Sometimes I think about it around this time of year, other years it just slips by quietly. It haunts me when my thoughts turn to it. It helps me to keep in perspective the fragility of life and just how invincible we’re not.

On February 9, 2002, back when we lived in Florida, I was driving home from my job at the radio station on an overcast Saturday evening just after 6:00. The rain had just begun to drizzle. I was driving southbound on a 4-lane highway when I saw a commotion about 1000 feet ahead. It was starting to get dark so I couldn’t quite trust my eyes, but it looked like a large pickup truck in the northbound lane had just crossed the 20-foot median and struck one of the cars ahead of me. The immediate train of brake lights and silhouette of spinning vehicles confirmed it. I continued slowly in the shoulder of the road to the vicinity of the accident. I could have turned down that side street that would take me around the scene, and to my home where my wife was making dinner in advance of my arrival. It was then that I parked and called her to tell her to go ahead and feed the kids and that I was getting out at this accident scene. I still didn’t know why. I felt led to do so, however.

As I walked with tall steps through the moist, uncut grass along Military Trail in near darkness, I could see the large pickup sitting haphazardly across the lanes I was just traveling in seconds ago. I saw two people on the ground near the truck. A man sat on the ground outside the driver side door and yelled into his cell phone. The woman looked dazed as she sat on the ground outside the passenger side door. I found out the next day that her name was Robin. Farther south in the same lanes sat a large sedan with a front end crumpled into the cabin of the car. I heard the screams of a girl coming from that area. I, like so many others who stopped, went in that direction. As I continued walking through the grass, I saw a person laying just off the road, about 20 feet from the truck. This person was way too far from the sedan to have come from it, so I asked Robin if there was someone else in her vehicle that was unaccounted for. She was of no help at the time. She seemed confused and kept saying, “Oh, Georgie… My God…” Against my advice to move at all, Robin painfully dragged herself near the side of the road, about 10 feet away from where I stood over this other person. I asked Robin repeatedly if there was someone else riding with her whom she wasn’t able to find and she stated that there was. She then started asking, “Where is she?” She? “A female?“, I asked. The person laying face down in the grass before me was wearing an A-shirt and jeans, with a buzz cut for hair. Not typical female attire or style. I later found out that this girl’s name was Nadine. She had been ejected the 20 feet or so from the truck. I leaned down and grabbed Nadine’s wrist to feel for a pulse. There was one… Thank God. I confirmed again with Robin that this in fact was a female I was looking at. She again confirmed it and continued to mutter to herself, oddly not concerned with me or what I was doing. So I leaned down on one knee, grabbed Nadine’s hand and spoke into her ear. I said, “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me…” I could feel a slight movement in her hand. To confirm that I wasn’t imagining it, I repeated myself. This motionless woman’s hand barely moved, but enough that I could tell that she heard me. I then got closer to her ear as a few people stood behind me and watched and cautioned me not to move her. I wasn’t about to. I just took the next minute or so to pray into her ear. As I heard sirens wailing minutes later, I felt for a pulse again. It was gone. Nadine had just passed, face down, in peace, surrounded by strangers. My stomach dropped. I felt sick. She was 29. So was I.

Screams could still be heard coming from the other car. The sedan had a group of people around it by that time. Minutes later, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles arrived. A crowd of people jumped out of these trucks, grabbed their gear and began to rush the scene. One guy ran up to us with his box and asked if there was a pulse. I said no. He checked for himself. There wasn’t. He asked me to help him flip her over. He attached this wire to her and looked at his screen. Whatever it indicated, he then stood up and walked away from us, headed to the sedan. He never came back. I sat there for what seemed like ages. I was asked to stay to give my statement, but asked to back up so that the police could cordon off the area. About a half hour later, I left and went home. I left the scene not knowing their names or anything else about these people I met tragically on the way home that night.

The next day, I read the Palm Beach Post to see what details they had of the incident. The ”Georgie” Robin kept referring to was the 38-year-old driving the truck with Nadine and Robin as passengers. The sedan carried a family of three. The screams we heard on the scene were those of 17-year-old, Vassilia, a girl that would find herself an orphan within 24 hours as a result of George’s decision to drink and drive that night. She lost both parents. The newspaper put names to all the people I saw that night. It said that Robin was in stable condition at a local hospital. I called her two days later and introduced myself to let her know that Nadine passed peacefully. I knew she wouldn’t remember the night, but needed to know what I knew. She was floored. She sobbed and sobbed over the phone to me. She asked me why I called her. Again, like when I got out of the car that night at the scene, I had no idea why other than to say that I wanted her to know. She thanked me. Robin told me how Nadine had just come from New Jersey less than a month ago to get away from her father and his dislike for her lifestyle. It was then that she asked me for a favor.

She then asked if I would call Nadine’s dad in New Jersey to tell him the story I had just told her. I gulped. Hard. I said I would and took down the number she gave me. We exchanged numbers and hung up.

I laid there and looked at the number and wondered if I had the strength to do it. I wondered if I had the right to do it. I wondered if it was even my place at all. Like the two times before, I wondered WHY I was even considering it. I felt like an outsider whose presence may or may not have been welcome in such a tragic circumstance. It was then that I thought of my three children. But then I thought about it as a parent and then the answer seemed clear. The directive laid out before me very plainly. I, myself, would want to know – God forbid – how my precious child passed. Twelve hundred miles from home, in front of strangers, but with peace, dignity and a prayer.

I dialed the number, but had to sit because my knees knocked uncontrollably. No answer. I left a message to have someone call me about Nadine. The next day, I grew uncomfortable with this burden and sought to offload it quickly. I remembered Robin telling me where she came from in New Jersey. I searched the internet for anyone in the small town in New Jersey with the same last name as Nadine’s. I found a few and again began to dial. A man answered at the second number. He said he knew Nadine.

I introduced myself and said that I was calling from Florida to share a story. When I asked who it was, he stated that he was Nadine’s father. I said that I called for no other reason than to answer any questions a parent might have about their child’s last moments on earth. It sounded like a lot of commotion on his end as he yelled over a room full of people to call others to pick up other phones in his house to hear what I had to say. He asked approximately ten questions and sounded sadder than when I found him, yet stated that he was relieved. He wanted to know how she was dressed, how she looked, whether or not she was in pain, who she was with, who was there, what I prayed, what the scene looked like… He admitted that he was confused as to why I was calling, he kept asking me, “So you were just driving by?” He also kept asking, “So you didn’t even know her?” I stated that I didn’t. He thanked me heavily. I gave him my number and offered to speak with him whenever he needed me. I never heard from him again. From what Robin told me, he and Nadine parted on bad terms. Little did he know that a month later, he’d be burying this girl of his that he last saw with a disapproving heart. Life’s fragile. not to mention short. I kept thinking about this during my talk with him.

 George is currently serving a life sentence for his DUI that night. He was on probation at the time for another DUI. Sadly, it took three deaths to finally get him from behind a wheel. Vassilia finished high school and went on to Dartmouth College. I was invited by Robin and Nadine’s girlfriend to come to a fundraiser at a local nightclub to help her dad with funeral expenses. If I remember correctly, Robin told me that her dad didn’t accept the money raised for her that night at that nightclub. It still was a great thing for me to go, however. I got to see pictures of Nadine when she was full of life and vitality. I got to hear stories of how she loved all those around her and touched the lives of all that knew her well. I needed that to get me past the images of her that stuck in my mind from that night I first saw her.

 I look back on that as one of my first realizations of God’s ways. God has always been there in my life, but it was then that I, as a new believer at the time, realized that I was there that night for a reason. I say humbly… I got out of the car inexplicably. I called the hospital inexplicably. I called New Jersey and searched for a stranger inexplicably.

God knew all along.

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