Posts
Every year my kids that were going to high school would come home in the spring and bring a permission slip for a program named "Shattered Dreams". I would look the paper over, sign it and send it back to school. I knew that the program dealt with the subject of drinking and driving. Prom season is coming up and as high school parents, we all worry about our kids making a life altering, possibly ending mistake. This year when I got the paper it was different. Betty, my youngest child, had sent in an essay asking to participate in the program with the staff to bring home the point of how devastating drinking and driving could be. This year, I found out exactly what goes on during the program and how much effort goes in to making a realistic morality play of what can happen if students choose to drink and drive.
Betty was chosen to be one of several "living dead". The program has many selected students who participate in a mock fatal car crash. They tape a "party" where they are drinking and then a car full of students are seen driving away. The screen goes blank and all that can be heard is screeching tires, bending metal and shattering glass. They record a mock trial where the drunk driver is sentenced for the murder of the students in that car and the other car involved. A real car is brought onto the campus that is twisted steel. The student body watches the whole movie play out and visits the car during the day to see what can happen. My beautiful girl was one of about 50 kids who were pulled from class throughout the school day as if she had been a victim of drunk driving. We made a poster of pictures of her throughout her life and after she was pulled from class, her teacher read an obituary for her, that I was required to write. They then painted her face white and she could not talk for the rest of the day. She didn't come home that night. She stayed with the other participants at the Y. They were not allowed to communicate with the outside world at all, no cell phones, no computers, no talking of any kind. Once she became one of the "living dead" she was gone to all of us until the program was over.
In my book "Advancing Backward", I write about Betty's suicide attempt when she was fifteen years old. That seems like a million years ago now. She is eighteen and absolutely stunning. Her large heart and healthy sense of decency and justice hold her tiny frame up to it's full height of 5 foot 4 inches. We are the same height. She looks me dead in the eye when we talk. The name of Betty's chapter is "15 Seconds Can Change Your Life". The Shattered Dreams project shows that sometimes it takes less than 15 seconds. I went to the meetings for this program and felt so squeamish during the whole process. No one, outside the immediate group, could know who was participating. The element of surprise was key in driving home the point that no one is exempt from a drunk driver's bad decision.
As I sat in my office putting together the poster of pictures of my girl, I felt sick. Just pretending that she was dead hit home for me. It's nearly been my realty twice. The first time was when she was born during my medical storm. Had they not delivered her when they did, she would not have made it. Pictures of her was what truly saved my own life, as I lay in ICU. The second time was during her crisis. The image of her face when I walked in the room and saw her hanging there... it is one that I work very hard to push deep into the recess of my aging brain. The process of pretending she was killed by a drunk driver, well, I really got worked up over it. I can honestly say, if that did happen the driver had better be dead or in jail for their own protection, because I am quite sure I would be out of my mind, grief-stricken crazy.
I wrote a short obituary as if it were to appear in the paper. I did not write her life story. The kids she goes to school with have known her since middle school. They know most of her life story. Betty is open. Her heart is open, her mind is open and her mouth is usually open, in a good way. She carries a light inside her I can't seem to put into words to my own satisfaction. Ever meet somebody that radiates so much warmth and love, you wonder if they are real? You find yourself gravitating towards that person and have no idea why? That is in very small part what being around Betty is like. For me, writing about the death of my child, my miracle baby, brought me to tears. I put the picture of her father's head stone on the poster as a reminder of where she would be. I put the words from a huge poster in her room, John Lennon's "Imagine" on the poster too. The interesting thing is while I was doing the work, I felt sickened by it, but I did not cry. The tears for me came after they pulled her from class and I could no longer hear from her. She didn't go to work that day, she didn't come home from school, bound down the stairs, light up the room with her smile, run around the house with hair and backpack flying, she didn't go into the kitchen with her boyfriend on the phone, while making a cup of tea. There was no tippy tapping on the computer in the family room, where she would sit, listen to music and check her facebook. There were no updates or sign of her anywhere. I walked around the house and cried. I didn't know if the high school kids would get with the program and understand even a fraction of what the staff was trying to bring home, but trust me when I say, I felt it all the way to my bones.
I am so grateful for the high school staff who pushes so hard to keep this program alive. the work tirelessly, sending emails, letters, having meetings, using their own homes to film the mock party scene. They push these kids to understand on any level how important it is not to take their lives for granted. I am certain they have saved a life. If you have kids who are in high school, this is something to look into. The life you save may one be your own child.
