JUST MAYBE...

J

Yesterday we dressed Benjamin.  It was the most sacred and wonderful experience coupled with such sadness...so many emotions felt.  I am so grateful to have been a part of it.  After we were finished, we left from there to go and buy some frames for the pictures that I had enlarged for Benjamin's funeral.  It was not what I wanted to do...after such an emotional day, I didn't want to be in public.  I was afraid to run into someone I knew.  Thankfully that didn't happen.  I was being watched over.  We went from there to a pizza place that a friend of ours owns.  He wanted to give us some pizza for dinner - a lovely gift.  As Stevie and I were walking out of the store my head was obviously somewhere else because I wasn't even paying attention to oncoming traffic as I stepped down from the curb into the roadway of the shopping plaza.  Stevie grabbed my arm and yelled, "MOM!" and pulled me back.  It was at that moment that I noticed a truck coming who had to step on his brakes suddenly.  As I looked to my left, to that truck and it's owner, I noticed the disgust on his face.  The fact that I would carelessly step right into the road without looking both ways.  He was shaking his head back and forth while talking into his cell phone, probably bad-mouthing me to whomever he was speaking to.  I gave him a quick look of sorry and hurried across the road.  What I really wanted to say is..."can I share with you what kind of day I JUST had?  Can I share with you that I JUST lost my son a week ago, and was JUST at the funeral home dressing his body?  Can I share with you JUST how HARD that was?"  Then maybe, just maybe, he would have been a little more compassionate at my absent mindedness.  Maybe it would teach him to be a little more compassionate to others when they do stupid things because just MAYBE they've had the kind of day that I did.  And then maybe I would have kindly reminded him that it was HIS responsibility to YIELD to pedestrians, even the sad, heart broken, absent-minded ones...