Witnessing the aftermath of a fatal road accident

This post comes with a warning. This material is raw and painful. Viewer discretion is advised.
I am carrying a great emptiness tonight. In the last 24 hours I have experienced both shock, and loss, mixed in with a huge sadness, a compassion, and some anger too, and I am sitting with this. I can’t bring myself to write about the otherwise interesting events of the previous week or two. It just would be too incongruous.

For a long time I have noticed the great dexterity with which kids will handle bicycles, and the way in which pedestrians and cyclists alike will “own” the road in town, and expect drivers of vehicles to navigate their way around them. No one seems to wear a seat belt, or a helmet, and one bicycle will often carry two or three people, just as a pick-up truck may carry a dozen passengers sitting, standing, or hanging out the side. And I have also wondered how they do it. Some parishioners tell me there are laws about a number of these things, but no-one seems to pay any attention to them.

Yesterday at around 3.15 pm, I witnessed a large crowd gathered around a white sheet draped over a body on the road, as I heard the sound of an arriving ambulance. I went to the school to learn from a number of teachers and students that a mother and grandmother were riding together through town just a few blocks from our church school, when a bus on a crossing street hit the grandmother and sent the 3-year old flying from the bike (either from the bar or the handlebars, according to differing accounts) to be run over on the road and meet her death not long afterwards. Some students claim the bus driver was speeding and driving dangerously. Some teachers say it would not be the first time, and provide examples from their experience.

The screaming and the severe head injury was witnessed in detail by a considerable number of our students making their way home, including quite a number of very young ones, who are not shy to go into detail. I understand that neither the mother nor grandmother had serious physical injury, but I cannot imagine the pain they will be going through in other ways.

I am told the grieving family are connected at the Nazarene church school, and I am imagining to myself that the pastor will be making his response. I also discover today that there are three of our own young students who are cousins of Ruby, the young girl who died. I have spoken and listened with a number of students and teachers, including the cousins. I have attempted to reach someone in the extended family, and have not yet succeeded. Like many of the teachers, I had resisted being part of the crowd of onlookers. Maybe I could not face it myself too.

Tomorrow morning I lead the children in our chapel services. I pray for direction and ask that nothing I say or do will add to the pain. We will pray for little Ruby and commend her to God, and we will pray for her family and everyone affected by this. Please pray for them too.

I really don’t know what else to say tonight. I really don’t.