Our Last Summer

It is summer. Our final summer together. In a few short months, there will be thousands of miles of land between us, an incredible labyrinth I would traverse over and over to find my way back to you. But I refuse to let my eyes move away from you, for my thoughts to wander into the haze of a future that has not yet come to pass. Instead, I let my body compress into the passenger seat, as I have countless times before, and my mind fades the corners of the world until all I see is you. The curves of your knuckles grasp the wheel with an odd familiarity, illuminating the blue of your veins in the evening sun. If I could relive a moment forever, it would be this one. If only to see your face again. If only to prevent that which came to be whispered as “avoidable” and “tragic” on late-night drives and at twilight memorials. After the commotion silenced into a beating hum harping behind my eyes and inside my head, I began to speculate.

Did my smile motivate you to accelerate? Did my restlessness cause you to pass lights without a second thought? If I had never met you, would we still walk the same earth and look at the same sun? Where had I gone wrong? Maybe I should have been more adamant about scolding you when you sped, or raced, or glanced at your phone. Perhaps they should have lectured us in school. Maybe you should have appreciated what was around you, in reality. But neither of us is to blame. We were children. I still am, and you will forever be. So if I could grant you one piece of advice, anyone one piece of advice, it would be to look at a future without your best friend, mother, father, sister, or lover.

Since we were kids, barely able to see above the dashboard, we came in a pair. Many days turned into nights on our lakeside drive, darting between yards and fishing down by the river. It always amazed me how knowledgeable you were about wildlife and nature, and life. For being so young, I could sit mesmerized by your voice for hours on end, watching the hours tick by through the sun’s position in the sky. Instinctively, with the naivety and ferocity of children, we always found ourselves immersed in trouble. Though when all would come to pass, we emerged resiliently, and above all, together. If you had told me there would be a moment, even fleeting, where you were not by my side, I would have scoffed in disbelief. However, my worst fear has now become a stark reality. One I will be a prisoner to as long as your memory lives within me—all for a single, permanent mistake.

No amount of posters or commercials will sway young adults’ minds so intertwined with a single device. And once you have conjured up an image so terrible, you close your eyes to hide from the sight of it, think about yourself and what the world has offered to you since the beginning of your life. The dreams you have and the plans sketched on forgotten notebooks to achieve them. Would you give all that away to reach your mere destination minutes faster? Something so irrelevant in the grand scheme of life. I hope you would answer no to that question. But when it mattered, you did not. Words are one thing, easily said and broken, but actions are different. Actions are irreversible, even when we wish they were not. Throwing such a young life away is never worth it, even if society has conditioned our brains to react to the dopamine hit of acceptance and likes. One must put their safety and the safety of those around them first. It is a long list of requests for a teenager, but it is even more necessary in today’s world.

At such a critical point in the fight against distracted driving, it is almost negligent in relying on others to solve our problem. The bureaucratic process of law enactment is unreliable, particularly when more young people are injured and die every day in auto accidents. Even if the federal government passed something, its effectiveness would likely be minimal, as abiding by the law isn’t necessarily a significant factor behind teenage decision-making. Unfortunately, the presence of consequences is not an effective deterrent. Laws will not stop a phone from ringing, a text from chiming. Real change begins on the ground, through conversations in the school parking lot, at the family dinner table, or weekend football games. Nothing can better sway the minds of young people than their peers. If the amount of awareness existed then, as it does now, things could have been different for you, but maybe the fate of thousands of people can differ today.

Think of others and then oneself before partaking in dangerous driving. Only by knowing and understanding the risks will tangible action happen. There need not be any more young people, on the precipice of a whole and vibrant life, be reduced to statistics. Such horrible tragedies, like the one I have experienced, are thankfully not yet a common occurrence. Nonetheless, with each passing year, more is needed to stem fatal incidents associated with distracted driving. Unfortunately, no amount of pleading affects the face of what occurs. The fact remains: You are gone, and I would have done anything to save you, dried my dreams in the sun, and folded them away. But all the lost things would not have mattered because we would have been together. Your face will never brighten again in the pursuit of one of our adventures, and your arms will never embrace your mother, whose pain I can only begin to grasp. Due to powers within our control, we are apart, and we will never be whole again. And I will live with that guilt for the rest of my life.