The sun is pouring through the leaves of the tree as I stare out my bedroom window. It’s late March. In fact it’s my old best friend’s birthday. At this moment, so many years ago, I’m talking to one of my other best friend’s Natasha. I haven’t seen her in two years, but she’s on the phone. She’s asking me if I remember one of our friends, Jennifer Booth. I can’t recall if her voice started to crack or if she cried while she told me. Natasha’s words still hold all of the weight of the news she was passing on. Jennifer had been killed while picking up trash along I-15 just outside of Las Vegas. She had survived the initial accident only to be taken off of life support the next day. She was one of 6 to die. My friend was dead.

Today, 3/13/21, is one week shy of the 21st anniversary for the crash. A 20 year old was driving while high when her she lost control of her van and ran through the line of “kids” picking up trash along the road. My friend wasn’t an angel. None of us were. She was doing community service for some infraction. I honestly don’t know what it was for. The story is that 5 of the teens were killed at the scene and Jennifer was airlifted to the hospital where she was taken off of life support the following day. She had no brain function left.

Las Vegas wasn’t a great place to raise a kid in the late 90s and early 2000s. We all did what we could to stay out of trouble, but it found some of us more than others. I was one of the lucky ones, most days. I’m not sure what brought Jennifer to that place at that time. It destroyed me. This was the first real loss for me. My grandfather had died when I was younger, but I wasn’t close to him. For me this was a loss.

Jennifer was stolen from all of us because someone made a choice to drive while high. I wouldn’t know this for a long time though. It was really only a few years ago that I found out the driver wasn’t drunk, but instead high. That still hasn’t sunk in so many years later. I’ve told so many people that I lost a friend to a drunk driver. I used it as part of my identity and a reason not to drink. The blinding anger that came with this loss was something I never dealt with. The news, the trial, and the sentence would do nothing to ease the hurt and quell the anger. The driver was sentenced to 18-48 years in jail. Let’s do the math real quick. That’s only 3-6 years per person killed. Where the justice in that? Those kids had a life ahead of them. Were they on the right path? I can’t say. They never got the choice to make a change to a different path. Their path took them there, that day, and put them in the way of a van driven by someone else on a perpendicular path. Where those paths crossed many lives ended.

I consider myself lucky for having gotten to know Jennifer. We weren’t great friends by any stretch, but she had an infectious smile. I saw so much potential in her. There was pain and hurt too. How she dealt with them wasn’t really a way I would agree with. Her death really put me on a different path in how I would deal with mine. I bottled a lot of it up. I wrote a few poems for an English class about it. I promised I’d stay away from alcohol and drugs because of this loss. What I didn’t do was deal with it. Ever. I let it just sit there in the back of my head. One day I was at a local show with some friends. A girl walked in and she was a spitting image of Jennifer around her age when she died. I didn’t know what to do. It felt like I was seeing her again for one last time. I knew it wasn’t her and I couldn’t go say goodbye to that person. How would you explain that? “Excuse me but you look just like my dead friend. I’d like to say goodbye.”

It would take many years for me to slowly release the anger. There is a moment where I started to realize that I had understood and healed slightly. I got another phone call from a friend. This time it was different. No one was dead. This friend had informed me they had been arrested for DUI. They stated it had been a few months since it happened, and they were scared to tell me. Normally I probably would have yelled and screamed. I was calm and it actually helped me come to terms. I realized at that moment that I didn’t need to carry the anger anymore. Nothing had changed, just time had passed. The courage needed by that friend to tell me of all people, must have been immense. While I don’t condone what they did, they learned a valuable life lesson. Thankfully no one got hurt. That sounds like a weird thing to say. I am thankful no one got hurt. If I can prevent anyone from feeling what I felt, or the families felt, or even what the driver felt, I will. I don’t know how I will, but I will. Please think before you get behind the wheel. A short drive can change everything in an instant. You don’t get any do overs and there are no second chances.

In October of 2019 the driver was released on parole. She says she’s sorry and feels remorse. While I feel for her I will never forget, nor forgive her, for what she did. I know there’s a silver lining in here, but so much was lost that day, and every day since then. I do hope that whatever pain the driver felt that lead her to do what she did is gone. I do hope that she can move on. Some of us may still hate her, but I do not. While it caused me pain, and many others even greater pain, I do hope she can find some peace in her life now.

Everyday we make countless choices. It’s not possible to see all of the outcomes, the hurt big or small, the life saving choices, the devastation we can cause, until its too late.

To all those that have lost someone, I don’t think you need to forgive nor forget. Carry what you need and slowly let go of what you don’t. Find us if you want to talk. The more we talk, the more we heal.