I visited with my dad's friend Rick B today. I haven't seen the man in probably 3 years, I believe it was before I ever met Tom. We met Rick and his family through church back in the day. Rick, I believe has 4 or 5 kids, all really polite and respectful. He lost his son Dallin a year ago November 28th. Dallin, his sister Lara and her friend Caleb were headed out of town. They had just gotten a little past the Twin Falls (ID) exit and were hit by a car during a snow storm that pushed their car 15 feet in toward the median. Dallin got out of the car to move some of the snow so they could continue on their trip. Caleb got out and was going to help Dallin, but Dallin told him to get back in the car. Just as Caleb got back in, he looked in the mirror just in time to see another car hit Dallin. It is my understanding that he was dead on impact. As Rick continued his story, I couldn't help but see the events unfold in my imagination. Not something I really wanted to imagine, but just the way the story was told made me see everything as it happened. My heart was hurting. Rick's family is LDS and Dallin had just returned home from a mission not quite 5 months before. Rick had said that after he got home, he spent a lot of time with the family. In a way, I believe he finds in comforting to know that his family was altogether in the last few months of Dallin's life. Furthermore, Dallin's sister Lisa had her third child and named him Dallin after her brother-this happened all before his death. I'm not sure if anyone has ever had an encounter with the LDS people, but they're all strangely at peace when people die. It's like they're trained to know that people are here and then die and that it's just "okay" when they go.
The reason I chose to blog about Rick and Dallin is because Rick and I both have something in common-We lost a child. But there's a big difference. Rick's son was 23. I carried mine for 20 weeks. People say "a loss is a loss" and I don't disagree, I just feel that a 23 YEAR OLD loss is harder to accept than a child I merely CARRIED for 20 WEEKS. I'm not saying that one person is worse off than the other, because I bet they hurt the same amount. I saw signs of change in Rick when he was here. I remember Rick as the happy man, who talked and enunciated his words in a way that I as a child could understand, and used his hands to talk. He was very... big, for a lack of a better word, to me-he just stood out against other male teachers at church. And the entire conversation, he didn't directly face me, no hand gestures. No real smiles. I think it was as hard for him to talk about it as it was to listen. However... at least his family has memories of their son, and adventures with their brother. And that'll forever be something they cherish.
