Repeat After Me

Today’s post comes from the file labeled “personal information.” I wish I didn’t have to say what I’m going to say, but such are the lessons we reluctantly must learn in life.

This weekend some friends and I drove to Albany for the funeral of the sister of one of our very good friends.  The young woman to whom we paid tribute was younger than reasonably necessary for an event like a funeral.  She was 32 years old young of age.  The details of her life are insignificant for the sake of this blog post, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying anything if I didn’t say that she was a beacon of light to her loved ones, a young soul whose humor and stories guided the budding lives of her three younger siblings, her devoted family and her many, many friends.

I did not know her personally, though we had met briefly for all of a minute and a half.  I liked her a lot in that minute and a half.  I know her because I know her sister, and because she must have been, by all accounts, a carbon copy of my friend’s exuberance, her thirst for adventure and her insatiable ability to make anyone laugh, no matter their rank or status in this world.  She obviously lived life by living it, not wishing to live it.  That is a remarkable quality, and one that we must always look to for inspiration.  I wish I had known her personally, because the stories I’ve heard do not do her justice.  Not to me, and not to her family, who had the fortune of knowing her for her 32 years.

The point of my writing today is that despite the fact that you don’t know her (probably) and you have no legitimate reason to know about for the loss my friend is experiencing, you must know this fact about her:  She was killed, a victim of a drunk driver.  For this, we can all take pause and listen to our hearts and our minds to know what we must do, what we must learn from this brief glance into her life and untimely demise.

It goes without saying that drunk driving can cause damage and heartache for all of those involved—you could say that it’s a bad idea for the mere fact that it’s illegal and will put you in serious trouble with the law, but that’s really nothing.  I don’t know how to say something that has been said so often that it’s a tired cliche by now—that drinking and driving, on almost every end of the spectrum, is a complete and utter mistake.  Everybody has done it, so nobody can plead the fifth on this.  It is easy to make excuses, but it is harder to face your consequences when you’ve made the enormous error in judgement and gotten behind the wheel while intoxicated.

I wish there were a new way of saying this, because it would only then make it sound worthy of our attention.  We must take notice.  Because I don’t want to be by another friend’s side through another funeral because of this horrific and routine mistake, as willing as I would be to do so.

Don’t drink and then drive.  It ruins everything.

That’s it.

If you live in WNY and are in need of a driver, call Liberty Cab at 877.7111.
If you live outside WNY, Google your local cab company and put its number in your cell phone right now.  Put a spare $20 bill in the back of your wallet so you don’t have that excuse.
If you are with someone who has had too much, don’t be a shmuck and assume they’ll get by.  Even if they live down the street.  It’s far easier to walk them or drive them, if you are unimpaired.
If you have any sense of reason, don’t make me have to write this post again.  Take care of yourselves and each other.  You aren’t too cool, too sexy, too on top of the world to ask someone with all their senses intact to take your keys.  You’re just smarter than the others.

R.I.P. Elizabeth

Photo courtesy this guy.

Posted by on 06/23 at 02:59 PM