As I’ve noted before, I wake up in the early hours of the morning and take the dogs for their first walk several hours before the sun rises. It’s on one my favorite times of the day. It is dark. It’s quiet. There’s very few other people outside other than my 4:30 AM girlfriend, an occasional Amazon delivery person getting an early start, the newspaper guy, and a few early morning risers driving to work or the gym. Quite often, I won’t see another human being at all.
We see bunnies, deer, possums, bats, cats and owls. Sometimes we’ll hear the birds waking up. In the late summer the crickets will chirp and screech loudly.
Several times a year, I’ll see extremely bright lights, often strobing, from a distance. When I get closer, it usually turns out to be an ambulance. I see 2-4 of these each year. Sometimes I know the people who live in the house. Six of my neighbors had early morning ambulance visits. I later learned that four went to the hospital for treatment and two had passed away.
Further away from my home, I’ll see the EMTs prep a stretcher and medical equipment to take into the home. They are efficient and methodical – not rushed, but not wasting time either. I can only guess at what happened and why they were called. I don’t know and it is none of my business.
But I know it’s not because something good happened.
if I was a religion I’d say a prayer for the occupants of the home. But I’m not. So instead I send warm thoughts and sympathy – hoping that whatever this is, that is goes as well as it can for them.
There are a lot of old people in my neighborhood. An ambulance in the wee hours is never a good sign.