It was a dreary December day in southern Georgia, and we were visiting my dad's dad's grave. He had died just a month-or-so earlier, but I wasn't greaving, nor did I shed a tear at his funeral. Of course I missed him, with his silly little rhymes and his goofy-ass sense of humor. He had simply been a dirt-poor farmer from start to finish, and he was all worn out... it was his time to go. Because of that, there was no shock, and there was actually a sense of relief for his sake.
All of a sudden, as we were getting ready to leave, we all heard a loud screeching of tires, followed by a sickening "THUD!". My brother and I jumped the cemetery fence and raced to the highway, about a quarter-mile away. What I saw over the next few minutes has been etched into my brain for decades by a caustic acid of severe shock, poured over a previously-ignorance-is-blissful childhood. I saw a middle-aged bald guy standing as if catatonic, repeating a sad mantra of "I'm sorry. I didn't see him!"... a large dent was in the hood of his car... a very large woman was weeping wildly... a bicycle was twisted like a pretzel and lying by the road... and in the middle of the mayhem, there was a roughly-10-year-old boy (about my age) on the ground with a caved-in head, with my dad and uncle trying to keep him alive. They were covered with his blood.
A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived and whisked him away to some nearby hick-town hospital (we found out the next day that he had died). As the pathetic crowd started to disperse, my brother and I looked at each other as if to say "What the hell just happened here???!!!". What just happened, at least in my mind, was a sudden, unexpected emotional growth-spurt. Mortality finally had a face, and it wasn't looking like that of some old, worn-out dirt-poor farmer... the face looked a lot like mine... a 10-year-old that was suddenly, violently torn away from ignorant bliss.
