A blink is powerful

By: 
Wade Young

Milliseconds.

Nanometers.

The blink of an eye.

Those flashes are the measures of the most significant events in our lives.

We have all experienced them - and they usually happen when someone passes away. One minute they are here. The next, they’re not.

In a blink.

The lives of many people were changed last week when a Lonsdale family and the Tri-City United family - again - lost one of its own. Blake Ryan Asher, age 17, died tragically in a car accident on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020.

Blame winter and those terrible icy roads for taking this young man so soon.

He was wearing his seatbelt.

He was driving a 1999 Chevrolet Silverado pickup, not a tiny little compact car.

Blinks are not fair.

My heart and deepest sympathy go to Blake’s family. I can’t begin to understand the pain they are experiencing with this loss.

News stories like this make my job reporting it so difficult. They are the worst kind to do because of the deeply personal, and painful nature of them. I am very cognizant of how the family and the community must feel at losing this young man, but a news story has to be told.

However, there is a human-interest story that should be told too. I want to do Blake’s life justice and write the best possible story I can, which shows people the type of person he was. What was he like? What was he passionate about? He was active in Speech, which is terrifying for most people. However, to me, it shows me he was brave and confidant.

He was a good-looking young man, with a great head of hair (at least from the photos I’ve seen.) Was he proud of that? According to his obituary on page 3, “He had the “best hair” and was so proud of it.”

He had to be popular? People should know about that too. His obituary added, “His gentle, sweet, goofy spirit will be sorely missed by so many.”

The TCU high school principal and Blake’s speech advisor spoke very highly of this young man.

Alan Fitterer, the principal used words like, “genuine, honest and caring.”

Wonderful words for this young man.

In a blink, I lost my dad on September 28, 1997. Not a day goes by I don’t think of him.

I lost my twin brother in infancy. I think about him too.

When crap like this happens, lives are changed forever. You can’t revisit or relive them. And worst of all, you are not allowed to go back and change the course of history.

Time and life - unseen forces in our lives - exert their relentless pressure on us. They push us forward while we dig our heels in the ground.

It’s unfair.

It sucks big time.

And it pains us physically.

But time and its healing powers ease the hurt.

Unfortunately, that takes a lot longer than a blink. It takes weeks, months, and years.

It’s unfair.

What I know is the pain never goes away. We only learn how to live with it and get through day by day.

So what are we helpless humans supposed to do?

All we can muster is support for one another in the best way we know. Be there for each other. Hug your kids, parents, grandparents, spouses, brothers, and sisters because you never know when a blink will change your life.

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