A Life Lost

If you were to ask anyone what their greatest fear is, you may get the odd silly comment in response, but I think generally speaking the answer would be ‘something happening to my family and friends’.

A fear of every parent is for the well-being and safety of their children. When they are young, parents do their utmost to protect them from danger and would, if asked, be prepared to fight to the death for them. It sounds very dramatic, but it is a primitive, instinctual response and one that all loving parents would recognise. It’s also one, that as a parent of adult children, I still feel.

As children grow old enough and start making their own, at first tentative, way in the world, parents look on with pride and not a small amount of worry. Worry comes with the territory. The urge to protect your children never goes away, but as a parent you know your child has to be independent in order to survive in the world. And so you watch them from afar, ready to offer help if needed.

As much as parents want to defend and shield their children, there are circumstances where they can’t, and go through the horror of some of their worst fears coming true.

I awoke this morning to the news that a friend and her husband had received that knock on the door by the police a few days ago, informing them that their twenty-one year old daughter, H, and her fiancé, J, had been involved in an accident in their car. J was driving and had hit a tree. He died in the car. H sustained critical injuries, bleeding on the brain being the most serious.

I can only begin to imagine the sheer, awful terror my friends are feeling right now. The helplessness they must be feeling. There is absolutely nothing they can do for their daughter, they are powerless. All they can do is put their trust in the skill of medical staff and will their daughter to recover as she lays in intensive care.

Equally, I cannot begin to imagine how the parents and family of J are feeling. He was twenty-one years old, with his whole life ahead of him. All that potential; all that promise; the plans he and H made together, gone in an instant.

Whatever the cause behind the accident, which I don't know, the devastation it has left will be felt for a long, long time.

Wherever you are in the world, please spare a thought for J and H.

UPDATE 29/12/2010

H is regaining consciousness and is aware of and able to respond to people talking to her, although she is unable to speak due to having a tube down her throat. She is now breathing unaided, but the doctors are unwilling to remove the tube at the moment. She is unaware of what happened to J, which is a bridge that will have to be crossed.

I really hoped the accident hadn’t been caused by drink-driving, which is, unfortunately, a natural assumption to make I think. I was told today the accident happened because of black ice – J hadn’t been drinking and he wasn’t driving too fast. It happened on a stretch of road where there’s been a water leak for several weeks. Because temperatures have been extremely cold at night, the road proved lethal that night.

It was an extremely unfortunate accident, with no-one to blame. Except perhaps the water company for not fixing that damn leak.