Intersections

I don’t enjoy spending a lot of time thinking about what might have been. I do it anyway.
I did it Saturday. I thought about how all of us move among ourselves.
All the pleasures and all the pain of life come from being connected to each other. Not just sharing the same space at the same moment. But having a real influence in each other’s lives.
I used to think of these as little things. But that’s because I wasn’t experiencing my own life. These things only seem small from a distance. But not when you’re in them.
I changed my Saturday plans for traveling to a beach party in Port Stanley with a dear friend to remain in Toronto. I wanted to attend a march to celebrate the unique gifts of psychiatric survivors. I met a friend there who might have walked alone if I hadn’t joined her. There was drumming and singing. I loaned my voice to an old Bob Marley song. I put my hands together and smiled at people I knew. And I smiled at the people I didn’t know. I was loud.
Many people recognized me, because I helped to open the Mad Pride celebration with a speech a few days earlier. I was still receiving love for the speech.
The moment I can feel from that day, the most important one, happened when a woman I met an hour earlier offered me a deep hug and whispered in my ear, using words from my own speech, assuring me that our pain, my pain, wasn’t just a cry in the wilderness.
When Saturday’s march was over and the musicians were seated, I stood and worked my way through the crowd of people, some of them dressed in hospital gowns. I touched my new friend on her painted shoulder and returned all the love in her hug from days ago. I offered her a gentle kiss on the cheek. I didn’t have a lot to say. Maybe I said it all. I thanked her for, everything. And she thanked me again for getting the week’s events started.
In that moment, I couldn’t help but feel that the things that brought me to experience those useless years of despair and profound loss were the same ones that guided me to so deeply touch a woman I don’t even know.
I spent the rest of the evening trying to shake the terrifying image of something I experienced as the afternoon began. I watched an elderly woman cross the street against the light and into the path of a large cube van. The screech of the van’s tires called my attention to what she was doing. She went down with such force that her tiny body was carried at least three metres into the intersection, like something was pulling her along the ground and away from the pain in the van. I grabbed my keys and ran out my door. I was the first one at her side. The distraught driver joined me in my helplessness. He repeatedly called out to God. He began to move the woman and I told him to stop. We were soon joined by others with cell phones and the intersection became filled with cars and people, all keeping some distance as they called for help. The driver and I just stood there, mouths too dry to speak, hearts strangled.
A nurse took over until an ambulance arrived. I stood at the corner watching the progress of something I’ve seen too many times before. A police officer took my statement. Then he apologized to me for having to witness the accident. I immediately dismissed it. I didn’t want to contribute any sorrow to what I saw. But I thought a lot about it. He was right. I needed that moment of kindness. I held onto it as I tried to escape the terrible image in my mind.
I realized something else. I wasn’t helpless. The driver was going to move her. It was life’s own gesture. He just wanted her to stand, to say something, to give us a sign of herself. He wanted to reverse the flow of life and death and try to do something differently. Anything. But he may have hurt her by moving her. I said no and he stopped. I wonder now if speaking for her made a difference. It was little enough. I wanted to do something too. Maybe I protected her. It was what had to be. I think of it now as a moment of love for someone I don’t even know.
There are so many intersections in my life. Little ones. Big ones. Sometimes I don't feel part of them.
But today, because of words and music and drumming and the healing power of hope, there's a little more joy in one kind woman's heart. And in mine.
Sadly, for another woman, there are flowers at the side of the road.

-Meghan