The Bicycle Project, Part 1

Date due: 8/3/08
Premise: Everyone writes a story or makes a piece of art, etc, that is somehow related (if only loosely) to the idea that a bicyclist gets hit by a car and is killed. Ongoing project.

Sentinel

I don’t think I’ll ever really understand why I chose to bike to work that day. At this point, even thinking about it seems pointless, but I can’t make myself stop. Would things have been different if I’d made Annabelle drop me off? Would I have lived another twenty, or even fifty years? Would there have been children? I don’t have to wonder what’s happened to her since I’ve been gone: we’re allowed to watch what goes on there. But they won’t ever show me what might have been. Brian says there’s no point, because everything that happened was planned from the Beginning and only He can know which choices lead us to our destinies.

I remember the screech of tires on asphalt, a sickening crunch, searing pain, blood everywhere. Fat lot of good that helmet did me. The internal bleeding was too severe. I heard them say that as I lay half-conscious on the operating table. For some reason what I was most upset about at the time was the fact that my favorite shirt was ruined, as torn and bloody as I was. I mourned the death of that shirt as the heart-rate monitor told me I was flat lining and the Light I’d always thought was a cliché lead me away. We both died that day, my shirt and I.

The clarity I have here allows me to summon the compassion to worry about what will happen to the man who killed me. I have never been angry with him. It’s very difficult to be angry here. Brian would tell me that what that man did was all part of the Plan. I know he didn’t mean to do it. His name is John, just like mine. For all I know, I was the one at fault and now poor John is on trial for vehicular homicide. I hope he has a good lawyer. I know he has a wife, just as beautiful and caring as Annabelle, and they have children and he’s a good father and he doesn’t deserve to go away for this. If I asked, they might tell me what will happen to him. I don’t want to know yet. I’m just going to watch, and pray. I’ll pray that somehow whatever happens to him will make him a better person, because that’s what the bad times are supposed to do to us. That’s how He designed it.

A selfish and very human part of me sometimes wishes that Annabelle were here with me. I’ve refused to let Brian show me what will happen to her. He says it would comfort me, but I’m not so sure. I hope she finds someone else, and that they get married, and have children, and grow old together just like she wanted us to. But I’m not sure I could handle seeing all of that at once. Or worse, knowing that it will never happen, while at this moment I can see her curled up on our bed sobbing so hard I’m afraid she’ll suffocate. I feel so blessed to be missed that much, but her pain is almost unbearable to watch even when I know that somehow this, too, shall pass for her.

Everything here is light and thought and love and feeling and waiting joyfully in the knowledge that everything is as it should be. Some part of me knows that it’s time to stop watching—to “let go and let God,” and then all of life’s mysteries, the past, present, and future would be revealed to me in an instant and I would be consumed by a Heavenly sense of true understanding. Brian says it’s more beautiful than I can ever imagine, but all I can see is Annabelle past and present, afraid of her future. Apparently even in Heaven, some things take time.

Brian says I have Eternity, so I watch and wait.