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It's hard to blend and manipulate cosmetics on a body that isn't living. My mother and I used the palms of our hands to warm up the mid-tone foundation that matched Miranda's skin. I looked down at this young girl who should be listening to music in her car with the windows down, enjoying the beautiful summer evening, and heading to Taco Bell to hang out with her friends. Instead, she's lying on the table in my parent's funeral home because she chose to reply to a text message while driving on a warm summer night from the friends who were waiting for her at Taco Bell.
Miranda never made it across town to hang out with her friends and order her favorite Cheesy Gordito Crunch. The police shared the investigative report with her parents, and it concluded that her body was thrown out of her car after colliding with a large utility pole. This directly followed Miranda looking up from her text message and swerving to miss the car that suddenly was in front of her.
I thought about that final text message quite a bit. What did it say? Did they change their plans? Did she change her plans about meeting up at Taco Bell, and was she just about to write a text telling them so? Or was she going to tell her friends she was running late, or maybe that she needed to stop for gas?
It doesn't matter anymore. She is now deceased and silently resting in front of me. I keep looking down at Miranda for some sort of answer as to why she made such a fatal mistake. Why reading or sending a text at that moment was so important, and why she didn’t take a minute to pull the car to the side of the road.
When I learned that a high school girl died while texting and driving, I wanted to help my mom at the funeral home that day. This girl was my age. She went to the neighboring high school. I hung out with my friends at that same Taco Bell. Miranda could have been one of my friends. She could have been a girl I’d seen in the parking lot. She could have been me. 
Later that evening Miranda’s family came to the funeral home to spend time with their daughter, their sister, their granddaughter, and a person they all loved so deeply. I remember the air was so heavy, the grief was so real. I wanted to say something helpful, but I had a hard time looking at anyone in the face because I feared what would meet my gaze. 
They hurt, plainly, but they were lost and at loose ends and there was no solace for them. Not fair; they deserved something better than that. I wanted to say something helpful but, at my young age, I didn’t quite know how to do this. Maybe get up and say something thought-provoking? About the beauty in the circle of life and death? I felt deeply for these delicate people with sad faces and broken hearts.
The friends started coming in about an hour later. They wore their version of what they felt a funeral mourner should wear. They all were dressed in sorrowful black and spoke in inaudible whispers. The energy of the room seemed even more bleak. All the kids looked lost. I could tell they wanted an answer to what horrible thing just happened to disrupt their carefree summer. They couldn't understand how doing something so simple as reading a text message while driving caused this tragedy. They were going to be stuck with the trauma of the accident for a very long time.
Driver’s education class taught me that touching a cell phone while driving was simply not permissible. Did Miranda’s parents sign her up for this course? Was she not paying attention? The instructor shocked us with death statistics and a startling movie. Maybe her funeral would never have happened that day if she had paid attention.
When I was outside handing out water bottles to a large group of her friends, some guy smoking a cigarette broke the gloomy quiet with a declarative statement. “”
He wasn’t met with an answer. The sentence hung in the air. He spoke the truth, and I’m sure this thought crossed everyone’s mind at some point since finding out about her death from texting while driving, but speaking the words out loud was a sudden rip of the band-aid that no one standing there was prepared for.
A girl, who I later learned was Miranda’s cousin, said that she always texts and drives and swore she would never do it again. After seeing the devasted faces of her aunt and uncle as they stood next to their daughter’s casket, she promised she would never do that to her own parents. Everyone agreed. Everyone promised at that moment not to touch their phones when driving.
The seasons have since moved forward and I hope the friends outside the funeral home that day have followed through with their affirmations. I know I haven’t looked at my phone while driving since spending time that summer with Miranda, and I doubt I ever will. I don’t need a bigger wake-up call.
But something needs to be done to prevent these needless deaths. My state of Oregon has a fine that starts at $1,000 for drivers who are caught texting while driving. Do people pay the fine and continue with their behavior? Hard to say.
Most vehicles have hands-free options: Connecting a phone to the vehicle's hands-free system. It is quite easy, and the speakers in the car work well. People can also pull over and park if they need to make a call or send a text message.
Maybe automakers will create a mandatory lock-up of the phone before the ignition starts. Or maybe car companies can build a special pocket on the opposite side of the driver to hold the phone out of reach of the driver. Or have a built-in sensor activated.
We need to do something to keep the phones put away, but I sure don’t want the death of a loved one who died from texting and driving to be the answer we all need.