I've told this story once before on Reddit. That post didn't gain much traction, but if this sounds familiar that's why.

I saw two people die when I was 19. Technically I only saw one actually pass, the other was dead when I arrived.

I was heading to my girlfriend at the times house and there was a pretty sharp bend in one of the roads leading there. As I'm coming around the bend, I see a fire and for some reason the first thing I thought was "why would someone burn leaves so close to the road? That's so dumb".

Turns out the fire I saw was a car that took the bend too fast and hit head on with another car. The impact was so strong both cars did a 180 and faced the opposite way they were actually driving.

I was the first person on the scene. I don't really know why, I guess adrenaline just kind of kicked in once I realized what was going on, but I parked my car and jumped out immediately.

I ran up to the burning car (only the hood was burning but it was slowly growing) and when I looked inside it appeared that both the driver and passenger were dead. I found out later the driver died on impact. I went to walk over to the other car and I heard the passenger cough.

I immediately ran to his side and tried to open the door, but it was jammed shut and the window was stuck as well. I went back around to the drivers side and the only entry point to the car was the rear drivers side window. I don't know why but I thought if I could just undo the passengers seat belt, he would be able to help push his door open and get out.

So I leaned into the window to try and unbuckle him and while I was struggling with it, he looked up at me, coughed once and died. I was about six inches from his face and that day I learned why we have the saying "the life left his eyes" because that is exactly what happens.

A couple seconds later, felt like minutes to me, a cop pulled me out of the window and told me to back away from the accident and I realized other people were outside by this point. I went to the other car and helped out the two little girls, their mother, their uncle and I tried to help their dad but the steering wheel had pinned his legs down. Everyone in the second car was gone, except the dad who broke his legs from the steering wheel.

I went to my girlfriends house and told her what happened. Turns out she knew both of the kids who died from school, one was a year older than me and the passenger was the same age as me. Most ironic thing? He had the exact same name as me. In the other car, the man who had his legs pinned by the wheel was also one of my girlfriends teachers, and he would have had both of those kids in his class at some point.

I guess I was in shock when I got to my girlfriends, but I don't remember much about the rest of that day. For awhile I couldn't even talk about it without a panic attack coming on, let alone see an accident in a movie or real life, and it took a week or two before driving felt normal again. That was 6 years ago now so it's easier to talk about and I've actually found it kind of helps to sometimes, though there's still times I can't.

Every once in awhile I see a picture of the kids face honoring his memory on the anniversary of the accident and it kind of shuts me down for a day or two.