Apologies if there is already a thread like this, a quick scan didn't give me one. This is for sad things you see or experience or hear about or care about. Different than threads about feeling sad, which may or may not be connected to specific sad things — I mean things external to you that still affect you and illustrate the random and pitiless distribution of pain and suffering in the world.
So of course I have one that made me want to start the thread. Caution: This is a bummer. This thread is a bummer dumping ground.
This is what I mean. There is a well-known family in town, one of whom I know professionally. She has been the loudest and most effective advocate for special education students here that the district has probably ever had. Which all started out with her advocating for her own son, who was diagnosed with autism when he was very young. She had to fight for services for him all the way through school, and along the way she became better at special ed law than the county's own lawyers and consulted with a bunch of parents and attorneys. She collectively cost the county millions of dollars in settlements for shit they never should have fought in the first place. Very smart, very confident, very cmomitted to her kids. She actually has a master's degree in conducting but has basically put a music career aside while raising kids — her husband is the UT swim coach, so she was able to not work for the past few decades, which made her into a super effective activist and advocate.
Anyway, her autistic son graduated from high school and took some adaptive higher ed classes at UT and by all accounts has friends all over town, a very sweet and thoughtful guy. He got a job not far from his parents' house, which he could walk to. His mother just posted a really loving celebration of him and his achievements on his 22nd birthday a week ago. Yesterday he left his job and was walking down the sidewalk to meet his dad at a local restaurant for lunch. And (I'm sorry but) some motherfucker on heroin passed out at the wheel and crashed his car right across the sidewalk and instantly killed the kid. The driver woke up when the ambulance showed up and didn't remember any of it.
I mean, what the fuck do you say. The whole community here is just stunned.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 22 August 2023 21:12 (two years ago)