Recently my daughter asked how do we make change or increase awareness about the way Zane was killed.  “If it was cancer”, she said, “I could be a part of a number of things to help promote, prevent and belong to…people get it.  But what do people do about drugged driving?”  Well, there is MADD and there is National Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention Month (which happens in December) and there is Safe Driving Week…there are options.  It got me to thinking, why have I not joined one of these?  The truth is, I’m not sure which one is for me.

When the officer told us that Zane’s death was not an accident, that they were killed by a drugged driver, that it was a collision that could have been prevented, anger was the first emotion I felt. How the hell did this happen?  How did anyone not notice?  How could this man’s friends let him drive drugged?  Why would he get behind the wheel when he was high?  Why did no one see them and report them?  Where were the police?  How can something so avoidable be the reason that, not one but three people died on that road?  Oh, the insanity, the utter grief that my son was killed by a man who shouldn’t have been driving in the first place.

I felt such hate for the driver that took away so much from so many.  And then I stumbled upon a social media page of his.  It had pictures of him, of his family, his sister who is my daughter’s age.  It was the picture of his mom that I stopped scrolling and stared at her.  There she was; the mother of the man who killed my son. I thought to myself how she would be sitting in her home, planning her son’s funeral, looking through his pictures and remembering happier times.  I am sure she was a typical mother who loved her son and did her very best to ensure he was safe and healthy and happy.  And with that, the anger melted into sadness and all I felt was pain for her.  She was another mom who had just lost her son.  This was a fellow mother who will live the rest of her life without hugs and the sound of her son’s laugh.  Whose dreams of what he could have been will never come to fruition.  She was sentenced to live in the same community as I do.  It was not her fault.  The rest is just details. Messy.  Ugly.  Details.

The year my son was killed there were 4,423 drug-impaired driving charges and 4,633 deaths due to drug overdose.  On average, 4 Canadians are killed each day in alcohol/drug related motor vehicle crashes. 

My daughter is right; we need to shout this out loud.  Whether it is addiction or the victim of drugged driving, drugs are killing more of our children than any other cause.  My question is why is this?  And maybe that’s the focus we should be taking. That is the cause I want to join.