I hit a deer on Thursday night. Well, I suppose, technically, she hit me. I was only a mile or so from home, and she came tearing out of the woods along a dark stretch of highway. By the time I saw her, I knew it was going to be a hard hit. There was traffic coming at me and traffic behind me and all I could do was brace for impact. She hit my van square on the nose, busting up the grill and releasing the front latch so the hood flew open and stayed open. I’ve had some interesting life experiences, but maneuvering two tons of metal through traffic at 60 mph while peeking through a one-inch viewing slot at the base of my windshield was a new one.

I managed to get off the road. I shifted into park, found my phone, called the sheriff’s department and, of course, my dad, before exiting my van.

The deer was thrashing around in the road, cars swerving around us and continuing on their way. 

I walked over to her and stood over her sleek, beautiful body. Her legs twitched a bit, and I could see her ribcage rise and fall, though the pattern seemed rapid and shallow. She looked at me, but didnt seem to see me. She was already fading away.

I heard a man’s voice asking if I was okay. I said yes twice — perhaps to convince myself. 

“This deer, though… she’s hurt bad. She hit me hard. Will you help me pull her out of the road?”

“I can try,” he said. “I’m not a very big man, but I’ll try.”  We reached down to grab her and drag her by the legs, and she tried getting to her feet only to collapse back to the pavement. 

“You don’t have a knife in your truck, do you?” I asked. 

“No, I don’t. Are you thinking of…?”

“I just hate to see an animal suffer,” I said, watching the small puffs of steamy breath from the doe’s nose.

A second truck pulled up behind my van, and I heard a car door slam shut. A silhouette moved through the bright headlamps of the truck. A young, bearded man came into view and asked if we needed any help.

I explained that I wanted to help this deer out of her suffering, and asked if he had any tools in his truck. He nodded, walked to his vehicle, and came back with a fillet knife. He dragged the deer into the ditch, stepped over her body, and cut her throat in one powerful swipe. He released her head to the ground and she thrashed a bit as a small, high-pitched scream came out of her mouth. 

“I’m sorry, girl,” I said aloud. “I’m so sorry.”

Then she rested down in the soft brown grass of the bank. 

We stood over her for a moment together before I thanked the man for helping me — for helping us. “I really didn’t want to have to do that on my own,” I said. 

“No problem,” he said, humbly. 

We walked over to survey the damage on my van. It was bad. Undriveable. He asked if I was going to need a ride home. I told him my dad was on the way. He said he would wait with me. I told him I would be okay.

“Would you mind if I gave you a hug though?” I asked.

He smiled and leaned toward me. I squeezed him hard and thanked him once more before walking back to my vehicle, and he to his.

Minutes later, my dad arrived to the scene, followed by the police officer and our friend with his wrecker truck. We were quite the spectacle on the side of the rural highway. 

I transferred all my needed belongings from my van into my dad’s car as the officer filled out the report. I pulled my floor mat out into the ditch and tried rinsing off the 18 eggs that had been in a carton on the passenger seat before crashing into a puddled, yolky mess on the floorboard.

I walked over to the doe one last time and looked down at her dark, lifeless eye, wishing her life hadn’t ended because of me. 

I turned away. 

Minutes later, my dad dropped me off at home. The living room was dark. My three sons sat on the couch watching Jurassic Park. A man on the screen screamed in horror as a dinosaur spit poisonous liquid into his eyes.

I sat down on the chair in the corner of the living room. The tears fell silently.

***

When you think about it, there are dozens of opportunities for us to die every day. Accident, illness, injury. Natural disasters. Poisonous spiders, carbon monoxide, trees falling on our beds as we sleep. Deer hurtling themselves in front of our cars at highway speed.

But somehow, we are here.

Somehow, we’re alive.

We’re hitting BREW on the coffee pot. Taking out the garbage. Brushing our teeth and folding the laundry. We’re going to work and church and the grocery store, and then we’re coming home. 

We’re flipping the pages of our magazines before bed and tossing and turning to get comfortable beneath our flannel sheets before we sleep hard and do it again. 

But every now and then we have a moment where we think This might be it…

We slip and fall in the shower and barely miss hitting our head on the bathtub spout. Our car fishtails on black ice and we narrowly miss a big old jackpine on the edge of the road. A deer jumps into the path of our vehicle and we have to learn to park a car blind.

Every now and then, we think it’s lights out, and we can’t even believe we’re standing in our kitchen telling the story to our best friend. Our kids are in the living room watching a movie where all anyone wants to do is escape the monsters. All they want to do is stay alive. 

***

It’s the last day of 2023. The light is fading in my backyard.  I’m running the vacuum and getting ready to set the table for our New Year’s Eve dinner. As I pass the dining room window, I see her there in the yard. She’s all alone by the big blue spruce, standing still as can be. I stop the vacuum and walk up to the window, looking out at her. She’s close enough that I can see the small puffs of breath from her nose, the twitching of her rounded ears, the shine of her black eyes. 

We’re the only ones in this moment. 

We are flesh and blood and beating hearts. We are bone and hair. Breath and air. River water and afternoon light. We are the story of another year, the sum of our experiences. 

We are all the things we can’t yet know. Slip-ups, close calls, narrow escapes. 

We’re standing here on this Dead End street, hours before crossing the bridge into next year. We’re thinking about our next meal. About staying warm. About everything and nothing at all. 

I break my eyes away from her and turn back to the vacuum, pressing the power button with my thumb. The machine whirrs as I push it over the short carpet, capturing a half piece of popcorn, a tumbleweed of cat hair, the crumbs of our year. 

When I finish the job, I glance back out the window. The last light of day is receding. A few faint stars have appeared in the northern sky. Beneath them, the spruce tree stands alone.