Blog #6

When the Bus Driver Cried
By Ed Rowell

At first I wasn’t sure if this article would work for someone seeking hope but once I read the whole thing I finally understood. In his article was about a bus driver who took kinder garden students who didn’t have necessarily the best families to and from school. One afternoon he was pulling into the bus garage and he notice that a little boy, Ryan, was still on the bus because he had fallen asleep and missed him stop. So the bus driver took him home. A few months later, near Halloween, all the kids were dressed up in costumes for the holiday; Ryan was dressed as a vampire. After his last stop the bus driver went home. The next morning was a Saturday and the bus driver was reading the paper, a child had died at the Halloween party that the kids he drove to school had gone to. The child who dies had been trapped under a heavy piece of gymnastic equipment and died. This child who died was Ryan. So the bus driver went to the funeral and shared a moment with Ryan’s mom. He wanted to comfort her in her time of hope that her child was in a better place and that she would be able to live without him. In this period of comforting he mentioned that god also had gone though this experience because he too had lost a son. By Christmas time the bus driver was having a hard time with a stomach ache that wouldn’t go away so he went to the hospital to get it checked out. The doctors believed that he had appendicitis. As the bus driver laid on the gurney he felt a shot of something that took the pain away then saw a woman who looked like Ryan’s mom come in. she ended up being the nurse and she could tell he was in pain. She wanted to thank him for his words of inspiration that helped her though the tough time after Ryan’s death. As she took his blood she said this and he then felt much better about the experience at the funeral, because he had thought he had caused her more pain, but in the end his hope to make her grieving less had worked. Their hope was similar to Rukmani’s because she also lost a son and she turned to god to seek help in her life afterwards.

Rowell, Ed. "When The Bus Driver Cried." Christianity today November/December 1997 18 Feb 2009 .