Perspective

Today after class, I was heading to The Blue Boar Inn in Midway to meet a friend from last semester's English class. We have been trying to get together for a couple weeks now to have lunch. She was called in to work unexpectedly today, so she asked if I could come to her work for lunch and we could catch up there. I thought I knew where the Blue Boar was, so I headed out to Deer Creek Reservoir, thinking I was heading in the right direction. I was only, hmmm, about 8 miles away! After realizing I had NO clue where this restaurant was, it dawned on me that I could plug the name into my GPS, which is what I did, hoping to be led right to my destination. I was merrily following the directions on my GPS when I came upon a detour. Now what to do? I thought there must have been a huge fire somewhere close by because I had to wait for a long line of fire engines before being redirected by a policeman in the middle of the intersection. Great! I couldn't get there with the original directions, so I went where I was told and waited for my GPS to recalculate. Oh, good, there was another way to get to the Blue Boar. I followed the new path and was again stopped by a police officer redirecting traffic. Again I saw a lot of fire engines and began to get really concerned about a possible fire at the Blue Boar, as I knew it was in that vicinity, and hoping my friend was okay. The kind police officer told me I wouldn't be able to get through for another 15 minutes and directed me back to where I originally started when I saw the first police officer. Are you still with me? By this time I was beginning to get cranky. I had been traveling for nearly an hour trying to find this restaurant, I knew my friend would be looking for me, and I was getting cranky from being hungry. You wouldn't like me when I get hunger-cranky! I just decided to pull over to the side of the road where I could see police officer #1 in my rear-view mirror. I called my friend and explained the situation to her. I told her that if I couldn't get through in 10 minutes I would just go somewhere else to eat and try to catch up with her another time. As fate would have it, all the fire engines were through the intersection and the police officer left, allowing traffic to flow as usual.

When I called my friend to explain the situation, she told me there was a funeral going on at a state park across from the Blue Boar. It was the funeral ofa firefighter killed in Parley's Canyon last weekend. He left behind a wife and two young children. I remember reading about it the same evening it happened. We had been to dinner in SLC with friends and had just passed through the scene of the accident minutes before it happened. I remember reading that traffic had been backed up for quite some time. I was saddened to hear what had happened. Another fatal accident had happened just a few months before that in about the same location under similar circumstances. Someone heading in westbound traffic lost control and crossed the median into eastbound traffic, killing the eastbound driver in both situations. Steve had been minutes away from that accident also.

Wow! Talk about perspective. I was getting frustrated because my life had been inconvenienced for a few short minutes! I felt very somber as I sat on the deck of the Blue Boar Inn while watching the camera crew vans and people still leaving the funeral. I thought of how two families had lost loved ones and how the people who had caused the accidents might be feeling. Lots of lives forever changed in a split second.

I am very blessed!