Trains

When I was a kid, I was really scared of nighttime (and all the scary things in it – mass murderers, monsters, the boogeyman, et al.) I was sure they were in my closet, out in the dark hall, coming up the stairs, peering in the windows. The worst was when I woke up in the middle of the night and everyone else in the house was sleeping. Every creak in the house was terrifying. I couldn’t go to my parents, because doing so would have meant putting my feet on the floor, and there was no doubt that whatever was under my bed would reach out and grab my ankle.

This made for some long, lonely nights. The only thing that helped was the trains. We lived pretty far from the nearest train tracks – probably five miles anyway. But at night, when the world was quiet, I could hear the train whistles. I loved that sound. It meant that someone else somewhere in the world was awake too. It comforted me, made me feel safe somehow. I would lie in the dark, scared to death, and strain my ears until I could almost physically feel them hearing, hoping for the sound of a train – another soul in the night. Once I heard that whistle, I relaxed and could often fall back asleep. I don’t know why they meant so much to me, but they did.

As an adult, I never lived alone before Kirk and I got married – I went straight from home to living with him. That meant that I had never spent a night completely alone until we moved south a few years ago. I moved on ahead of him to start my new job, and he stayed back at home to sell the house and wait for our new one to be built. This meant living apart from him and the kids for about five months. I remember thinking I wasn’t too sure how I would feel about living alone in the temporary apartment. I don’t know why I was still intimidated at night, but I was. And sure enough, the first night was pretty lonely and restless – until I heard the trains. Once again, I somehow ended up a few miles from a railroad crossing, and that made it okay. It happened again when I moved here. I came ahead and lived in an apartment for two months while Kirk wrapped up things in the last house, and once again, the trains were here. I never intentionally looked for apartments near railroads, and never knew they were even there in either place until the first night alone. I loved that something that gave me such comfort in childhood still seemed to follow me in adulthood when I needed it.

You’re probably thinking that they give me comfort again now when there are so many nights without him. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Oh, they’re here all right. Only a few miles away from the house we bought, and definitely “hearable” at night. But like so many other things, the comfort of the trains has been stolen.

Why? Because of where he died. The accident happened on a highway that runs parallel with the train tracks near us. The impact sent his car off the road and it ended up with its nose right at the base of the small hill that the tracks are on top of. That means that while he was in the car, already “gone” but still in there with the investigation going on around him, the trains were going by him. Only about twenty feet up the embankment. There are at least two regular train runs that happen during the time he was there. Maybe more than two.

I think about the people working on the trains. Mostly the conductor. What did he see? He had to have seen all the flashing lights right next to the tracks as he approached. He must have seen the car – crumpled I imagine. Could he see Kirk waiting there for someone to take him out of the car? Does he see things like this all the time as he drives on the tracks? If so, is he numb to it? Or was he upset at what he saw?

I don’t like the thoughts of the conductor, but they don’t bother me nearly as much as the thought of Kirk in the car while the trains went by. They would have been whistling because at that location they are about to go through a crossing. I can’t think of anything sadder and lonelier than the person I love so much sitting in that car, with strangers taking measurements and making spray paint marks all around him, while the trains pass nearby. So much going on - much of it about him, yet somehow ignoring him as he sat there, probably slumped over the wheel. All those people, all those trains – such busy-ness, such activity, such purpose, such noise, with him in the middle of it, so still. All his busy-ness, activity, purpose, and noise forever snuffed out. Waiting for someone to take him from the car, to show the respect he deserved, to treat him like a person instead of an investigation. This is the picture that comes to my mind now when I hear the trains. Him waiting. While I, too, waited just a few miles away - waited for him to come home, or for someone to call and tell me where he was and why he wasn't home yet.

I hate that in having lost something so big, I have also lost things like the comfort of trains. The small things that could maybe have made this an iota more bearable – gone just like he is, taken from me the minute he was.