Death in my Neighborhood.

I woke up this morning at 6:20 to a fire engine screaming by our house. This never happens.

A few seconds later the bedroom was filled with the blue lights of police cruisers. I stayed in bed. It was supposed to be my day off - my morning to sleep in.

When Debbie awoke to get the kids ready for school, the emergency vehicles were still there. It turns out a fifteen year-old girl in our neighborhood was hit by a bus. She was killed. The girl lived about six houses from us. I didn't know her or her parents. I think her dad helped me catch my dog once last year when he escaped. I run by their house often. I didn't even know her name. (It was April. The news reporter told me this morning.)

Today our normally quiet suburban neighborhood is filled with local TV satellite trucks and teenage mourners. It's rather surreal. It didn't seem right to have our kids ride the bus this morning. Deb took them to school. I think I will pick them up. That's an irrational response, but it is hard to know how to react after waking up to the reality of death. It changes your routine.

I'd like to do something for the family, but they seem completely harassed already by the press. I'd just be another stranger in their way today. If I had taken the time to become their friends over the last two years, maybe that wouldn't be the case.

Death is the enemy. I hate it. To the core.

Learn from my mistakes. Invite a neighbor into your life or church this Holy Week. There is, in my humble opinion, only one person who can make the dead alive again.

Local News story here.