About a month ago I had a car accident. Another driver called
Anwar Kamal S. sped through the GIVE WAY sign at a roundabout and hit my Mazda
2 sideways. Luckily, I was not hurt. The car was written off, though. The
accident temporarily revived some fleeting memories of feeling (seeing) my own
body pushed, pulled and dragged by a force way beyond my control more than four
years ago, in very different circumstances.
Over the next few days many different thoughts crossed my
mind. I thought about Jason
Carney and his best friend Alina, both of whom lost their lives after being
broadsided by a drunk driver twelve years ago. I never knew Jason or Alina, but
I feel sorry for them, for their senseless, absurd deaths, for the unbearable pain
their parents were inflicted. I also thought the same could have happened to me
– except it was at a roundabout (you have slow down even if just a little!) and
in my case the driver (I firmly believe) was not drunk. Muslims (the vast
majority of them at least) do not drink.
As days went by, I also thought about how the little car had
been an integral part of our lives, Clea’s life included. Not that I feel any
special attachment for the car itself, but rather for those indelible memories
I cherish more and more as I get older.
The Mazda was the car in which Clea and I drove together to
Sydney Airport one
unforgettable night in September 2008. It was also the car where Clea and I
shared those morning conversations every parent loves to have on the way to
school. I reminisced about her first year of schooling, when her brothers went with
their mother to a Childcare Centre in a different part of town, while Clea
would jump in the car with her school bag, so full of vitality, so keen to
learn.
It was the car whose engine I often had to turn on five
minutes before leaving because the frost would make it impossible to drive off to
school straightaway. I thought about Clea’s reply whenever I locked the home door
and said ‘¡Andando!’ (literally, ‘walking’, but it’s one very idiomatic way of
saying ‘Let’s get going!’). Although she already knew what it meant, Clea invariably
said: ‘Andando no, ¡en coche!’
I have also been thinking that, regrettably, somewhere, there
will be parents who will return home after the summer holidays without their
child. Nothing can prepare us for the loss of our child. It is utterly unthinkable
to consider that our child may predecease us. Nothing can bring them back. All
we can do is to face up bravely to a new day every day. And that does feel too much
sometimes.
¡Andando!
