Words You Don’t Want to Hear 10



 Four words that you don’t want to hear, especially when the call comes in the morning at a time you don’t usually hear from your son, the night owl-worker:  “Are you sitting down?”


“No.”

“Sit down, Ma, sit down.”

He was hit…by a cab…while crossing the street.  He looked both ways, “like you taught me to.”  The cab came out of nowhere.  He was tossed into the air, his head slammed into the front window, he rolled off the car and started walking until he was stopped by witnesses.


“I’m okay ma, but I could have been dead…”

Lots of bruises, a few scars, lingering pain, some stitches. Tremendous gratitude, tremulous wonder.  Why did I survive? he thinks.


A few weeks earlier, another budding comic, a young woman, his friend was in a car accident.  Her call went differently.  There was no happy ending.  She died.


Why her and not him?


It wasn’t his time?


And it was hers?


Seems so.


But why?


We don’t know why.


So, let’s accept it, embrace it, and move on.


You didn’t have to have a car accident for your Mom to come see you.


Let’s not let another year go by that we don’t see each other.  Let’s not take for granted that we have all the time in the world because we don’t.  Let’s bury the hatchets that need to be buried, repair the estrangements that shouldn’t be, and be and do love in the world. 


I am beyond grateful, thankful, prayerful, and mindful.  I almost lost my son, he dodged another bullet (figuratively and literally a while back).


Amen.


 


About Candelaria Silva

Candelaria Silva-Collins is a marketing, community outreach and programming consultant; writer; and trainer/facilitator who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She has designed and facilitated workshops on a wide variety of topics including communication, facilitation, job search skills, team building, and parenting issues. She currently coordinates the Community Membership Program of the Huntington Theatre Company. Her work as Director of ACT Roxbury was profiled in several publications, including The Creative Communities Builders Handbook. Candelaria’s children’s stories, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in local and national publications and she is an active blogger. Her publications include the booklets, Handling Rejection; Pushing through Shyness: Networking Tips when You’re Shy, Slow to Warm Up or Just don’t Feel you Belong; and Real Questions about Sex & Relationships for Teens: A Discussion Guide for Parents. She has served on the boards of Goddard College, Wheelock Family Theatre, Boston Foundation for Architecture, and Discover Roxbury. She is currently Chair, Designators of the Henderson Foundation.

Leave a Reply

10 thoughts on “Words You Don’t Want to Hear