but the news from Scottsboro this morning hit very much closer to my roots. Below is a Facebook post that was shared with me. It’s by a young lady, originally from Scottsboro, named Kimberly Holland. The world is blessed to have hearts like Kimberly. They help cynical old men occasionally see through the fog of their own thoughts.
From Kimberly Holland:
I never watched Kobe Bryant play in person. I never met Gigi. I don't know John, Keri, and Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, or Ara Zobayan.
Yet, yesterday I cried for them. I cried for the families that were ripped apart in a second. I cried for the children who went to bed screaming for their parents. I cried for the parents who went to bed aching for their children.
"Life is fragile; the reminders of that are painful," I wrote in my notebook last night.
Then, I awoke to this news.
"Did you know any of them?" a friend asked.
I will know them.
I know the circuitous route from the start of the park to the marina they would have taken. I can paint in the rest of the picture in my mind, what this snap at the sunken marina didn't capture. I can feel the gravel underfoot and hear it slide against the well-trodden parking lot. I know how the water ripples and gently laps the shore when it's cold, as it was last night, as it will be tonight.
At the entry of this marina is a little restaurant, the one where I had my first job in high school. I used to walk two breakfast platters out to a couple in their houseboat on Saturday mornings. She liked her eggs scrambled. He preferred over-easy. Both wanted bacon, crisp. They'd tip me $3 for the trouble.
I have family that live down the water less than a mile, family that live almost directly across from this picture in the land you can see on the other side of the water, and friends that can smell the smoke from their homes. I know the first responders and rescue teams who battled this, who pulled people from the water, who found the thing no one wishes to find in those burned-out boats. I went to church with them. I graduated high school with them. I know them by their first names. I know their parents' first names.
Even if you don't know the people who died last night, even if you've never been to the same Walmart as them, even if you've never stepped foot in 50 Taters, even if you don't know the headache that is County Park Road and Highway 72, a road they would have taken regularly — and even if you didn't much care who Kobe was or that he even had a 13-year-old daughter to lose — you should take their sudden and agonizing losses as a reminder that there is nothing we are promised. We make plans for a future we do not have. We hope for a summer we may never see. We write to-do lists for a day that may never come.
So if nothing else comes from watching first the smoldering remains of a helicopter in the rolling mountains of California and then the smoldering remains of boats in the rippling backwaters of the Tennessee River, I hope we, or maybe just specifically me, remember to be thankful that we had today — and then tomorrow, I hope I'm thankful for that, too.
From Kimberly Holland:
I never watched Kobe Bryant play in person. I never met Gigi. I don't know John, Keri, and Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, or Ara Zobayan.
Yet, yesterday I cried for them. I cried for the families that were ripped apart in a second. I cried for the children who went to bed screaming for their parents. I cried for the parents who went to bed aching for their children.
"Life is fragile; the reminders of that are painful," I wrote in my notebook last night.
Then, I awoke to this news.
"Did you know any of them?" a friend asked.
I will know them.
I know the circuitous route from the start of the park to the marina they would have taken. I can paint in the rest of the picture in my mind, what this snap at the sunken marina didn't capture. I can feel the gravel underfoot and hear it slide against the well-trodden parking lot. I know how the water ripples and gently laps the shore when it's cold, as it was last night, as it will be tonight.
At the entry of this marina is a little restaurant, the one where I had my first job in high school. I used to walk two breakfast platters out to a couple in their houseboat on Saturday mornings. She liked her eggs scrambled. He preferred over-easy. Both wanted bacon, crisp. They'd tip me $3 for the trouble.
I have family that live down the water less than a mile, family that live almost directly across from this picture in the land you can see on the other side of the water, and friends that can smell the smoke from their homes. I know the first responders and rescue teams who battled this, who pulled people from the water, who found the thing no one wishes to find in those burned-out boats. I went to church with them. I graduated high school with them. I know them by their first names. I know their parents' first names.
Even if you don't know the people who died last night, even if you've never been to the same Walmart as them, even if you've never stepped foot in 50 Taters, even if you don't know the headache that is County Park Road and Highway 72, a road they would have taken regularly — and even if you didn't much care who Kobe was or that he even had a 13-year-old daughter to lose — you should take their sudden and agonizing losses as a reminder that there is nothing we are promised. We make plans for a future we do not have. We hope for a summer we may never see. We write to-do lists for a day that may never come.
So if nothing else comes from watching first the smoldering remains of a helicopter in the rolling mountains of California and then the smoldering remains of boats in the rippling backwaters of the Tennessee River, I hope we, or maybe just specifically me, remember to be thankful that we had today — and then tomorrow, I hope I'm thankful for that, too.
