One man's life touches so many others...

It breaks my heart every time I hear about something like this happening...

Last night my 12 year old brother rode the city bus up to his middle school basketball practice along with four of his teammates. When the bus dropped them off, two of the boys ran across the road in front of the parked bus and the boy in front was hit by a car that was driving down the road. The driver did not see the boy and so did not even put on his brakes. The impact was so strong that the boy was knocked out of his shoes. My little brother was standing on the sidewalk when it happened and could hear the impact and see his friend's body land. The boy was in critical condition and was flown to intensive care, but passed away this morning. It is heart breaking in so many ways....a twelve year old boy who had so much life left to live... a mother and three sisters who lost one of the most important people in their life...the driver of the car who, despite the fact that he had no way of seeing the boy coming, will have to live with the guilt for the rest of his life... my little brother and the other boys who had to witness this and will probably never forget.

I did not personally know the boy, but I knew who he was and had seen him play basketball games with my little brother. I talked to my mom about it today and heard all the details and about all the aftereffects. A facebook group was started for him after the accident happened last night, and after he passed away today a memorial blog was started for everyone to share memories and for people to know how they could help the family. I read many of the comments and it was amazing to see how many people it has affected. I am reminded of a quote from the movie "It's a Wonderful Life":

"One man's life touches so many others, when he's not there, it leaves an awfully big hole"

Hearing of all the tears that were shed at the middle school today and reading the comments on both facebook and the memorial blog from family, friends, teammates, teachers, classmates and more is definite proof of the truthfulness of this quote. Everyone had something to share and there were many fond memories of the boy being cheerful, sweet, and fun. As my little brother wrote on the blog: "Logan was a great kid, always smilling. It was even said that he was laughing right before the accident."

Hearing of something like this reminds me how fragile life is, and so unpredictable. There is no way to know when someone's life will suddenly be ended. As cliche as this may sound, it makes me want to always live my life to the fullest. You also can never know when the life of a loved one will be taken away, and so I repeat my strong belief that we must always make sure that people know how much they mean to us, before it's too late.