Timing

It's almost a coincidence. Today's timing is....unreal. I remember it happening, and I remember being completely numb. That was a result of the crazy medication I was on. It made me feel nothing. I didn't even go home. That is what pills can do. A few years later, though, I felt it -- such a terrible feeling is delayed mourning for loss coupled with regret.

Today, someone found me and reminded me of it again. Incidentally, today is the 9 year anniversary of when it happened. I don't think about it often, because so much has happened since then -- so much. It does come up sometimes, though, when I tell people where I'm from. Lots of people heard about it, and it, coupled with another local accident, changed the way train tracks were treated throughout the state. That was a terrible year for my brother. A terrible year. The year the tracks changed. We all used to walk all over them. To get home faster. When we were bored. It didn't matter. We knew the danger. At the time, the trains had just become super fast -- like bullets. They used to be slower. My brother and I weren't crossing them anymore, because we had moved -- I to college, and he to our grandparents'... or Attleboro. I can't remember.

Today in 1998, a friend -- of mine and my brother's and many of our other friends -- intentionally stood on the train tracks in our neighborhood. We all knew when the trains came. We heard them all day and all night. We knew when to avoid the tracks. We knew that if we weren't sure to put a penny down. To watch for the shake. To feel the steel with our hands for the telltale vibration of a train a few miles away. We were masters of avoidance -- at school, at home, in the street, on the tracks strewn with those charcoal-like rocks.

He stood on the tracks, and waited for the train. I always see him there, in my mind. In the drizzle (such were the weather conditions when I heard, the next day). Wearing that dull army-green jacket and the gray hoodie beneath it. Strangely sensitive about the cold, despite the situation -- pulling his hood over his head. Living in muted tones. Waiting for the train.

The train came.

Timing is a strange and cruel beast.