The 25th Anniversary of One of the Worst Days of My Life

Today is the 25^th anniversary of one of the worst days of my life: when my mother was killed in a car accident by a speeding driver passing another car in a no-pass lane on top of a country hill. She was coming back from doing volunteer work with a group of others. Four of the five in the vehicle were killed. With that single event, everything changed. My whole life trajectory was altered… fractured by sudden shock and grief. It caused a ripple effect that lasted for years and probably will my whole lifetime. I feel it subtly and subconsciously every time I commute back and forth to work with constantly have speeding drivers going way, way too fast over the speed limit on the interstate. Those reckless, selfish people swerve around other cars because they’re more “important” to get to wherever they’re going to just a few seconds faster. Those careless actions of people who just want their freedom of the thrill of speeding cause accidents to innocent people around them… people with hearts and heartbeats. For some, that need for speed is just another type of drug. My mom’s passing affected so very many lives including her husband, her children, her two older sisters, her many nieces and nephews, her neighbors, her former students, and those she was volunteering to help at the local hospital that she was seeing during her one and only year of retirement. Her spirit of helping others continues on with a scholarship in her name that is given out each year to an exceptional student at Coldwater High School. For those of us left behind having to deal with incalculable loss, we just have to continue on and make sense of the senseless… perhaps to share stories like hers to make people think more when they are driving their fast cars. Regardless of the grief caused by her death by someone so careless, today I’ll be remembering the love, goodness, kindness, and knowledge that my mother gave so many people throughout her shortened 59 years of life. And I hope you will, too. Thank you, mom. We love you. Your son, Eric