Death in a traffic accident
Posted by Sappho on August 17th, 2002 filed in College Life, Daily Life
Death in a traffic accident
Today Blogs4God had a link from their front page to and account in Redwood Dragon of the death of a motorcyclist. It’s well worth reading.
It will be eighteen years, next month, since Brian Sayre died. Not on a motorcycle, but on a bicycle. He was riding his bike, long distance, between Stanford and Coalinga, where his family lived, and a young man, who was driving his truck under the influence of alcohol, struck and killed him. I don’t know whether there ever were flowers or a cross at the place of his death. This isn’t my custom, and so I never visited the spot. My way of honoring the dead, the only way I know, is prayer, and so when Brian died I did ask my mother to get her church to pray for him (this is done among the Episcopalians, which is what I was raised, but Quakers only put the living on our lists for holding people in the light), and for years, even after I married Joel, I would pray for Brian daily. Well, eighteen years have passed, and I no longer pray for him every day (though I do so on anniversaries, and any time a day such as All Saint’s and All Soul’s, or Memorial Day, comes up when the dead are remembered). I do still think of him. He died at 24. It will not be so many more years before I will be old enough that Brian, at his death, could have been my child. Even now, I suppose, had I been a teen mother.
Maybe some other day I can say what he was like: the bright blond hair, short and wiry build, different colored eyes, eager and always exploring mind, or his deep concern for peace and for the environment. Or, there was the time we stayed up all night, in the library at Columbae House at Stanford, talking about God, and then kissed, for the first time, in the morning. But it is hard to think of any words to really describe one who died so many years ago, that none of you will have known. So for now I simply read about the death of the motorcyclist, and remember.
March 19th, 2003 at 2:05 am
You are not the only one who remembers Brian with fond memories. As one of his best friends for 20 years (we met as next door neighbors in Coalinga when I was 5 and he was 4), I will always remember his deep concern for his family, friends, peace and the environment. Had he lived, he would have made a difference. May he rest in peace; he is missed.
March 21st, 2003 at 8:47 am
How cool to meet another friend of Brian’s online! Do you know how his family is doing? I only met them briefly, but I liked them.
August 21st, 2004 at 4:26 am
Hi Lynn! Something about this late night prompted me to search Google for Brian Sayre, my best friend at Stanford, and I’m glad to see he made it to the Web, an invention that came 10 years after his death. It will be twenty years soon. Hard to conceive. I hope his family have redeemed life from his tragic loss with good lives for themselves. I wish I’d been more protective of Brian — gotten him to play it safer with his bicycle. I’ve learned that I can make a difference in my friends’ and family’s lives, and have learned to protect these treasures of my life.
August 22nd, 2004 at 7:45 am
Hi Lee! Good to hear from you. Jamie (the comment above yours) still exchanges Christmas cards with Brian’s family. His father has died (no surprise, since I remember Brian telling me twenty years ago about his father’s heart surgery).
It is weird to think that it will be twenty years so soon.