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Few years ago I witnessed a traffic accident in which a 16yo boy riding a motorcycle died. I was the first to get to him trying to assess his condition and hel

Few years ago I witnessed a traffic accident in which a 16yo boy riding a motorcycle died. I was the first to get to him trying to assess his condition and help. Those were his last moments. There was a lot of blood and I was helpless. I did my best but witnessed him dying anyway. I was 32 years old. I never knew this boy. Nevertheless this was a life changing experience. I'll never forget this neither will I forget having face his poor parents who wanted to hear about their son's final moments from the man who was there. This experience will never stop haunting me. I can easily imagine how devastating it can be for someone who's lost their friend. Especially when you're a kid. If someone from your family experienced this, please don't go the "let's not bring this up" way. That doesn't help.

codinghorror 10y ago
My heart goes out to you. That is a heavy thing to bear witness to. We don't get a lot of death intruding in our lives when we're young. But it starts to creep in as you get older and it is ... very unsettling.
- spydum 10y ago
  I find it interesting that for some people it is a truly humbling and transformative event, and others it's a debilitating one. Wish I had explanation for the difference though.
3131s 10y ago
It's a pretty common thing to witness unfortunately in poorer countries with bad road conditions and lots of motorbikes. I have seen firsthand a few terrible accidents in which multiple people died in horrific ways. I also saw a thief beaten to death pretty much right in front of me, which haunts me even more. I witnessed it from my balcony and by the time I got downstairs (with the intention of stopping it) it was too late. There was also a suicide in my neighborhood where a young boy jumped off his balcony from about 5 stories up. I was out exercising so fortunately I didn't see it, but when I got back my neighbors all told me and the next day I saw photos in a newspaper taken right near my apartment of a monk blessing the boy's body. My wife as a child also saw a foreign English teacher jump off a tall building. It can be really depressing living in an impoverished place.
bootload 10y ago
"I was the first to get to him trying to assess his condition and help. Those were his last moments. There was a lot of blood and I was helpless." Those first ten seconds are shocking. For me it was understanding ^control^, the lack of control and the fight to get it back. The situation you were presented @bitcharmer is binary and anything other than a win can be seen as failure. For me it took a long time to understand that whatever I did, I had no real ^control^. Understanding control, the complete lack of it, in extreme situations like the one you describe lets you move one step closer to understanding death. To understand what it is like in @bitcharmer shoes, read happened in a similar situation back in 2012 (non fatal) https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/7949327460 https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/7949327460 After this I'm one for one.
cyberferret 10y ago
The linked story and yours are both harrowing. But it has spurred me to action. Many years ago, my younger sister, a police officer, was off duty and just driving her car into town when she saw a car plough into another in front of her. She jumped out of her car and raced over to the drivers door, where she saw that the driver had a gaping wound in his neck and was bleeding out. My sister hates the sight of blood, and faints when getting a needle, but to this day I don't know how she did what she did, which was to reach in and clamp her hand around his neck to try and stem the bleeding, while trying to talk to him. His wife was in the passenger seat, relatively uninjured but screaming hysterically at her husband's condition. My sister said that she looked into the guys eyes while she tried to talk to him and reassure him - she said the look he gave her was one of 'pleading sadness', and she watched while in less than a minute the life went out of him right there and then. She only ever told me the story once, and our family has one of those stupid 'don't talk about it' rules, which after reading this, I intend to break. She seems fine to this day and doesn't show any outward signs of it affecting her, but next time I get the chance, I will see if she wants to talk more about it.
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  Be sure to tell your sister that she's a hero.
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    Most people who have been through such a thing would very much like to avoid having someone call then a hero.
    - lomnakkus 10y ago
      Not having been through the experience, I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate? FTR, my sentiment was really just about reminding people you care about that they are, in fact, appreciated. EDIT: ... and there's hardly enough vomit in the world, is there? I'm sorry, that sounded absurdly cheesy, but it actually does matter.
M_Grey 10y ago
I had a similar experience, and I'm a bit slow to process extreme emotions so in crisis I'm very calm. A few days later though, it hit me while I was in the shower and my guard was down; I started shaking and I didn't know why. I literally dropped the washcloth and realized that I was crying, then I realized why, and it all hit me. As you say, it's one of those things that never quite heals, it just... skins over a little. Sharing does seem to help.
- delerio 10y ago
  I'm the same way. I recently opened up to a friend of mine about a traumatic experience. They wondered why I seem so calm all the time, I'm the calmest person they know. It helped me alot just to talk to them about it, even though the situation was long gone, it haunted me for years. Yet I never showed any emotion over it on the outside, even though on the inside I was not right.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    I'm glad that you came to the same conclusion about talking helping, like you it was difficult before that. In my teens and early twenties a lot of people just assumed that I was weirdly calm. It's not easy for people like us to open up and say, "It hits me, it just takes time to process and it all happens inside of my head."
SEJeff 10y ago
This experience is precisely why you should never ask a war veteran if they've killed someone. Many times they have, but more often than not they've had to watch someone they were close with die. Source: am a veteran
- dpeck 10y ago
  Maybe if we talked about the horrors of war more we'd have less of them in the future.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    I wish, but the fact that there was a WWII does not hold out much hope.
    - dpatriarche 10y ago
      WW2 made Europeans and east Asians anti war -- the people in whose countries the wars were fought. It's only Americans and Canadians who view WW2 as the "good" war. Our countries got to play the hero role and beat the super villain, we were largely untouched (relative to what other countries suffered), and at the end there was years of economic prosperity. What's not to like?
      - mannykannot 10y ago
        Sorry if I did not make it clear - the much-discussed horrors of WWI did not stop WWII.
        mobiplayer 10y ago
        WWII was more like a second act of the same war really. Wounds were not closed.
        mannykannot 10y ago

codinghorror 10y ago

My heart goes out to you. That is a heavy thing to bear witness to. We don't get a lot of death intruding in our lives when we're young. But it starts to creep in as you get older and it is ... very unsettling.

spydum 10y ago
I find it interesting that for some people it is a truly humbling and transformative event, and others it's a debilitating one. Wish I had explanation for the difference though.

3131s 10y ago

It's a pretty common thing to witness unfortunately in poorer countries with bad road conditions and lots of motorbikes. I have seen firsthand a few terrible accidents in which multiple people died in horrific ways. I also saw a thief beaten to death pretty much right in front of me, which haunts me even more. I witnessed it from my balcony and by the time I got downstairs (with the intention of stopping it) it was too late. There was also a suicide in my neighborhood where a young boy jumped off his balcony from about 5 stories up. I was out exercising so fortunately I didn't see it, but when I got back my neighbors all told me and the next day I saw photos in a newspaper taken right near my apartment of a monk blessing the boy's body. My wife as a child also saw a foreign English teacher jump off a tall building. It can be really depressing living in an impoverished place.

bootload 10y ago

"I was the first to get to him trying to assess his condition and help. Those were his last moments. There was a lot of blood and I was helpless." Those first ten seconds are shocking. For me it was understanding ^control^, the lack of control and the fight to get it back. The situation you were presented @bitcharmer is binary and anything other than a win can be seen as failure. For me it took a long time to understand that whatever I did, I had no real ^control^. Understanding control, the complete lack of it, in extreme situations like the one you describe lets you move one step closer to understanding death. To understand what it is like in @bitcharmer shoes, read happened in a similar situation back in 2012 (non fatal) https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/7949327460 https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/7949327460 After this I'm one for one.

cyberferret 10y ago

The linked story and yours are both harrowing. But it has spurred me to action. Many years ago, my younger sister, a police officer, was off duty and just driving her car into town when she saw a car plough into another in front of her. She jumped out of her car and raced over to the drivers door, where she saw that the driver had a gaping wound in his neck and was bleeding out. My sister hates the sight of blood, and faints when getting a needle, but to this day I don't know how she did what she did, which was to reach in and clamp her hand around his neck to try and stem the bleeding, while trying to talk to him. His wife was in the passenger seat, relatively uninjured but screaming hysterically at her husband's condition. My sister said that she looked into the guys eyes while she tried to talk to him and reassure him - she said the look he gave her was one of 'pleading sadness', and she watched while in less than a minute the life went out of him right there and then. She only ever told me the story once, and our family has one of those stupid 'don't talk about it' rules, which after reading this, I intend to break. She seems fine to this day and doesn't show any outward signs of it affecting her, but next time I get the chance, I will see if she wants to talk more about it.

lomnakkus 10y ago
Be sure to tell your sister that she's a hero.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Most people who have been through such a thing would very much like to avoid having someone call then a hero.
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    Not having been through the experience, I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate? FTR, my sentiment was really just about reminding people you care about that they are, in fact, appreciated. EDIT: ... and there's hardly enough vomit in the world, is there? I'm sorry, that sounded absurdly cheesy, but it actually does matter.

M_Grey 10y ago

I had a similar experience, and I'm a bit slow to process extreme emotions so in crisis I'm very calm. A few days later though, it hit me while I was in the shower and my guard was down; I started shaking and I didn't know why. I literally dropped the washcloth and realized that I was crying, then I realized why, and it all hit me. As you say, it's one of those things that never quite heals, it just... skins over a little. Sharing does seem to help.

delerio 10y ago
I'm the same way. I recently opened up to a friend of mine about a traumatic experience. They wondered why I seem so calm all the time, I'm the calmest person they know. It helped me alot just to talk to them about it, even though the situation was long gone, it haunted me for years. Yet I never showed any emotion over it on the outside, even though on the inside I was not right.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  I'm glad that you came to the same conclusion about talking helping, like you it was difficult before that. In my teens and early twenties a lot of people just assumed that I was weirdly calm. It's not easy for people like us to open up and say, "It hits me, it just takes time to process and it all happens inside of my head."

SEJeff 10y ago

This experience is precisely why you should never ask a war veteran if they've killed someone. Many times they have, but more often than not they've had to watch someone they were close with die. Source: am a veteran

dpeck 10y ago
Maybe if we talked about the horrors of war more we'd have less of them in the future.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  I wish, but the fact that there was a WWII does not hold out much hope.
  - dpatriarche 10y ago
    WW2 made Europeans and east Asians anti war -- the people in whose countries the wars were fought. It's only Americans and Canadians who view WW2 as the "good" war. Our countries got to play the hero role and beat the super villain, we were largely untouched (relative to what other countries suffered), and at the end there was years of economic prosperity. What's not to like?
    - mannykannot 10y ago
      Sorry if I did not make it clear - the much-discussed horrors of WWI did not stop WWII.
      - mobiplayer 10y ago
        WWII was more like a second act of the same war really. Wounds were not closed.
        mannykannot 10y ago