"Something about Life"
by Meghan Pedersen
You know how certain images stick in your head and ever after define a moment in time, an emotion, or just plain stick, popping up unexpectedly every now and then. And for me at least, such images generally aren’t your typical hallmark photographs. For instance, when I think of my high school graduation, my initial thoughts are not of tossing my cap in the air or shaking my principle’s hand. Rather, I recall a picture of myself standing outside the locked door of my car, peering into the window where the keys are still in the ignition and my speech lies crisp and white on the passenger seat while tears run down my face.
Last summer another such image imprinted itself on my mind, a moment of time that really signified no event or revelation; it was one of those images that just plain stuck. But the moment was somehow significant in and of itself in a way that still escapes a concrete definition—something about loss, something about sorrow, something about life.
That summer evening I was driving home from work during that beautiful time at the end of the day when the sun illuminates everything on its leisurely descent, tingeing the fields, the grass, the peeling barns gold. This hour seems to compel everyone to take a moment to breathe and soak life in. So though my grandparents and family were gathered at home in honor of my sister’s birthday, I drove lazily, enjoying the beautiful, dusky hour.
My unhurried attitude proved to be fortunate for me, for as I leisurely accelerated following a stop sign, a deer, dazzled by the sunlight perhaps, ran into my car. I slowed to a stop and got out. Behind me, the deer, a doe, battled to get up, and then drug herself across the road, down the ditch, and into the corn field. Her journey was laboriously slow, yet she radiated a desperate energy to get away from the road and into the shelter of the corn stalks. Her struggle made my heart ache and impressed itself on my mind.
The doe’s potential offspring, soon to be orphaned, filled my mind. I experienced a brief moment of hope when I thought of the motherless fawns that my cousins had nursed back to health. But in the back of my mind I knew that this situation required a different remedy, that it would require more than bottled milk, a heat lamp, and straw.
I checked my car for damages. There were none, which somehow made the deer’s situation more tragic. Then with shaking fingers I called Dad. I explained what had happened, then asked him if he could do something for the deer, the child in me knowing that Dad can fix everything, but the twenty-one year old realizing that there would be only one way to stop the suffering, but unable to say the words.
Dad knew what I was really asking, “Megs, the deer is going to suffer and die. Do you want me to come shoot her?”
But rather than choosing the humane option, I chose the easier one—leaving the deer’s life to fate, justifying my decision with the maze of a cornfield in which I told myself we would never find her. But I do find her. The doomed deer crosses my vision from time to time, unexpectedly, unwelcomed, but in some way necessary. She means something to me though I can’t quite say what—something about loss, something about sorrow, something about life.