A while back, I saw someone post on Instagram that their dog of 10 years had died. Obviously devastating, I distinctly remember them saying it was their first time ever experiencing grief. I remember a small rage filling my body. 

I am familiar with death. When I was 21, I was a caretaker for my dad as he died of cancer, with him, as he took his final breaths. Since then, I’ve felt the familiar heaviness of grief many times, most not quite managing to compare to that singular life-shaping experience. Lately, as my grandma ages and my mom’s health declines, I feel death’s dark presence once again. We walk the same path, death, a few steps behind me but never out of sight. 

But my grief has never been accompanied by instantaneous guilt until recently. I’m sure I’ve caused harm along the way. Life can’t exist without it. Generally though, I try my best to keep my role in it to a minimum. I avoid meat. I rescue bugs in my apartment, overcoming my fear to bring them safely outside. I don’t fish even though it seems peaceful, unable to face the reality of causing pain for fun. 

Last week, as I drove into the Hudson Valley with Lindsey, a fox ran out under my tire. I was going 50 miles per hour. She gasped and then it was dead. Barely a millisecond passed between noticing it and seeing it in my rearview mirror, flattened under the weight of my car. Instantly, I sipped a bitter cocktail of guilt and grief like I had never tasted before. 

When you find out someone or something suddenly died, it’s shocking. But never have I felt the heaviness of having a hand in it. 

This was new. One second there was a fox, living a life in the tall grasses of Hudson. The next, it was crushed, another dead animal in the road, this time behind a car I navigated. 

I cried hysterically. Shaking, Lindsey holding the wheel, while I continued to push the gas. 

Surely, I couldn’t hit an animal twice. I had never hit an animal in my life. Two times in 24 hours would be insane, I found myself thinking all day as I drove through upstate New York with a fresh fear racing through my mind. I replayed the moment of impact over and over.

I felt sick, unsure I could overcome the deep pit in my stomach. I wanted to talk about it, I wanted someone to tell me it was ok. I couldn’t believe it happened. It happened so fast. Could I just pretend it didn’t?

I felt a similar feeling when I watched my dad die, shocked that someone could be here one second and gone the next. It felt impossible that my father, someone who had been with me since I was born, who I looked up to and needed, could be unreachable and forever inaccessible in the time it took for him to heave one final breath. 

I remember, once I went back to college, feeling like I could almost convince myself it hadn’t happened. In another life, he was at work. In a meeting. Maybe on a plane to Romania for business. 

Obviously, the grief I felt after killing the fox doesn’t, and didn’t, compare to the life-altering grief of losing my dad, but it was a reminder of how quickly things can happen. How quickly tragedy can strike. How quickly everything can change. 

Something must be in the air because yesterday, while driving from Bushwick to Bed Stuy, I almost hit a biker. I was driving back from my studio when he shot out across the intersection. I slammed on my breaks, as did he, sliding up on one wheel as we both did everything we could to avoid contact. A moment that brought us fully into the present. 

My first instinct was anger, my light was green! But as I looked at him, shouting apologies through my passenger side window that still refuses to open, I instantly started apologizing too. 

How quickly things can happen. How quickly tragedy can strike.

We drove off, both shaken, but alright.  

And how quickly things can be ok again.