Self-thought in the face of sadness

Yesterday, a woman in Manchester tried to stop someone from stealing her car from in front of her own house, and was run over and killed. Her partner and five year-old son witnessed this.

Looking at the photo of the woman, she might have been one of our regular customers at the takeaway my parents own. When people have died, they are remembered perhaps extra fondly, but if it was the woman I’m thinking of, she really was always very smiley and chatty. I hope it wasn’t.

It’s awful that even when I’m reading the news like this, although my reaction is sorrow for the victim and family, and disbelief at the callousness of the act it’s also horror that I can’t work out whether the woman is someone I recognise and have talked to many times or if it’s someone I don’t know. I always feel that my natural reactions are more selfish than they should be.

This happened about a mile away from my parents’ house, so it’s a really high chance that it was one of our customers. It was in quite a nice, relatively well-off area too, which you might expect to be fairly safe. But then again, the car thieves were probably an organised group who target relatively well-off areas. Opportunistic thieves wouldn’t usually be so brutal, would they?

I don’t know whether it was her. If I was at home in Manchester I would find out very quickly. People know each other there, so the community might be a bit subdued.

Have you ever wondered, how all the people you’ve known are doing now? Whether they are married, migrated away, divorced, still alive even? Whether they are happy? People that used to play important parts of our lives but we have now lost touch with…

I wonder if anyone ever wonders how I am, if they still remember me after many years of non-contact.