Puzzle Piece

The two pieces I posted regarding the luge accident have been drafted for quite a while. I didn't know where to put them. They are uncomfortable. They are not sunny. But they are necessary.

Chronologically they weren't ready to be posted right after the fact; they deserved more time, more thought. But to put them at the end, to have them appear glaringly at the top of the page as a punctuation mark forever, as representative of my entire experience? That wasn't right either.

Please don't look at these two posts as shoved into the middle of happier times. This is not an attempt to bury what happened by sweeping it under the rug. I also, however, don't want to ostracize that event and make it appear completely isolated from all of my subsequent experiences - on the contrary, it in some way influenced every encounter I had throughout the duration of my time in Whistler.

I'm still trying to find a place for this piece of my Olympic puzzle. If you ask me "How was the Olympics!?" I will answer that it was an amazing experience, because it was. If you (like so many people have already) ask me if I was there for the accident, I will tell you I was. It is not, however, something I am ready to openly discuss with people in casual conversation. It was not something I learned about on a breaking news story, as the rest of the U.S. did - it was something I experienced.

I plan to carry that burden without making a spectacle of it.