In My Lifetime

Moana Rest in Peace

HINDE, MOANA B., Funeral Services for Moana B. Hinde will be Monday, the 19th of January, 2009 from 6-9PM at the Apopka Chapel of the Baldwin Fairchild Funeral Home in Apopka, FL. Moana passed away on the 15th of January, 2009. She is survived by her husband, George and sons, Tony and Michael Hinde of Apopka, Fl. Please sign and view the guestbook at www.baldwinfairchild.com Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral, 601 N. Park Ave., Apopka, FL 32712 (407) 886-1461 Published in the Orlando Sentinel on 1/18/2009 It looks so innocuous doesn't it? Plain, simple, no indication of the way she died.  Nothing gives it away.... what happened last Thursday night.... except that she died.  It doesn't even say how old she was. My friend Anne had been looking in the paper everyday.  It hadn't made the news, thanks be to God.  But the fact that there was no press, no obituary... it made it seem unreal.  Anne and I hadn't gotten anyone's name or address or contact info at the accident scene.  I had made a conscious decision to walk away... leave everyone and everything there on 17th street in Ft. Lauderdale.  I decided to resign as everyone's pastor when I walked away.  But circumstances just keep conspiring to keep me connected.  I walked into a coffee shop on Friday night and there sat the chief inspector who took our statements and then recorded our statements.  He was very young but very kind and efficient. It was wierd to run into him..... of all the places in Ft. Lauderdale.... there he was.  Yesterday Anne and I had gone back to the restaurant we had dinner in that night and then drove slowly up the road until we approached the accident scene.  Anne stopped, we got out of the car and looked around.  The orang markes were on the street, L Front, R Front, L Rear, R Rear, a circle where something plastic had been crushed, I circle around where her glasses ended up, a circle around the small pool of blood that had flowed out of a compound fracture of her right hand.  We stood together in the warm wind with the sun brightly shineing and said prayers together.  And then today, Anne found the obituary. It felt like something has been tied to me.... I can hardly walk the burden is so heavy. Anne and I had been driving up the street that Moana was crossing when she tripped and fell.  She went down quickly and didn't get up.  A young man in a car had just pulled up to a stop coming out of a parking lot.  Moana had just gone over to Outback to get a desert and was taking it back to her hotel room at the Embassy Suites hotel.  But she tripped.  And the young man didn't see her fall, thought she'd crossed the road, he couldn't see her lying on the ground.  We couldn't get to him in time.  We watched it all happen.... as if in slow motion.  The car pulled out and both passenger wheels rolled over her torso.  I ran to her and took her hand as she lay crying on the ground.  I spoke to her in calm tones and assured her all would be well.  I knew it would be.... but at that moment I didn't realize she would surely die.  I knelt on the pavement holding her hand, asking her questions to take her mind off the horror and the pain.  The young man knelt there too, on the phone with 911. Begging her forgiveness.  Weeping.  Praying.  Distraught.  I held her hand and put my other hand on his shoulder as his body shuddered in grief and remorse and regret and agony. Now the movie plays.  The fall, his car moves, the wheels roll, her body convulses, he stops, suddenly we're all there.... kneeling on the ground. I can feel her hand... warm and gripping mine and then cold and lifeless.  I can hear someone say, "Let go, step back" as they roll her onto the stretcher and quickly put her into the ambulance.  I see the young man periodically collapsing after they took her away and simply disentegrating when someone phoned him on his cell phone from the hospital to say she had died.  I can hear myself praying.  I can feel his anger and confusion and grief. For those of you who haven't heard from me in awhile.... I've been busy.  And mostly I've been trying to get past the accident since it happened on Thursday.  I'm writing about it here to try to get it out of my head and to ask you all to pray for Moana's family and for the young man and his young wife and their 2 year old baby girl. Pray for Tony that one day he will be able to go on with his life.  And God rest the soul of the faith departed.... Moana.

US Invades Canada

After days of bombing raids across the border into Canada, centered on highly populated areas of Toronto, US tanks and armoured personnel carriers crossed the border at Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, Lewiston, and Windsor today moving the heavy artillery and ground forces into the areas inside Canada that have been the source of missel launches in recent weeks.  For two weeks preceding the bombing raids into Canada missiles have been flying from various places in the Toronto and Hamilton area into the United States.  While most of the missiles have hit farm land and lower populated areas, air raid sirens have filled the night air since before Christmas as over 200 missiles were launched from terrorist forces inside Canada.  While the Canadian government and the Canadian military are not being blamed for the missile attacks on the US, the retaliation has resulted in many civilian Canadian deaths.
After 7 years of consistent terrorism by missile attacks and suicide bombers from inside Canada, the US has finally decided that the terror must stop.  As the international community wrestles with the issues involved in the retaliatory action, the US continues to attack the Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario relentlessly.

Sounds crazy?  Yes... it is.  And no this scenario is not exactly the same as the complex set of circumstances between Israel and Hamas that has Gaza caught in the cross hairs but looking at this this way takes away the strange "bent" the American media's coverage of the situation.  I thought I'd lost my mind when I woke up one morning to see Israel bombing Gaza.  I had to DIG to find out that for TWO WEEKS the missiles had been coming over the border into Israel, over 200 in that shor time... more than a dozen missiles a day for two weeks. Can you imagine the terror?

I'm sick for the Palestinian people.  My heart aches for the destruction that is resulting from the retaliation.  And my heart aches for the soldiers in the IDF who fights this war in heavily populated areas. I think of the parents gathering their children into basement bunkers more than once a day, everyday, to keep them safe from that one missile that hits it's mark.

I'm not against Palestine, not at all.  I think the Palestinians deserve a homeland.  It was a horrible mistake not to make that part of the post WWII division of land in the region.  But just change the names and faces just a little.... and it's easy to see how it has evolved in these past few weeks. Hamas fired missiles into Israel today.  They vowed to make Gaza a cemetary for the IDF.  And it is becoming a graveyard for the Palestinian people.

Pray for peace.  Pray for peace.  Pray for peace. The protests are becoming larger, anti-semitism is enjoying a comeback.  I do not defend Israel in all that they do.  But Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. 

We need only look at what the US military did to Afghanistan and Iraq in the service of fighting terrorism to see the pattern.  And all this on the day that Al Franken becomes a US Senator. What's next? Rachel Maddow for president?

Pray for peace.