reply to post by AccessDenied
Nice, AccessDenied. I'd like to add my own story of leaving behind a dark heart. It was a good day for me. Probably one of my best days.
I watched as a man drove his car over my beloved dog, Bear. The man could have avoided it, perhaps. Now, though, I think he didn't even see the dog.
The man was rather short and so he sat low in the driver seat.
But he ran over my dog and didn't stop. He had to have known he ran over my dog. Sheesh! The sound was quite loud from where I stood in my back yard
watching the event. The man just kept on going down the road.
My dog pulled itself off the road using it's front paws, it's back legs useless, it's back broken. My wife and I held Bear and petted him and
hugged him for the few minutes of his life that remained. It's true when people recall knowing when they see life leaving a creature, Bear was
looking at me and suddenly his eyes changed from life to death. It was over. Yeah, dumb dog. He had been hit by a car a year or so earlier and didn't
learn his lesson.
Sure, I am to blame for letting this dog run loose. But I live in the country and, well, it's just what I have always done, let dogs run. If I was a
dog I would want to be able to run free and chase bunnies and scare birds and run off the occasional intruder that invades my territory.
Anyway, I got a good look at the man driving the car. I expressed hatred towards him. I wanted to kick his a$$ the next time I saw him. And see him I
did, a few days later. He was sitting in his car at a store when I came out of the store and he called out to me, "Can you please help me? I can't
turn the knob on my oxygen bottle and this one is empty!"
I forgot all my hate at that moment, seeing a fellow human in distress and possibly in a life or death situation. What did I do? I turned the valve on
his new bottle of oxygen and helped him connect to the tubes running to his nose. He thanked me. And in turn I thanked him. He was puzzled as to why I
thanked him, but I just told him, "Just know that today you have helped me."
That was the day I stopped hating.
[edit on 26-9-2009 by kyred]