Moving at the Speed of Life.

"You must have a guilty conscience.”

The officer peering in the passenger window is trying very hard not to laugh. And I see his point. I have just pulled myself over—without sirens or lights. Because the words of another officer are echoing in my head. 

“There’s nothing more embarrassing than being told your wife was a bitch when she was pulled over.”

But the officer in the window doesn’t know about the officer in my head. What he knows is from the computer terminal in his console. My age. My hair color. My eye color. My weight. From 11 years ago. My address. My driving record. The three letters and four numbers on the license plate that mean something he can’t quite place but knows he should.

A guilty conscience.

Over the three missed runs this week. The classroom art that has been building on the kitchen bar for months. The single apple jack stuck to the floor since Monday morning. The clean clothes now wrinkled because they are still sitting in the basket days after the final spin cycle. The bank account I haven’t balanced in years, checking in only long enough to make sure it’s floating above the low water mark. The leaves that meander through the yard and collect like snowdrifts in tiny corners and the irrigation system broken since last spring. The books I haven’t read with my daughter, and the computer that I haven’t set up for my son. The meals I don’t eat and the rest I don’t get. The phone calls not returned and the emails unread. Appointments missed and invitations forgotten and unanswered.

The doctor’s appointment we are late for and the school bell we will miss.

Somewhere in the 37 books on grief that now gather dust on the shelf, written by experts of an academic, experiential and religious nature, are words so complicated in their simplicity. Statistics show that those who’ve lost everything drive as though they have nothing left to lose. I believe that to be true. But I also believe this to be true.

We don’t have time to slow down.

Smiling back at the officer in the window, I see his lips move but it is the smile in another officer’s voice that I hear.

“SLOW DOWN. You are going too fast. And don’t tell me that you aren’t. Because I can SEE you.”