we carry each other

here's the thing about living in a small town: you can't not know.

I suppose you can write 28712 as your return address for years without really being part of life here. I am sure it happens that way for a lot of people, actually. but if you are paying even a little bit of attention, you just can't not know.

if you didn't know the driver (and odds are fairly good that you did: he grew up here and ran a local business), then you know someone who knew him. or you know his parents. or his sweet partner.

and if you aren't connected that directly, then maybe you know someone who saw the wreck. someone texted you from the scene saying "pray, just pray." someone one you know stopped their own car, their own family safe inside, to help, to hold his hand, to sing while they waited for an ambulance.

and if that isn't your link to the story, then you at least know what it is like to drive on rosman highway, that stretch where the road widens and the speed limit broadens. you know what it is like to be thinking of anything other than your own mortality while you look at scenery you've flowed through a hundred times before. you know what it is like to forget you are traveling in a huge hunk of metal at high velocity and that any slight compromise of that habitual action can alter the world as we know it beyond comprehension.  and even if you've never driven on rosman highway, never passed through that expanse of totally forgettable landscape where anything could happen but not much ever does, you've been on a road just like it.

and if you haven't driven in a place where it could have been you but it wasn't, then maybe you're a parent and you remember your sweet child at six months. you remember who you were in those first months of parenthood when the newness hadn't quite worn off and the person your child is was just really starting to emerge. you think about how your child knows you now, and you are grateful, so very grateful, for every moment you've been given with her.

and if you aren't a parent then you are a child, a child who grew up with or without a dad, a child whose life has been shaped because of it either way.

if you live in a small town, you can't not know. you read the tiny blurb of a newspaper article that should have said so much more. you hear people talking in the yoga dressing room, in the grocery store. you ask people you know if they've heard, how they're connected.

maybe in has nothing to do with living in a small town. maybe this is just how we grieve, how we process, how we wade through the sad vulnerability that tragedy can bring. maybe small town life is just the magnifying glass that makes it larger than ordinary.

but there is underlying comfort to be found through the grief in my small town this week. that comfort comes in knowing our community is connected, in knowing that we do know each other, or at least know each other through each other. the comfort is that it is a grief shared, that there is room for all of us to feel heartbroken and rattled whether we knew michael duckworth or not. it can be my grief (and yours, too) even if we are not his mother or partner or even his close friend. we are too tangled up around here not to share the big things like sadness. it is far too much to carry alone so we must carry it together.

and carry together we do. and carry together we will. even as we help to carry this family today we know it will be us some day that needs to feel the hands of our people all around us. the hands of those closest to us, and the hands of those that love us through those that love us. this is what love is. we love because we are loved. and the (heart)beat goes on.

here's the thing about living in a small town: you can't not know. but here's the thing about living full-hearted life: once you know, you get to be one of the helpers.

brevardians (and lovers of brevardians world-wide), please consider contributing to the mike d memorial fund to support mike's family. this is how we carry each other.