One summer afternoon, Jack and I were driving home from the shore in bumper to bumper traffic. As usual, he was paying attention to his surroundings.
“Too bad that guy spent more than a million bucks for that car and can only drive it 35 mph like the rest of us.”
“Which one?” I asked. “The red or the green?”
“The blue. Or he could be like that guy there. He only spent half a million for his.”
Turns out we were keeping company with a Lamborghini and a Mercedes Benz. Who knew! Not me!
Jack. Jack knew. He was paying attention. Whenever I looked at cars, I might have noticed what size they were, if they were dirty or clean, that sort of thing. And how the driver was driving, and maybe if there were interesting bumper stickers on them, but I never looked any closer, never really knew exactly WHAT was around me. I could drive next to Lamborghinis all day long and not appreciate it.
This was nothing new. Our whole married life I’d been oblivious to the distinctions between cars. They were the means to an end. I didn’t see them individually, with their own advantages, disadvantages and personalities. Jack, on the other hand, could identify most vehicles — across four lanes of traffic — in a dense fog — in rush hour — by simply sighting the taillights. “That’s a ’56 Something-or-Other. That was the year they arranged the lights like that, in that shape. The next year they reverted back to…”
It dawns on me that I keep running into people all around me — people talking on Facebook, or sitting on the plane, or traveling the train — who look like ordinary, put-together people, like the rest of the human traffic around me, but who are living with the loss of someone dear and irreplaceable. Months and years later, these people are still mourning. They’ve found a way to get around, true, but it still hurts. Their loss is no longer news, but it is an ever-present reality of their lives. And do I even see them?
As we travel this life, may we truly see who’s idling next to us.
And wave Hi.
