Rush Unto Death

We are, for all our care and caution, a rushing people. When one thinks of the act of hurrying, of moving with impatient rapidity, one associates such rushing with the exertion of effort. And yet it is the act of deliberately slowing down that requires the real effort. And sometimes the exertion of our wills to slow ourselves is more than we can bear.

There was a time when I rushed, when my days were supple and languid and I had an endless supply of them. And during that time, a choice came up before me, a choice that demanded a clean, clear answer from me. I made my choice in haste, and it turned out to be a very poor selection indeed. The hurried choice upended more than one life on the day I made it, and who can say what traumas and difficulties still hang about the necks of those who were directly touched by my hasty decision? The years have taught me to distrust and even despise rushing.

Not long ago, my wife and I were driving home after a shopping trip. On one of the busier roads near our home, my eye was caught by a fast blur on my right. An elderly Golden Retriever was streaking across a median, headed for the road on which I was driving. My foot found the brake, and I came to a stop, hoping to avoid hitting the animal. Cars in the oncoming lane saw the dog as well, and they, too, braked and waited for it to scoot past us.

But a woman in a minivan behind me was not going to be delayed in her essential pursuits. She laid on the horn; I looked at her in the mirror and saw her gesturing at me with one hand, her other hand busy clamping her cell phone to her ear. She seemed to be agitated and yelling, though I didn’t know whether this was aimed at me or at the person to whom she was speaking on the phone. I looked away from her and saw the Golden Retriever was just about to cross the road, and by now all the other traffic had seen the dog and was waiting.

The lack of reaction on my part must have snapped some relay in the van driver’s head. She pounded the horn one more time. I looked in my mirror in time to see her yank the steering wheel to one side, and she roared around me. “Oh, no,” I said out loud. “There’s a —”

The dog, majestic in her liquid movement, her tongue bouncing out of one side of her mouth, her eyes bright, her mouth open in a glee-grin, ran right into the road, just in time for the woman in the blue minivan to meet her there. Even through my rolled-up windows I could hear the awful double-thump of bumper and tires striking living flesh. I stared in horror as the dog writhed in spasms of agony on the road. I don’t recall whether I saw the brake lights come on or not, but I do recall how the woman sped away, leaving the dog to die on the chilly asphalt surrounded by a group of heartsick witnesses who could do nothing for her. By the time we left the scene, only a sad little stain marked her presence on the road. Where did she come from? To where was she trying to go?

I sometimes think of the Golden Retriever and wonder, as I do about all animals who have caressed my life if even only for a moment, where she is now, whether she has a memory of her time here, whether I will ever see her again. I also wonder if the woman whose impatience and unawareness of her surroundings took her life ever gave her another thought after that day. I wish I could see the dog again, to tell her how beautiful she was in my eyes that winter day. And I wish I could see the woman again. I would ask her if she is still rushing through her life. I would warn her about the inevitability of the consequences. I would give so much if I could erase rushing and hurrying from this life.

~ S.K. Orr