Over two months ago in Richmond, my 14-yr old niece was in a terrible car accident. Four kids in the car and one of them, a young girl, died at the scene.

The neighborhood kids went for an underage joyride late Friday night, but their their car was “t-boned” at full speed while running a red light. (Well, what actually happened is speculation, since the police are still investigating.)

My niece barely made it through the weekend.

The doctors said that the 72-hour period after an accident is crucial. Living past that, she will have a good chance at survival.

My brother had a lot of support from the doctors, our family, family friends, his church, and my niece’s high school.

Here, in Texas, it felt like we were drifting through outer space… safe from reality.

Even if we were back in Virginia, there would be nothing to do except wait, pray, and deal with every shocking detail of her recovery.

Peronally, I was relieved to be at such a good distance from the smell of hospital hallways and the sight of my father crying.

Everything was in a state of confusion and upheaval.

Over the weekend, another one of the kids died at the hospital. A young man of 15.

The driver of the car, another boy, was apparently doing better. I think he was moved out of intensive care… where my niece remained.

I had already started a 40-day drawing project, but news of the accident was making it difficult to concentrate.

Each day, I wanted to stop the project. Drawing was an agonizing process. My mind became a frenzy of body parts, blood, feeding tubes, loss of vision, cerebral pressure, organ shutdown, spinal taps, and muscle tissue. Drawing was an all-at-once process that felt like a combination chain smoking, prayer, and doing surgical operation. It was my way of stressing out about the situation and, at the same time, doing something to fix it.

For over a week, it was a heavy, stress-inducing task.

Sometimes, the drawings would be about building up health and protection.

Other times, maybe I was scrambling around to operate, fix and arrange things, to correct synapses, to mend nerves, and drain fluid.

I became sad to think about my niece waking up to this personal nightmare.

Her body and organs smashed up, and unable to understand why she was in the hospital.

It was overwhelming to think of all the crap that I “got away with” as a young man, but that my niece had recieved the full smackdown on one of her first defiant actions as a kid.

She was starting to be more conscious and wake up to the fact that she was really stuck in the hospital with her jaw wired shut and one severely infected eye.

Now that she was more alert, we were all feeling more thankful.

The universe was wild, but stable.

Some days, the news was still overwhelming and I would realize that she was still in critical condition. We would wait for news about the scheduled operation… and hope for the best.

As for the drawing project, I made it past the doubt and frustration… to actually break new ground. To find some hidden expression or language, and bring it to the page.

At that point, I was able to relax and spend more time drawing. The process became an act of meditation and sedation, rather than a spontaneous spinoff of stress.

My brother really impressed me by using a service called Caring Bridge to keep up an online journal of his daughter’s 68-day journey through hospital care.

Yesterday, she finally made it home.

My brother blogged to keep everyone up-to-date on her situation, to thank people for food (and make specific food requests), to ask people that know his son to keep him in line at school, and to keep people in touch with his daughter’s entire ordeal.

I assume that his journal was read by half of the entire high school freshman class, church members, people from his work and his wife’s workplace, high school administrators, and other local parents.

A couple times, he had to get preachy, but the moments were appropriate for the enrichment of his community.

He took time to insist that parents goto their child’s My Space page.

Parents - Please get your kids to review their personal webspace created on www.myspace.com with you. Your child will not like it, but it will open your eyes. After you are shown, many kids will likely try to find a way around you interfering with this in the future, i.e. by creating a different identity on the site, then letting everyone know except their parents. For now, however, you will have a glimpse. My plan, for now, is to prohibit use of the school provided computer while at home…unless it is used at the kitchen table with me nearby. I apologize for using this website, which is meant for sharing love and support, however I don’t want another parent to be awakened like ours by police. Let’s face it–kids will be kids, however, I will let you judge the information you discover for yourself.

He also heard something that was going on at the school where kids were acting out with “competitive grieving” at his kid’s middle and high schools:

I am getting reports of competitive grieving, sympathy and acts of kindness, i.e. comparing the number of hospital visits, guestbook messages, or just judging someone’s facial expressions or behavior to determine how much this situation has affected them.

Reading his journal… I was really impressed and connected.