A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 30
A mind-boggling story: ID mixup in deadly crash:
PHOENIX — Instead of planning Abby Guerra’s funeral, family and friends hope for her recovery after learning that Arizona authorities misidentified her in an auto accident.
Guerra was initially listed as having died at the scene of the July 18 crash, and her friend, Marlena Cantu, as one who survived, though badly bruised with a swollen face.
Cantu, 21, was actually killed, and Guerra, 19, was in critical condition with a brain injury, broken back, collapsed lung and other injuries.
Guerra’s family had spent the past week planning her funeral, and teammates from her University of Evansville soccer team in Indiana planned to fly to Phoenix to attend it. They rushed to her bedside Saturday after learning of the mix-up.
“It’s a miracle but … you feel angry because we mourned all week,” Dorenda Cisneros, Guerra’s aunt, told KPHO-TV in Phoenix on Sunday.
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The ordeal was devastating for Cantu’s parents, said longtime Cantu friend Colleen Donovan.
“Every day they went (to the hospital) having hope that she’s living one more day, then to find out it’s not her,” Donovan told the Arizona Republic. “And Abby’s parents, too. They’ve gone through all these emotions, and now they find out she’s really alive. Abby still has a struggle to survive.”
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A similar situation happened in Indiana in 2006, when a deadly traffic crash drew widespread attention after two families discovered one of the victims had been misidentified as a survivor.
The two young women were similar in appearance, and the family of the one who died had kept vigil for five weeks at the bedside of the survivor, Whitney Cerak, believing she was their daughter. Cerak’s family had buried 22-year-old Laura VanRyn’s body, believing she was Whitney.
We go about our lives. Lives we pretty much think will go on… and on… and on. Yet in perhaps the most miraculous of all aspects of the human psyche, we somehow accommodate our consciousness to the unalterable truth and harsh reality that at any given moment — like this moment right now — we could die.
Just. Like. That.
In a way and at their deepest level of being, all stories are about death. Action, thriller and suspense movies allow us a chance to see characters pivoting at the very edge of death. Comedies allow us to laugh in the face of death. Horror embraces death. Science fiction and fantasy engage the same parts of our consciousness that connect with the idea of heaven and an afterlife, a way of beating death.
And then there are dramas. Like the one above. Two families. Two daughters. One dies. One lives. But in the cruelest twist of fate, their identities are switched.
Can you imagine? The range of human emotions these people must have gone through, be going through still. They’ve been on a crazed elevator ride, deepest lows, highest highs, then forced to switch roles midway through their respective tortured experiences.
I am reminded of a short story by the writer T.S. Boyle called “Chicxulub.”
T.C. Boyle’s story touches on a thought that occasionally passes across my mind. How meaningless our lives are in the grand scale of Earth’s history. He juxtaposes the destruction of the earth by an asteroid, Chicxulub, that hit Earth five million years ago, with a parents’ fear of losing a daughter. Beginning with the daughter walking in the rain at night, and contrasting it with this asteroid (or comet), Boyle leads gradually up to the seemingly apparent death of the daughter. (The victim is carrying ID). However, fortunately for these parents, the discovery at the hospital is the daughter does not lie dead, but one of her girlfriends. Throughout he comments: “So what does it matter? What does anything matter? We are powerless. We are bereft.” Or, “The rock is coming… hurtling through the dark and the cold to remake our fate. But not tonight. Not for me. For the Cherwins, it’s already here.” Finally, “The thing that disturbs me about Chicxulub is the deeper implication that we, and all our works and worries and attachments, are so utterly inconsequential. Death cancels our individuality.” Yes, yes, yes. This idea that an asteroid can strike at any time (figuratively or literally), randomly makes all our stressing and striving and playing seem all so inconsequential. But then again, what else is there to do until it hits?
What else is there to do until it hits? One thing is to try to make sense of this thing we call life. And one way to do that, perhaps the best way is through stories. Watching them. Reading them. Writing them.
A few weeks back, The Kid in the Front Row posted this manifesto about filmmaking. He ends with this comment:
Lets take our ideas, our talents and our energy and let’s find ways to work together, to create the projects that really matter. It’s time.
As the man says, “Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.”
So on Day 30, the last day of this “A Story Idea Each Day for a Month” series, I give you another idea. You could go anywhere with the premise above — drama, thriller, fantasy, even horror.
But don’t miss the larger point: Each one of us has an expiration date. And until our own personal Chicxulub comes along, why not embrace our creativity and write the best damn stories we can?