Just after I posted my life update post today, I realized that today marks eight years since the car accident at Carleton. I’ve written a lot about it before (mostly on previous blogs, occasionally mentioning it on here) so I’ll keep this short.

I didn’t want to let the day go by without marking it. As life-changing an event as it was for me, so many people at Carleton were much more affected. Not to mention the families of the young men who lost their lives that afternoon.

Often I think back to an informal memorial service for J, M, and P that happened at “the Cave” (Carleton’s kinda sorta music/club-ish venue) a couple of weeks after the accident. One of their friends got up to speak and said “I wish time would stop passing because I’m worried that I’ll forget them. I don’t want a day to go by where I don’t think of them.”

I think it’s such a testimony to the kind of people they were that still, 8 years–almost 3,000 days–later, rarely a day goes by where I don’t think about P. And I didn’t know him incredibly well.

I’m sure they are still reminding so many people who knew them that life is unpredictable and precious. And that knowing this, we can’t spend a second of our lives chasing superficial goals or letting other people’s desires for us direct our lives. We are only blessed with short stays here on earth–we must make the most of them.

xx Claire