“Well, who really knows? Any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow!”
This classic and completely unhelpful phrase has been said to me countless times over the years. Typically, I hear it in response to my explanation that my 41-year-old husband is already years past the average life expectancy for the rare disease with which he lives, Fanconi anemia.
I know this phrase is spoken out of a place of discomfort. It is enormously uncomfortable to have the person in front of you quote such dire statistics. It changes the air. It makes things real. It makes the listener want to brighten the mood back up, to comfort the speaker, but even more so, to comfort themselves. The listener becomes uneasy, because even though this isn’t a disease they have, and these statistics don’t apply to them, the turn this conversation has taken makes them conscious of their own mortality. So much so that they quickly shove death and disease into tidy boxes labeled, “Things That Happen Randomly” and “Things That Happen To Other People.”
Cue the bus.
The bus phrase is thrown onto the conversation like a lid on a pot of boiling water, hiding but not removing the reality of what bubbles inside.
A friend who lives with the same disease as my husband recently said in regards to people using this phrase:
For the people who say that any of us could get hit by a bus, their bus is a metaphor. Our bus is real. We know our bus is coming, we just don’t know how fast it’s driving. When you know that a bus is headed your way, life is different. Also hard is knowing that the bus might not take you out immediately, but instead drag you behind it for a while first. People who don’t have a diagnosis like this aren’t afraid of what they don’t know. But we know what’s coming for us and it’s absolutely terrifying.
There are many of us who know exactly what the bus that’s barreling towards us or our loved ones look like, and it is a knowing that we cannot escape. We have had many near misses with the bus. Times when we have been side-swiped, but not entirely knocked out, the impact leaving scars both physical and emotional. We have seen our friends, too many friends, be taken out completely by a bus, giving us too vivid of a preview to ever be able to look at a bus without wincing again. The smell of the exhaust lives in our nostrils. The sound of the engine makes our hearts race from miles away. We see its flash of color out of the corner of our eye everywhere we go.
In these past weeks of living in the midst of a global pandemic, this classic saying has been conspicuously absent as the world has gotten a taste of what it is like to see “buses” everywhere they look. I, as a long-time caregiver for a person with a compromised immune system, am now not alone in seeing sneezes, coughs, and unwashed hands as buses revving up their engines, capable of taking us out. The world has joined me in having statistics that predict the odds of our loved ones being hit. I am no longer the only one changing the air, making things real, causing discomfort. Right now, for all of us, the streets are covered in buses.
It’s awful, isn’t it? Having a picture of the thing that could take you and your people out? I don’t wish this reality on anyone. And yet, I must say that I have found comfort in not being alone in this fear of buses during this time, in knowing that it’s not just me avoiding the streets and convincing myself that I heard the bus’ horn. A heavy item has been removed from the To-Do list with which I live, knowing that others are now alongside me in my constant fight to keep my husband safe.
I knew this feeling of solidarity wouldn’t last forever, but I had hoped that the peek that the world is having at the reality that we live with every day would be a turning point. Perhaps a moment of others joining us in our negative space, leading to awareness, empathy, and support even after the COVID-19 buses are decommissioned.
As the days go on though, I see that some people are starting to think that the buses are only in service on the other side of town, and that it is now safe to go outside, to cross the street without even looking. Or perhaps they think that the buses were here earlier, but they have since moved on. Like the use of the phrase itself, I understand that these actions may stem from a place of discomfort. It would feel so much easier to put a lid on the pot of boiling water and stop looking at those bubbles, wouldn’t it? But running into traffic is dangerous. Even if you aren’t hit by that bus, the swerve that you caused as it avoided you may very well lead to it crashing into a multitude of cars, who were safely driving in their lane, following the rules of the road, a disastrous impact of which you may be unaware, as you continue on your way.
It is uncomfortable to be aware of our own mortality, and it is tempting to shove uncomfortable statistics into tidy boxes labeled, “Things That Happen Randomly” and “Things That Happen To Other People.” But there is nothing random about this virus and there are no “other people.”
To drive my point home, which is exactly where we all should be, let me use an oft-quoted phrase that may help make this clear: “Any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow!” Exactly. Any of us.
Get off the streets.
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One Response
We are all so confident that "this" will go away and "things" will get back to normal. We are all so confident that Covid19 will be eradicated. It gives us a sense of calm even in the midst of our anxiety — it’s not a matter of "if" but "when" our usual life will return. Whether or not this confidence is well placed remains to be seen. You and Sean are way ahead of us. You know exactly what you and Sean deal with and that it is going to stick around trying to conquer you every day. You don’t have the luxury of waiting it out that we assume we have. You’re ahead of us in understanding and experience — but I wish you weren’t. I wish your family could just be normal like the rest of us — normal in abnormal times that will surely become normal times again. But, alas, you and Sean deal with abnormal in abnormal times that appear to be here to stay. God bless you and keep you. Thank you for showing us your life at a time when we may be more apt to understand.