It is this “conspiracy of silence” surrounding death as it relates to crash fatalities that I would like to shatter.

Some time ago, I wrote a lengthy post. Very lengthy. With the thought in mind that some might not have read to the end, I am reposting it in a different fashion: the end comes first:

“I will be eternally grateful that Mary and AnnaLeah were ready when death knocked at their door on a day when they did not suspect it. I am comforted by a letter we found after their funeral which Mary had written to herself (meant to be read ten years later) a few weeks before our crash. One of the things she said–and which I will never forget–was that she hoped that she was living every day as if it were her last.

The Bible says that, Death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.(Ecclesiastes 7:2) Why is it that Too Often we do not do so? Why do we live and think and act as if we were invincible and invulnerable?

According to Rod Lensch, ‘One good explanation is that death is like the law of gravity. We recognize its reality but rarely think about it. People generally tend to walk into life with hope and confidence but back into death with uncertainty and fear. So the conspiracy of silence surrounding death continues unabated.’

And, it is this “conspiracy of silence” surrounding death as it relates to crash fatalities that I would like to shatter. I would like to shine a spotlight on these countless unnecessary and preventable deaths and call for change–for safety to become much more than a word that is flippantly tossed around without any real and lasting impact.

Let’s be bold and decisive and circumspectly do the sensible and compassionate thing. Let’s do our part–each one of us–to protect those around us from all harm and danger that they might love and laugh and live their life fully.

This morning, as I was taking a shower, I began singing Amy Grant’s song, Thy Word Is A Lamp Unto My Feet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs-aiQ9NZ1g

Normally, that song is an encouragement to me. But as I got to the phrase, ‘Please be near me to the end,’ I ‘lost it’ as the memory returned of my girls’ abrupt and premature end to their lives. At one and the same time, it was a comfort that He was indeed near them ‘to the end’ and a great sorrow that their ending had to come in such a way and at such a time–so unnecessarily for me to see and bear in my own lifetime, and for them to miss out on so much more of life, not to mention all the lives now bereft of the love and gifts they so freely shared.

It is at such moments that I cry out, ‘May there be an end to Too Often, Too Little, Too Late. And may it come quickly.’”