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Blogs by Albert L Isaac
Bodies 6/5/2009 7:02:07 AM
It was raining as I drove my car down University Avenue. A sudden movement caught my eye: a bicyclist, to my right, out of control, swerving to avoid a water puddle – careening into my lane. I hit the brakes and immediately began to skid. I let up the brake, by reflex.
I didn’t have time to check my mirror for cars to my left – or maybe I did, because somehow I did know there was a vehicle there. I can’t be sure when I looked, because everything happened so fast.
I remember the man’s panicked face, clear in my mind, his clothes drenched, his actions frantic, his wobbly bike on a collision course with my car.
And I remember the first time I saw a dead body. It was a boy on a bike, in my neighborhood, when I, too, was a boy on a bike, riding home after dark. Only this boy wasn’t going home. He was lying dead in the street. His family likely unaware. Police cars all around. An ambulance parked, lights flashing. But no sense of urgency. A crime scene photographer snapping pictures.
The person who killed him didn’t stop. Hit and run. I wonder if the killer still carries the guilt of what happened that night. If he was caught. If he was ever punished for the slaughter.
I stood with my bike and watched. Empty. And then I rode home with great caution, thinking about what I had seen. Thinking about that family and their incredible loss.
That was not to be the last body I would encounter as a youngster. The second was on my corner. In the rain. An elderly man was crossing the street when the car struck him. Killing him. His face ashen, his blood running with the rain. Like the boy, he laid there while officials did what had to be done.
The driver stopped in this case. A young couple, dressed in tuxedo and evening gown, on their way to the senior prom. I don’t want to think about what the rest of their night was like – or about the family of the man lying dead in the rain-soaked road.
I remember my third dead body. The one I watched die. I worked in the hospital, then. The elderly mother of a grade school teacher was hospitalized and I went to visit. I walked in to find my teacher standing vigil by her bedside. We spoke briefly and she told me it was time, and as I stood there watching, the old woman died. Right before my eyes. The nurses were called and pronounced her dead. I went back to work, reflecting on what I had witnessed. A peaceful death after a long life.
I would see many more bodies, thousands, it would turn out. After college I went to work for 20 years at the medical examiner’s office, seeing firsthand every death I could imagine and quite a few beyond my imagination.
And in the many years since those first deaths, I’ve had many close calls that by God’s grace did not end in tragedy.
A boy on a bike, riding beside me as I drove my car, pulled in front of me. I slammed the brakes, stopping within inches of hitting him. I remember his terrified face, mouth open, eyes wide and his foot out, touching my bumper.
Another time, another bicyclist, riding down the middle of University Avenue, at night. He was a black man wearing black clothes, yelling, “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me!” as I swerved by, narrowly missing him.
A teen on skateboard, fearless in his youth, racing against the flow of traffic as I made a right turn, again missing him by scant inches. He laughed at my spontaneous exclamation, mocking me as he skated off with his cohorts.
All of this, however, is not went through my mind today as the man on the bike careened toward me. I can’t tell you what I thought at that moment. I merely reacted.
I swerved. Just a enough to avoid both the bicycle and the van approaching from behind in the left lane. I didn’t crash and I didn’t run him down.
But I drove a little slower after that, and realized today is a good day.
