grief had already occurred, but in that house six miles away, for a few more precious moments, it would still be a warm and happy Christmas.
I sometimes think that life's true purpose is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by reminding us that the moments of sorrow heavily outweigh the joy.
I drove back slowly and parked in front of the building. I climbed the stairs and wrote a few paragraphs about the accident in silence before sending it over to the copy editor who read without comment like he had read 100 such stories and sent it on for publication.
Before the paper was out that night, the managing editor brought us some champagne and plastic cups to cheer us up.
I wasn't going to have any, but then I thought, "What the hell, it's Christmas."
One Christmas, I brought a book to work to pass the time. But I never got to read it because of the accident.
In the old newsrooms, the police radio was on all the time and through familiarity, you trained your ear to hear only certain calls and ignore the drone of mundane traffic. Police jargon is sterile and professional, with no trace of emotion because it has to be. So in the dead calm of a Christmas newsroom, a flat voice that sent two cars to an accident with injuries followed a few seconds later by the code "10-31, coroner notified" meant this was no longer a quiet Christmas.
The accident was on a stretch of road that was empty then but is full of houses and Starbucks and Panera, now, where happy people laugh and talk and share their lives. It had been snowing earlier that day but the road was pretty clear, except for patches of what they now call "black ice," wet spots that freeze over dark pavement and are nearly invisible.
From what they could piece together, she was on her way home to see her mom, from some university a couple of states away. She was driving a Volkswagen Beetle that kids used to have before Toyotas and Hondas and Ford Fusions.
I owned one once. Mine was red and rode like a carnival ride. In the winter, it was always cold inside and sometimes it was too cold to start so we'd have to push it down a hill, pop the clutch and hope she would turnover. One time, I skidded on an icy road and piled into a snow bank. I pushed it out by myself and drove on like nothing ever happened.
This girl spun out as well, but unlike me she skidded into the path of an oncoming truck instead of a fluffy snow bank. The engines on those things were in the rear so the only things between her and the grill of the truck was about 2 inches of metal and 2 feet of air. We all stood around the wreck, flares whistling, stomping our feet to stay warm. She died immediately, the cops told me.
I went to the accident scene because that's what we did back then. We went places and talked to people and told stories that made you feel like you were standing right next to me when you read them. "Put me there" my first editor told me. Good advice, only I couldn't imagine who'd want to be where I was right now.
The cop who stood with me figured the girl left school on Dec. 23 and drove pretty much straight through with a few stops here and there for coffee, a sandwich and a little nap. He figured she slept in the car because there was a red plaid blanket on the pavement a few feet from where what was left of the car settled. The body was gone by the time I got there and I was glad of that. Dead people look so small and sometimes, their faces stayed with you awhile.
"Tough break," I remember him saying, like the home team had just fumbled as it was driving for the winning score. He was sincere enough, I guess, however "tough break" didn't exactly put it in perspective, being Christmas and all.
But that's the suit of armor you put on when you go to one of these accidents. You just look past it so it doesn't become part of you. Or you go to a safer place, like religion. Religion is a comfortable place to hide when you just can't explain something as child as dying in a car crash six miles from home on Christmas Day.
The cop doing the paper was a friend of mine. He asked me if I wanted to go along when he made the death notification. Sometimes people in shock are easier to talk to then than after they have a few minutes to realize the magnitude of what has occurred.
I thanked him but said I'd better be getting back. I really didn't have to, and I think he knew it. But if he did, he didn't let on. The death notification didn't bother me. I'd been on those before. You just be someone else for a while and you don't feel a thing.
I didn't want to go because I knew the car she was expecting on that Christmas afternoon was supposed to be her daughter's, not a cop coming to tell her that her daughter was dead. I wanted to avoid the cruel destruction of the illusion of happiness. The event that would bring the overwhelming grief had already occurred, but in that house six miles away, for a few more precious moments, it would still be a warm and happy Christmas.
I sometimes think that life's true purpose is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by reminding us that the moments of sorrow heavily outweigh the joy.
I drove back slowly and parked in front of the building. I climbed the stairs and wrote a few paragraphs about the accident in silence before sending it over to the copy editor who read without comment like he had read 100 such stories and sent it on for publication.
Before the paper was out that night, the managing editor brought us some champagne and plastic cups to cheer us up.
I wasn't going to have any, but then I thought, "What the hell, it's Christmas."
