上外贸综合英语读写课文挖词Unit 6 Every 23 Minutes

Every 23 Minutes

My husband and I went to a f______ a few weeks ago. The man we h______ had not been ill and will never grow old. He was killed in his car on a Sunday night, driving home along a pided highway.

It was an ordinary evening, no b______ than any other, when a car coming in the other d______ went out of control, b______ through the guard rail, and hit two other cars before s______ head on into his. According to the newspaper, the driver, who was returning from a wedding, seemed p______. "I only had two bottles of beer and a cocktail," she is reported to have said.

A wedding.

Followed by a funeral.

I wish she could have been there to see all the lives her act has changed forever, the wife, and four children, the e______ family, the hundreds and hundreds of friends who sat in painful silence, listening to words which barely touched the d______ of their grief.

Strange to think that, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, this happens in America every 23 minutes.

Somebody drinks.

Somebody drives.

Somebody dies.

And other lives are a______ forever, though sometimes the changes may be i______ to a casual observer. By chance, the day before the funeral I ran into a longtime a______ while shopping. He c______ on my crutches. I asked if he had ever broken his leg.

"Uh, I have a long rod in this thigh," he said, "from a car accident two weeks after I came back from Vietnam."

"That's i______. To leave a war zone and then get injured," I t______ him. "You're lucky it wasn't worse."

"Well, my wife was killed in the crash and so was the wife of the driver," he said uncomfortably. "We were hit by a drunk."

I've known this man for years, yet suddenly realized there was a whole c______ of his life he'd never mentioned. I asked and discovered he'd remained in the hospital seven weeks, and that all that time he'd known his wife was dead. It was hard to know where to go from there, for there are questions you can't put to someone in a casual conversation — questions like, "How could you b______ it?" or "What did you do about wanting r______?"

I wish I knew the answers to those questions. I wish I could offer those answers to the woman who, o______ by grief, could barely walk as she followed her husband's c______ from the church. Every 23 minutes, who dies?

A mother who will never comfort the child who needs her. A woman who will never know how very much her friends d______ on her. A man whose c______ to his community would have made a d______. A wife whose husband cannot p______ the future without her.

Every 23 minutes, who dies?

A son who involuntarily a______ his parents in their old age. A father who can never a______ his children's a______. A daughter who can never take back her angry words. A sister who will never be her sister's m______ of honor.

Every 23 minutes, who dies?

A brother who will not be there to hold his n______ niece. A friend whose encouragement is gone forever. A bride-to-be who will never say her v______. An aunt whose family will f______ and fall apart.

Every 23 minutes, who dies?

A child who will never f______ his early promise. An uncle who leaves his children without g______ and support. A grandmother whose husband must now grow old alone. A lover who never had a chance to say how much he c______.

Every 23 minutes.

A void opens.

Someone looks across the table at a v______ chair; climbs into an empty bed, feels the pain of no voice, no touch, no love. Where there was once i______ and contact, now there is only a______ and despair.

Every 23 minutes

A heart breaks.

Someone's pain shatters the c______ of her body, l______ out in tears, e______ in cries, d______ all efforts to s______ the despair. Sleep offers no escape from the n______ of awakening. And morning brings only the i______ of loss.

Every 23 minutes.

A dream ends.

Someone's future b______ and goes b______ as anticipation f______ into nothingness. The phone will not ring, the car will not pull up to the house. The weight of tomorrow becomes u______ in a world in which all promises have been broken by force.

Every 23 minutes.

Somebody wants to run. Somebody wants to hide.

Somebody is left with hate. Somebody wants to die.

And we permit this to go on.

Every 23 minutes.