He went to a baseball game and never made it home

Life, man.

What else can you say to it sometimes other than, “Fuck you!”

Just “Fuck you.”

Consider:

A man walks to a local park to enjoy a youth baseball game. He never returns home.

Instead, a car allegedly driven by a 29-year-old man on drugs—who doesn’t even have his license—careens off the road and slams into the bleachers.

The man in the bleachers dies.

Fuck you, life. You suck.

This is a true story and it comes to us from my home state of Maine.

This past Sunday, a 76-year-old man named Celestin Muhizi—who once escaped the genocide that occurred in his native Rwanda back in the 1990s—was killed in the exact fashion mentioned above.

He had come to America to live with his son, a final chapter to the dream life he always imagined for his family.

He enjoyed taking walks in Portland’s Deering Oaks Park, a place I have frequented many times myself over the years.

He loved the freedom of the walks, the picturesque downtown Portland views, and he enjoyed watching the youth baseball games that would occur every weekend.

That’s where he was when his life ended suddenly in the top or the bottom of some random inning, of some random game that he simply enjoyed watching.

A man was arrested and charged with manslaughter, operating under the influence of drugs, reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon, violating the conditions of his release (obviously had been in jail before) and operating without a license.

Such an arrest would do little to ease the pain of Celestin’s family and friends, though.

“He was awesome, caring and a hard-working dad,” his son told the Portland Press Herald.

He came to America in the spring of 2019 to see his grandson be Baptized.

He loved it so much here that he asked to stay.

Just this month, the U.S. Government gave him the proper paperwork, allowing him to call the United States of America home.

Now, he is gone.

In a moment.

A twist of fate. A cruel twist of fate, that is.

People of this world are divided and stupid as they fight about things, take sides about things, that in the big picture don’t truly matter.

Forget left vs. right for a minute.

Push COVID-19 and the mask-vs.-no mask movements to the side for just a moment.

It all could be over in that minute, at that very moment.

A single minute.

One singular moment.

Wrong place. Wrong time.

The end.

A man went to watch a youth baseball game on Sunday.

He never returned home.

So, keep fighting about the things that don’t really matter that much.

Get on your social media and bicker.

Me?

I’m going to try to step out my front door today, and tomorrow, and I hope the next, and try to live the rest of my life like it means something.

After all, it could all be snatched away in a singular moment.