last day in spain

It was the last day that I was in Spain. Late April and 2005. This was a day that I spent walking in the calm nostalgia of a semester that had been unlike any other. A four month chunk of my life that would cause me to smile back at my memories for the rest of my life. That was the kind of day that I was dealing with. The last day.

So we had gone over to a friend's apartment for lunch. This girl was a language partner with Lukas and a native Columbian. Her and her roommates cooked an amazing meal for us. Really, it was incredible, but I had to leave early and skip dessert because I had one last table talk to catch across town with Alan and Jesse.

I made my way down the steps and out into the light of the afternoon. I crossed the street. I walked up to a stop light that had a crowd of pedestrians waiting for the light to change so that they could cross the busy, four lane road. It was a mini-parkway, of sorts. I line of green bushes ran their way down the middle like a wall painted green, cutting the four lanes in half, and hiding the cars that whizzed by on the far side.

A woman in her late thirties was paced beside me as I approached the crowd. Her eyes where trained forward and her step was purposeful and solid. She had somewhere to be.

We reached the crowd and I came to a stop. The woman kept walking. Into the road she went. it was fine because there were no cars coming. But I thought, why didn't she look? She never looked to see if there were cars, she just moved.

She reaches the median.

There is no pause.

She keeps her stride.

Behind the green wall comes a flash of blue. A Renault. About 45 mph.

I have never been able to handle the way that television and movies portray people getting hit by cars as a source of comedy. It is horrific.

Her body was thrown in the air. 30 feet, maybe? She was fireworks in the sky. But then her body fell and she cried out. We ran over to her in the intersection and helplessly watched her cry. Watched her die.

That was the last day in Spain.

Jason Tatum