In his memory... RIP I LOVE YOU

by Ashley Marie Scribner
(Edgewood, NM, USA)

My name is Ashley and I am from a little town we call Moriarty. Its really a hole in the wall and hardly ever does anything happen here except for one night when some friends decided to have a party in an open field. My friend, more like a brother (i can't mention his name cause he was the driver) but he had two maybe three beers that night and someone had thought the cops were coming so everyone got in their vehicles and sped away and my friend was on a adrenaline rush and got behind the wheel out of habit and took off just like everyone else. He and 4 friends hit a cattle guard on the side doing 40 mph and it put the car up on two wheels and it skid into a light pole and it killed him and injured two and the other two left so no one knows if they were injured or not. The sad part is he would have lived if he didn't get behind the wheel and this could have been completely preventable. I lost him because he made one bad decision. Even sadder is he would have survived if someone had called 911 but no one did. Someone that lives close by had saw sparks coming off of the light pole so they called 911 and when the emergency team got there, it was to late. I am not putting the blame on anyone, I am just simply telling my story and how it affected me and the people around me and much less, his family. Yes he was the driver and no I am not making excuses for him but he only did it out of habit not because he wanted to. When I got the news it was so unreal, i could not grasp it. This young man that I had known for 8 years, who had grown to become someone I called a brother died because of drinking and driving. How am I or anyone supposed to handle that kind of news? Yes I am not a victim of a drinking and driving accident and yes my brother was not a victim and yes he was an offender and yes it was wrong but regardless, it still affected me the same way because he is dead and there is no bringing him back and he won't have the chance to have a family and a future because he died at 18 years old. He was about to graduate high school and he missed that because of one horrible life changing decision. I miss him more and more with each passing day, I find myself thinking about him alot and I have days where I just break down and cry because I know that he is gone for good. There are not words to describe the kind of pain you feel when you lose someone to this type of accident because deep down you know that its preventable. The pain is so unreal and you hurt for days, weeks, months, even years on end. I grieve for the families who have lost someone as a victim, the innocent who had no rhyme or reason to die. I feel for them because I can only imagine how it feels. But since I am on the other end of the spectrum, I mean losing someone as an offender I know how that feels to know they made that decision and killed themselves and injured others and it hurts deeply because you wonder why they even considered making that decision in the first place much less going through with it. Just know that offenders and victims alike suffer and one is always going to be worse than the other but we do still suffer.