An Unconsolable Curiosity

It's been nearly 30 years back on some long forgotten and forlorn New Mexico two lane blacktop; I can still see the violent dust rolling and rising, the tractor trailer laying on it's crippled side badly smashed, like a cockroach that had been half stepped on, on the drivers side. I will never know what was the cause, speed, sleep deprivation, booze, poor judgement, but, I cannot unknow that drop in the gut feeling of desolate despair, a sense of lonely loss, of something terribly unchangeable, unfixable. I wonder if the driver right then and there, where I was looking, was already gone. How many miles did he need to drive to come this way home? How many must, any of us as needs be, drive to arrive?