You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The pain in a mother’s heart.
We are gathered inside a small, cramped trailer in rural Tennessee.
There are 3 TV stations before a couch. There are 6 journalists staring at an emotional woman, surrounded by pictures of her 14 year old daughter.
It’s a gaggle of tripods and lights and reporters trying to seem concerned and not seeming competitive in such a horrific moment.
The woman is trying to hold it together, but she is not doing well.
She is wearing a sun dress. She is eating a breakfast sandwich.
“I’m sorry you all,” she says softly. I haven’t with all this happening.”
All this is a pain that few of us will ever know, could ever fathom.
Less than 12 hours earlier, her 14 year old child was killed, run over in the street by a hit and run driver.
In a sick twist of fate, the mother was coming home from a trip and encountered the accident scene on the road a few blocks from her house.
She had a bad feeling, but didn’t realize the blue lights and ambulance crews working ferociously to save a life, would be her blood.
She tells us that her rising 8th grader is a warm, bright child.
She loves animals and wouldn’t hurt a thing, the mother says staring at her daughter’s photos propped up on the coffee table.
She shows us the note her daughter wrote. It is sad. It is poignant. It simply reads, If you are reading this we walked to the Dollar Store.”
More cruel irony.
“I didn’t allow her to walk on that busy highway,” she will tell us. “I told her she could be hit by a car.”
The mother stops and swallows, but she remains strong.
Then I look at the woman who is clinging to emotional stability.
“Mam. What’s the pain in a momma’s heart?”
A tear wells in the woman’s eye. That tear multiplies, expands, and then gushes down her cheek. The emotional dam that she was holding back has been breached and she lets out the emotions of a thousand daggers to the heart.
“I’m mad. I am so mad.”
She pauses and cries. Her cry is piercing. Her cry is quietly penetrating every living soul in the room. We are silent and some of the news crews look away.
“how can you knock a kid in the ditch, kill her and leave her there? I don’t understand. They treated her like human trash. Worse. That’s my daughter I have to live without because someone is an idiot. My heart is broke.”
As she utters this powerful, visceral statement, the small trailer seems to percolate and over load with sounds, inappropriate for the moment.
She is gulping in air, filling her lungs with despondent chortles of unbelievable pain. Tears are streaming down her face.
Suddenly from the background, like nails on a chalk board, the sound of iPhone ringing with ring tones that are a cross between a sand blaster and Metallica.
To a journalist trying to capture this moment, this pristine, quietly devastating moment, the phones buzzing like a rock concert are sacrilegious like dumping excrement in the collection plate at church.
I am appalled, but remain calm.
The ring tones seem to agitate the trailer dogs, also inside the home, who suddenly get up and begin bumping into our legs, pushing their bony faces into our shins, begging for attention.
In the background there are 4 or 5 family members.
They are whispering loudly and muttering aloud.
I feel like slapping them.
“Don’t you realize your loved one is here baring her soul to us?” I feel like saying.
Their cell phones keep ringing with hideously obnoxious ring tones and I want to knock them in the head, but I stay calm and let the mother say her piece.
This is her time.
Her daughter is killed by a hit and run driver and now she urges him to give himself up and give her family some solace.
“That’s a human being, that’s my daughter that I have to live without because someone is an idiot. My heart is broke,” she says.
The room again grows quiet. The phones are muted. The dogs lay down and lick their paws quietly.
A momma’s words are powerful, each word meaningful.
“I want the driver to surrender himself so my family can rest in peace.”
Her words trail off into the quiet of a packed trailer home.
No ring tones sound. No inappropriate whispers. No more stupid reporter questions.
The dog yawns quietly and rests his head on my shoes.
I look at the momma with the tears in her eyes.
I hope for her sake we find that driver.
Life’s Crazy™