Drive slower, hug longer

It happened again this week.

A few times a year we tell the story of neighbors who saw flames and got their neighbors out of burning homes and to safety.

We’re still looking for the young man who helped a woman up an embankment along Pittman and stayed with her, offering comfort until help arrived.

There is a lot to recommend life in the Mat-Su Borough. But nothing speaks more highly of us than how we respond in an emergency. While helping each other might have gone out of vogue in other locales, here helping remains the very pinnacle of fashion.

In today’s pages we share the tragic story of a young boy whose mother was killed in the same car crash that injured him.

Holding him in her arms this time was Mat-Su Borough School Board member Debby Retherford. She is a mother, too, and we are grateful for the care she provided this student on the side of the Old Glenn Highway on Sunday night.

Mercy is the highest best use of any human. We offer our thanks and highest praises to Retherford, who offered love and caring to this child of ours.

In our daily lives we are quick to draw lines and divide ourselves into various factions. But moments of shared crisis have a way of drawing us together, of breaking down walls, and building new alliances borne of necessity.

While this young boy’s struggle is individual, there are many children in our community who know the pain firsthand of losing a parent. A growing number of children in our community also have lost one or both of their parents to lengthy prison sentences.

Our community also includes broken-hearted mothers and fathers whose children died of cancer, drug overdoses, or, who were murdered. Time may mend these wounds, but it will never erase them.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the challenges of your personal struggle and lose sight of those around us facing real, unimaginable loss. The pace of life is so fast, it’s easy to lose sight of what is truly important.

Moments like this one on the side of the Old Glenn Highway ask us to pause and take inventory of our life and our loved ones.

Today, remember this 10-year-old boy. We encourage every one to drive slower and hug longer in his honor.