out, out damned spot

so i'm standing on the corner of state and mission having just run up to the mission from la cumbre plaza and right before my eyes a woman steps off the curb from next to me and is decimated by a car rushing by to beat the red light.
she is thrown 50 feet from me and the feeling of watching her fly through the air is like nothing i've ever felt in my life.
you know how people say: "it was like i was watching a movie?" well, that is what it was exactly like. she flew through the air and fell to the asphalt and cracked her head open.
i rushed over to help her, sweat pouring off of me, not only from the exhausting run but from the utter freakiness of the situation.
how do you help someone who is obviously beyond help? she lay on the ground, legs askew, her head profusely bleeding: bright red liquid all around her.
at least i had the presence of mind to hold her hand, say a prayer for her and call 911...all in the same split second it seemed. funny, though i am catholic, i could only think of a few phrases of the Jewish Book of the Dead which was written to be used as a guide for both the living and the dead. then i said a hail mary, people all around me: no one doing anything to comfort this woman who clung onto life long enough to say thanks to me. and then she was gone. i have never seen anyone die. i promise you that when and if you do, you will never forget it. it is as if the life force is sucked out of a person from the inside out. the eyes go blank, the body goes limp. there is no doubt that death has arrived and being so close to this woman i could actually smell her die as i think i breathed in her last breath. fucking scary...more so now as i write this than at the time.
many of you know that i lost my parents when i was very young. what you don't know is that they lost their lives in a similar manner: thrown from their car in a devastating car accident. their bodies likewise on view to a number of people who did nothing to comfort them. they died on the street, in public, no one around who cared enough to even pull my mother's skirt down. even now thinking about that one small fact makes me want to beat someone to a bloody pulp. but, at least they had each other to cling on to and when the paramedics arrived they had to pry their hands apart. i like that. it makes me smile: 2 people so in love until the very end, innit?
yeah, i told myself, once the uncs told me about this 5 years ago, that i would never let this happen to another human being if i could help it.
but did i think that i would/could actually hold it together enough to actually help someone in this way? no. not in million years.
it was a small kindness, i know this. it was an unconscious act, one guided by necessity and the enormity of the event more than by unbridled humanity, i think.
it may sound as if i am bragging and in a way i am. but not for me. it's because i was invested with the highest moral and social ideals...by the uncs: uncle michael.
so yeah this whole thing is morbid i guess. maybe even self-serving and yet it is humbling: i had the balls and the presence of mind to act: i was not an observer, i was a participant.
it is real. it happened to me and, though i will never forget it, i survived.
peace,
tyler