Sad-DADD

Snapshots Along The Way

2012-01-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

Here are few snapshots of the past few months:

Jill and I went Christmas shopping, and had a pleasant enough experience. We decided to have lunch at Chili’s. At a table near us, a family was having a birthday celebration for their college age daughter. They sang happy birthday. Her name was Rachel. Of course it was…

When we traveled to southern California for Christmas we passed a car with a bumpersticker that read: “Freedom Isn’t Free. My grandson died for it!” In a way, Rachel, too, died for the sake of freedom: The freedom to drink and drive. No one celebrates her heroism, though. True, she did not choose her sacrifice or volunteer to put herself in harm’s way. With no greater protection than her blind faith in the goodwill of her fellow drivers, she took her chance, as we all do, every day. Now look at us. God bless America...

I get Google alerts for “DUI Homicide”. I don’t read them anymore. It is the same sad, maddening story every day. Nothing has changed. Rachel is dead. The world wasn’t impressed enough to change. How many more Rachel’s it will take until it does, I am too sick to reckon…

Two days before his 21^st birthday, our son, Erik, and his friend, Amanda (whose boyfriend Aaron was killed in a drunk driving incident), were rear-ended at an intersection by a 17 year old girl. The impact propelled his car into middle of the intersection. Fortunately, nobody was crossing at the time. His car was totaled, though. The driver’s mother, who carried the insurance, is underinsured and will not cover the cost of replacement. Happy Birthday! Jill and I were in Chico that night, going to see the movie, The Way, by Emilio Estevez, about a man who carries his son’s ashes as he finishes his son’s pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Erik didn’t have the heart to call us that night. He waited to call us in the morning until he knew we would be home from church. Another phone call. Another reminder of the fragility of life, of how slim the thread by which all our hopes hang...

No Christmas tree. No holiday music. A pile of cards stacked on the dining room buffet were the only evidence of the season inside our house. We didn’t have the heart for it, and because we were going to be in southern California, we had a good enough excuse not to make the effort. We put up a wreath and lights outside. Any casual observer would never know there was a completely dispirited couple making a show of life inside. True, it wasn’t as dreadful as it has been. I don’t know if we are showing signs of improvement, though. We were numb, indifferent, going through the motions. Merry Christmas!...

Dispirited. I received an email invitation from the Abbey of the Arts to consider seeking out a word that would guide my spiritual direction for the coming year. The word that was given to me is: “dispirited.” Hardly encouraging. But true. I recognized the truth of it the instant I heard it, and, as I lay on my bed listening, I heard it all night long. So there was no mistake. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. It’s necessary first to acknowledge the problem, to find the starting point, before we can take a step in the right direction toward wholeness. Jill and I have already begun to do that. I don’t know where it will end. By the grace of God, the grace of God…

Some of Rachel and Erik’s friends visited us while we were down south. There was a moment when two of Rachel’s friends were sitting on the sofa with a space between them, and I had the distinct thought: Rachel should be sitting right there in that spot, laughing with her friends, discussing her job, her school (no, she would be finished with school by now), her boyfriend (or husband, or child…)with them. I let it go. I tried to be thankful for the gift of the presence of those who were there in the moment. A step in the right direction. Still: How much more beautiful the world would be if only Rachel were here…

I had to get out of the house, so I revisited Mt. Rubidoux. I walked to the cross at the top of the mountain to watch the sun rise. I went seeking something, but I did not know what I wanted. Though I did not receive anything tangible, I did come away with the conviction that many other seekers have walked the same path up the mountain with a heavy heart. I found signs along the way...

The cross is a holy emblem that reminds us of a noble act and a sacred idea. But as I observed the birds, the coyotes, the people on the mountain that morning, I had to acknowledge that they were no less holy than the cross I had made the goal of my pilgrimage.

I am reading Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons. The protagonist describes a Native American he knew, called Bear: “Bear loved all the tangible manifestations of Creation as fervently as Baptists do King Jesus. It was not the spirit of winds, rivers, mountains, trees that he worshiped, it was the living things themselves.” The living things themselves... The phrase resonates. One of the things I have come to appreciate more painfully than I ever thought possible is just that: the unique and irreplaceable precious life of each individual. The holiness of life expressed in every particular. Rachel is just one of the billions of humans that have ever lived. There has never been and there will never be another. How is it possible to live with the loss of something so uniquely precious? That is what I am dying to find out…

ACTS OF LOVE

2011-08-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

I must be feeling better. I’ve been listening to Prefab Sprout. Headed by singer-songwriter, Paddy McAloon, the group has been around since the ‘80s. They make winsome music, the kind that makes you appreciate the miracle of life. In fact, that is the title of one of their songs: “Life’s A Miracle”

Tell someone you love them, there's always a way

And if the dead could speak I know what they would say

To you and me, don't waste another day

Show someone you love them, don't be scared to care

And if they fall into your arms you'll be surprised to find

The weight that you can bear, yeah, because

Life's a miracle

Paddy’s been dealing with some serious health issues lately, but he still writes beautiful, uplifting music.

One of my favorite P.S. songs is called “One of the Broken.” Paddy puts words in God’s mouth. God acknowledges the communication problem between him and his children. He advises those who want to connect with him to reach out to the broken, hurting people in the world. It’s a song inspired by Jesus’ identity with the least among us. A lesson in kindness. A lesson in love:

Sing me no deep hymn of devotion

Sing me no slow sweet melody

Sing it to one, one of the broken

And brother you're singing, singing to me

I never wanted to be the object of anyone’s pity, but I can’t deny that I am one of the broken. Countless times over the last 3-1/2 years I have heard words to the effect: “My thoughts and prayers are with you.” I often sense in these kind sentiments a note of regret. I understand. These good people want to do more - and would if they could. But a tragedy like ours forces us to acknowledge that that we are powerless to fix some situations, some things are irreparable. There is no bringing Rachel back.

I collect quotes. My first room-mate in college had a deck of notecards on which he had written positive statements. He would review them religiously, sitting on the edge of his bed or at his desk. To be honest, at the time I judged him to be a little out of step with the rest of the world. I found a new room-mate as quickly as I could. I remember him now as a harmless, decent person. I wish I had been more like him.

Anyway, one of the quotes I came across lately is from Padre Pio. He said, “Love is the first ingredient in the relief of suffering.” My mother used to kiss my boo-boo’s when I was a little boy. Her kisses didn’t stop the bleeding or the heal the wounds, but somehow they made me feel better. Now I know why.

I have said before that Jill and I prayed faithfully for the welfare and safety of our children. It has been a monumental struggle to come to terms with the fact that we prayed for Rachel’s safety in the morning before we knew she was already dead and her broken body was lying in a morgue awaiting an autopsy. Since then, it has been a challenge to find a good enough reason to bother to pray.

But, even before Rachel was killed, she was gone. She had moved to Irvine to pursue her dream of becoming a forensic scientist. A few years earlier, we had moved her from her home in southern California to an out of the way country town in northern California. Rachel always made it clear that she was a “So-Cal Girl At Heart,” and would return as soon as it was in her power to do so. When the time came, we had to let her go.

How does love bridge the gap of miles or years? We called her. We texted her. We emailed her. We thought of her constantly - worried for her, wondered about her. We prayed for her. Nothing we could do seemed like enough. With love, isn’t that always the way?

Another quote I found recently has helped me gain some perspective. St. Teresa of Avila said, “Prayer is an act of love.” The Bible says that prayer is a waste of breath without love. But when it springs from “the will to love,” as St. Teresa says, the message gets through.

One of the writers of the Philokalia said, “Love is greater than prayer.” I still have no confidence in the ability of prayer to secure my requests, but one thing I can affirm: my prayers for Rachel each and every day of her life were an act of love. That makes me feel a little better. I did what I could do, even when what I did looked like nothing so much as nothing at all. Maybe compassionate thoughts and heartfelt prayers and other acts of love are useless. But so are many beautiful, precious things. God knows my heart and yours, and, if what the Bible says is true, Rachel now knows perfectly well how much I have always loved her - and always will.

Prefab Sprout has another song that has spoken to me lately called, “God Watch Over You.” Obviously, it is a prayer for God’s protection. At first, it raised my hackles, cynical as I have become of the utility of such prayers. But, when I listened closely, I discovered that Paddy subtly reminds us that God can answer this prayer in different ways. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. We are never out of his care:

I pray that god protects you...

God watch over you

every minute, every moment

God watch over you

every minute, every moment

God watch over you (and if you fall)

May he stretch out his arm and catch you,

keep you from harm, or sweep you

into his palm...but...

God watch over you

Love is never wasted. The Bible says, “Love Never Fails.” I can’t stop thinking of Rachel because I still love her. I still pray that God is watching over her - it’s all I can do.

There is a door it may seem locked

But in a little while, don't be shocked

Above the noise, behind the glare

I know you're listening out there somewhere, somewhere

I can't wait to meet you there, somewhere

I can't wait to meet you there

“Doo-Wop In Harlem” by Prefab Sprout

STATEMENT

2011-08-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

The following is the Victim's Impact Statement I made in Riverside Superior Court, August 5, 2011 in People VS Elva Diaz, convicted of Gross Vehicular Manslaughter and sentenced to the aggravated term of ten years. It was one of eight Victim's Impact Statements presented to the court on that day and one of 31 submitted in writing for the court's consideration. It is by no means the best.

Honorable Judge Mark Johnson:

My name is Steven Winebrener Elliott. I am the father of Rachel Amaris Elliott.

First, I want to thank you for presiding over the trial in such a fair and reasonable manner. I don’t say this to flatter or manipulate you in any way: This is simply the only opportunity I may have to express my gratitude.

Because of the way you conducted the trial, I have the confidence that you will justly sentence the woman responsible for killing my daughter.

During the trial, you recessed the proceedings for a morning so that a juror could accompany her minor daughter to the airport. You said more than once that you honored the juror’s request because you are a father of a 14-1/2 year old daughter yourself and would want to send her off personally if she were going on a trip on an airplane. From this, I know that you understand a father’s love for his daughter. There are things words cannot express. My love for Rachel is one of them. I am grateful that I have the confidence that you already know what Rachel means to me, because you obviously love your own daughter and can imagine the horror of losing her.

Your Honor, Rachel didn’t deserve to die. Rachel wasn’t sick. She wasn’t careless. Her death was not an accident. It was not her fault. It was senseless and sickeningly violent. Rachel loved life and made the most of it. I want to impress upon you and everyone else in this courtroom who never had and has now forever been denied the opportunity to know Rachel personally, the kind of person she was in life, and the precious daughter she was to me.

My wife and I tried to teach respect for the law, personal responsibility, compassion, and the value of hard work to our children, and we have tried to model these virtues in our own lives. Rachel learned these lessons well, and was a remarkably capable, responsible, and caring young woman. She knew even before she learned to drive that driving while intoxicated is dangerous to human life, and she worked hard to prevent it.

I am a family man. I don’t have a college degree. I have worked hard, long hours in construction all my adult life to provide for my family. The best I have to show for my efforts is a loving wife and two wonderful children. Now I have one.

I married the woman I love, and we decided to raise children together. We had just two, and God blessed us with first a girl and then a boy. Before the kids went to school, Jill, my wife, stayed home to care for them. It was difficult, but we managed to scrape by.

The night of June 23, 1989 was the most wonderful night of my life. I recognized instantly that Rachel was a miracle straight from the hands of God. I felt the weight of responsibility as I held her in my arms. I wanted to prove myself worthy of this priceless gift. I made it my life’s devotion to nurture and protect her.

Rachel was a precocious child. She began talking when she was only 7 months old, and, to my delight, her first word was “Da-Da.” Every night before I put her to bed I would take Rachel outside to say, “Good-night” to the stars. I would read to her, pray with her and for her, and sing her to sleep.

As she grew, Rachel continued to give me cause for wonder. She loved to sing, and had a beautiful voice. She was bright and beautiful and affectionate and a delight to everyone who knew her. When she was in junior high school, she asked me to baptize her. She revealed a tender, compassionate heart, a passion for justice, an incisive intelligence, and a native drive for achievement and excellence that we, her parents, only wish we could take credit for. Jill and I simply marveled at the outstanding woman Rachel was becoming in every way right in front of our very eyes.

Just like every other human being, Rachel wasn’t perfect. She was strong-willed and so intelligent that maintaining our authority as her parents was always a struggle. Sometimes we had to concede that she honestly knew better than we did. I always had the suspicion that the very traits that sometimes made life with Rachel difficult would eventually prove to be her greatest strengths. We tried not to break her independent spirit, but to foster in her a desire to use her power for good. We tried to encourage her to use the gifts and opportunities she was given to bless and benefit others.

And in her short life, Rachel did. I was always proud of her. I was never more proud than on the day this photo was taken. It was taken at her Senior Awards Ceremony. She literally received more awards and scholarships than she was able to carry back to her car by herself. We had to help her. I am not alone in my conviction that Rachel could have been or done anything she desired. Her gifts and abilities were matched with the drive and ambition that is essential to achievement. Sadly, some of the scholarships Rachel received that day had to be returned. She didn’t have time to use them.

A Victim’s Impact Statement is supposed to be about how I have suffered and what I have lost personally. But it is difficult to speak about my losses when I measure them against what Rachel has lost: Her life, upon which every other gift, right and privilege depends. Obviously, I have lost a daughter; a good daughter; my only daughter. I have had no greater joy in this life than being Rachel’s Daddy. As a husband and father, there is nothing on this earth I cherish more dearly than my family. I would gladly give my life for any one of them. I wish I could trade my life for Rachel’s. I wish I could have bargained for Rachel’s life as Elva Diaz has bargained for her freedom; I wish I could have defended Rachel’s life as Aimee Vierra has defended Elva Diaz’ freedom. The lives of my family are the only thing in this world I would not, under any circumstances, willingly give. Nevertheless, Rachel’s life was taken from her, from me, from this world, by a 28 year-old mother and former ambulance driver/emt who couldn’t be bothered or persuaded to find another way home after a night of binge drinking. It is so infuriatingly and tragically senseless...No excuse or explanation can change that brutal fact.

I want Ms Diaz to know something: Rachel might not have been alone in her car the night of February 21, 2008. Our son, Erik, was visiting friends down here in Riverside the night Rachel was killed. Before she left to visit the family of her junior high school friend in Corona, she invited my son and their two friends, Spencer and Emily Osborne, to go with her. By God’s grace, or dumb luck, they declined. Otherwise, Ms Diaz, the life-saver, would have been responsible for the deaths of four wonderful young people that night. She would have completely wiped out the work of the best 20 years of our marriage and left Jill and me with nothing to show for it but memories and ashes. She would have been responsible for the devastation of two families. When she refused to be dissuaded from driving home drunk from Sportman’s Bar, did she not care that it could just as easily have been her own child rounding the curve in the opposite lane of traffic? But it wasn’t her own child: it was mine.

The news that Rachel had been killed came on a day like so many other days, catching us in the middle of our routine. In many ways it was like we too were hit head-on by an SUV.

Imagine your cell phone rings as you are on your way to work in the morning. You are making the same drive you have made a thousand other mornings, past all the familiar landmarks. Thoughts of the day’s obligations occupy your mind. But this phone call is unlike the thousands of others you have received at times and places like these. Everything has changed for you; you just don’t know it yet. Your life as you knew it is already over. Every hope and dream you had of a happy and joyful future is dead. While you slept your precious daughter was dying. While you went about your morning routine, you had no idea that the life you built with the woman you love was already in ruins. Your little girl, the only one who called you “Daddy”, is gone and there is no bringing her back. You answer the phone and take the news.

Suddenly you are thrown into an unfamiliar universe. You have considered what your family would do if you were to die unexpectedly. But this possibility has never entered your mind. It’s not supposed to happen like this. People are sympathetic, but they need answers: What will you do with Rachel’s body? Will you have a funeral or memorial service? When and where will it be held, and who will officiate? Will there be music? What charities will you recommend as memorial recipients? Will you write an obituary? How will you summarize your daughter’s life? How can you? There are too many deadlines... Everyone you look at is confused and in pain. Everyone needs help, but you have nothing to offer, because you can’t even help yourself; you can barely function. And that was just the beginning of sorrows...

I have suffered in every way imaginable over the three and a half years since Rachel was killed. My father, wife and I run a small business. Three-fourths of our work-force has been crippled by grief and the financial and time demands of a fugitive hunt and this judicial process. I have suffered emotionally and spiritually, though I can’t begin to describe it: The light of my life has gone out, and I fumble in the darkness. I have been plagued with depression and mysterious, stress-related digestive disorders that have gone undiagnosed for almost 2 years. I am not the man I was. I believe I never will be.

Sometimes I glimpse a young woman with the sunshine glowing on her shoulders and the breeze ruffling the little hairs at the back of her neck. Her reality reduces me to tears - just the simple, miraculous fact of her life. Rachel was a real girl like that once. Rachel should be laughing in the sunshine, texting her friends, ordering take-out, falling in love. She should be.

One of the most devastating effects of Rachel’s death has been what it has done to the young people who knew her - our son, Erik, Rachel’s brother, especially. Rachel was the one who kept her friends out of trouble. When they would drink, she would insist on driving them home. She studied while they partied. She worked while they played. She cared while they pursued their selfish interests. When a person like Rachel is deprived of life and denied the rewards that come from her hard work and personal sacrifice, how do you rationalize it? How do you convince her brother, her friends, that it is still worth while to make the effort, to work hard, to be a good citizen? Imagine a 17 year old having to deal with the death of the person he lived with every day of his young life and having to face the rest of his life without his only sister who loved him fiercely. I can’t stand to think of it. He wasn’t even able to write a Victim’s Impact Statement.

Your Honor, as a family man, I ask you to imagine watching your wife, your surviving child, and all the other family and friends who knew and loved your dead daughter suffering around you. There is nothing you can do to shield them from the pain. There is nothing you can do to make it better. You must watch helplessly as they fall apart. This has been the pitiless torture I have only just barely been able to survive. And, to tell you the truth, often, I really haven’t wanted to. What do I have to look forward to? I feel my best days, when my daughter and I shared this world, are behind me now. I will never again hear Rachel’s sweet voice, her laugh; I will never feel her little hand in mine; I will never smell the scent of her silky hair under my nose as I kiss the top of her head. I will never see the remarkable woman she should have become. I will never hold her children. I am the husband of a wonderful woman and the proud father of a fine son, and for that I am grateful. They inspire in me the strength I need to go on living. But I miss her. I always will...

Your Honor, I believe Elva Diaz deserves the most severe sentence allowable. She gave Rachel a sentence of death and those who love her a life-sentence of sorrow and suffering without the benefit of a trial. I reject the notion that Rachel died so that Elva Diaz could be taught a valuable life lesson. As a 28 year-old mother and former ambulance driver, she should have known better than to drink and drive. I believe Elva Diaz’ best service to society will only be as an example for others, as a caution against the foolish and heartless course of action she chose.

I trust Your Honor to do what is fair and just in the eyes of the law. I know that no judgment you make will bring Rachel back. That is the one and only thing I desire, and the very thing you are powerless to give. I will never see my daughter’s face again in this life. I can only hope there is another.

Thank you for listening, Your Honor. And thank you for your service to Rachel, to the community that loves her, and to this country in the cause of justice. God bless you.

SENTENCE

2011-08-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

We thought it would be a huge relief when the trial had concluded. There was a month between the end of the criminal trial for Elva Diaz and the sentencing hearing on August 5, 2011. We had to be away for two weeks for the trial, and when we returned home, we found that we had a lot of catching up to do: the bills had piled up, the garden and the yard was overgrown, and the to do list had increased at work - urgent demands all vying for our attention. We found ourselves unexpectedly stretched thinner than we had been in long time.

To add to our distress, we were tasked with writing a Victim’s Impact Statement. We had known for three and a half years that the day would come when we would need to submit one. And we have dreaded the prospect for as long as we have known about it. How could we possibly hope to articulate what Rachel means to us? How could we describe the kind of person she was? How could we convey how her death has impacted us? Multiply them as we may, we knew mere words could never bring Rachel to life. Every attempt to capture her essence, the depth of our pain, or the quality and magnitude of our love is doomed to failure.

Sentencing. Making a sentence. A sentence is something meaningful - but it is also an artificial construct, a symbolic approximation of truth, an interpretation of reality at some remove. For us sentencing meant making a declarative statement of our love and our loss of Rachel, however inadequate it may prove to be

Our Victim’s Impact Statements were to be read and considered by the Probation Department for sentencing recommendation and by the judge for sentencing determination. We invited anyone affected by Rachel’s death to submit a statement. We never knew how much our words might influence the actual decision making process, but we hoped, at least, to impress upon those who read or heard them what we all have lost in losing Rachel. A surprising number of people - over 30 in all - submitted statements. Each one captured something unique about Rachel and her impact on the person who wrote it. Jill compared the final package we put together to a multifaceted jewel, each perspective revealing a slightly different aspect of Rachel - the whole an impressive thing of beauty. Reading them was an intense emotional experience for us, and we will treasure each one as a precious gift for as long as we live.

We were surprised both by who did and who didn’t submit statements. We don’t resent those who didn’t, because we understand the difficulty and futility of the task. Some people tried and never succeeded in finding words. Some people were silenced from the outset by the overwhelming impossibility of the task and never actually put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, as the case might be). I sat down at the computer one Saturday morning with much fear and trembling, not knowing whether I would be able to find the words or not, fearing that I wouldn’t. I was nearly paralyzed with anxiety, panic increasing as each moment passed, trying not to entertain the idea of failure, powerless to banish the thought from my mind. I didn’t want to let Rachel down. Early on, as I had imagined the task, I fantasized about my statement being the best thing I had ever written (since it was without question the most important). But, mercifully, I realized that was unrealistic, demanding too much of myself, and I settled for just getting the job done with some degree of authenticity. I accepted that my words would be inadequate and that my love for Rachel could never be satisfactorily expressed. I gave myself the freedom I needed to hazard the attempt and to fail.

In the end, I did write a statement only four typed pages long. I can’t judge whether it is good or bad, adequate or inadequate. I was just relieved I would have something to read to the judge in Elva’s presence at the sentencing hearing. Jill’s statement was 12 pages long, and that was not enough to say all she wanted to say. Judge Mark Johnson was touched by the words of the eight people who read their statements in court, though, and it was clear by his bearing that he sympathized both with our loss and the difficulty of our task. To him, Rachel was as real as our pain. That he understood what we had lost is a surprising source of comfort to us. For that, more than anything else, we are grateful.

A sentence is finite. We understand endings. A sentence is a punishment with an end in sight. For Elva, the sentence put a period on the term of her punishment. It is, I suppose, ultimately a hopeful thing. There will be a predetermined end to the unpleasantness of the legal consequences for her crimes. Judge Mark Johnson sentenced Elva Diaz to the upper or “aggravated” term for Gross Vehicular Manslaughter. Ten years. Perhaps, in the bewildering calculus of the legal system, three or four years with credit for time served. Now Elva Diaz knows how long she will have to suffer.

But it is not so for us. Our sentence is indefinite and continues on for as long as we can imagine the future. A run-on sentence. It never really makes a point, never reaches any sensible conclusion...

THE VERDICT

2011-07-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 30 the attorneys gave their closing arguments to the jury. The prosecution, Kevin Beecham gave a clear, persuasive, and impassioned summation of the evidence for conviction. He told the jury that it was not Rachel who was in the wrong place at the wrong time the night of February 21, 2008, but, rather, Elva Diaz. With her life experience as an ambulance driver and e.m.t., and because she had just been warned by at least one other person - her Placentia Police officer boyfriend, Zachary Palumbo - not to drive, she knew better than to drive while intoxicated; she knew better than to drive 84 mph in a 50 mph zone; she knew better than to cross the yellow lines and drive on the wrong side of the road; she knew better than to accelerate into a curve near an intersection. Ms. Diaz never even used her brakes before she slammed head on into Rachel’s car. And while Rachel was dying, Elva Diaz was lying to CHP officer Penneau, blaming Rachel for the crash; lying that she only drank one beer at 8:00 pm; lying that she had just been driving home from a friend’s house; and protesting that she couldn’t have caused the crash because she knew better than to drive on the wrong side of the road since she had been employed as an emt.

Elva Diaz surprised the court by taking the witness stand. Unfortunately, under oath she admitted only to remembering details that conveniently supported her defense: she remembered eating pasta for dinner; she remembers giving her keys and her license to her boyfriend, Placentia Police officer Zachary Palumbo (who has subsequently been promoted to protect and serve the public as a detective). Under cross examination, she denied that she knew that driving 84 mph in a 50 mph zone is dangerous to human life; she denied that she knew that crossing over the double yellow lines and driving the opposite way on divided roadway is dangerous to human life; she denied that she knew that driving while drunk was dangerous to human life. She was however, conscious and considerate enough for her own safety to fasten her own seat belt.

The jury believed her, and acquitted Elva Diaz of 2nd degree murder. In her closing arguments, Aimee Vierra, Elva’s defense attorney, fought back tears as she expressed what an honor it had been to defend her client.

Before they were sent out to deliberate, both attorneys adjured the panel that they must make their determination with an “abiding conviction” as to Ms. Diaz’ guilt or innocence. Each of them explained that an abiding conviction would give the jurors peace tomorrow, next year, and every year for the rest of their lives that they had made the right decision. It was a sobering admonishment, and one that impressed me with the awesome responsibility with which they now were tasked. I did not envy them their job.

The jury deliberated for more than a day, taking the rest of the afternoon and into the next to reach their decision. Thursday afternoon we were exhausted and mentally and emotionally spent. No one slept well. Friday was no easier. We went thrift store shopping with my Aunts Jill and Patty and my cousin Jennifer and her daughter Allie. But I felt sick all day. I had a splitting headache. When we got home, we had a perfunctory lunch and then I collapsed on the couch, waiting. At 3:15 we got a call from our victim’s services advocate, Carlos Romo, informing us that the jury had reached a verdict, and it would be read at 4:00 pm. We hurried to the courthouse, shaking and in tears.

Before we got out of the car, Jill, Erik and I prayed for justice and the strength to accept whatever verdict we were about to hear. We prayed for Elva’s family and for Elva as well. It had been a dark night for all of us, Elva and her family included, and we knew that whatever the decision there was no happy ending for anybody involved in this tragedy.

We took solace, though, in the knowledge that for better or worse this ordeal was about to end. The conclusion of the matter lay just down the hall of the third floor of the Riverside Hall of Justice and through the double doors of Department 31.

In a criminal case, the decision for guilt or innocence must be unanimous. The foreman handed the forms to the court clerk and their decision was read, just in time for the 4th of July holiday weekend. The jury unanimously decided to acquit Elva Diaz of second degree murder and to convict her of the lesser charge of Gross Vehicular manslaughter. Because of this, she will receive a sentence now on the order of someone who steals mail or forges a check.

The jury was thanked for their service and excused from the courtroom. Elva and her attorney, Aimee Vierra, embraced in tears. To them it was a victory for the cause of justice.

So now we have it: for the official record, it is a case of manslaughter, a really bad mistake, and not the result of someone who should have and did know better.

Immediately outside the courtroom, we were approached by members of the press. They asked us if we had received justice. I don’t know what I said to them, but my answer is “NO”. Justice depends upon the truth. The jury never got the chance to hear the truth.

We will have to learn to live with the decision the jury made on July 1, 2011, just as we have had to learn with the irrevocable fact of Rachel’s death.

I could go on and on, but I will take a deep breath, and remind myself of all I have to be proud of and grateful for: a daughter who died too soon but during her short life was a beautiful example of the goodness humans are capable of; a wonderful son who survives and has comported himself like the good and decent man he is through the worst of this terrible ordeal; the confidence that the Riverside District Attorney’s Office spared no expense or effort in the prosecution of this case; the personal friendships we have forged with all of those who have come to love us and Rachel by serving her cause; the abiding conviction that as a family and community that loves Rachel, we did all we could do in the pursuit of justice. In that we take comfort and will find peace.

God On Our Side*

2011-06-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

The courtroom is a strange congregation. I am reminded of nothing so much as a wedding, where the attendants are seated according to their relationship with either the bride or the groom. Only this isn’t a wedding. We avoid eye contact across the aisle. It is rather a somber assembly -. more somber, perhaps, even than a funeral.

Like a funeral, one of the principal players is conspicuously absent: the victim, namely, Rachel.

We have dreaded the day of the arrival of the trial since we learned that Rachel had been killed by a drunk driver. We knew it was coming. It took 3 years, 4 months, and two days to come to fruition - long enough for Rachel to have graduated college; long enough for her friends and contemporaries marry and have children of their own.

When Jill and I finally got the news that the actual trial date was confirmed, our hearts started pounding in our chests. We tried to use techniques we learned in yoga, breathing deeply and consciously to relax and calm our troubled hearts enough so that we could sleep. We both lay awake in bed all night, feeling our hearts pounding out their distress signals through the mattress. We wondered if they could keep the pace through the night or if they would simply giving out from exhaustion. It’s a strange thing: I didn’t think my mind was overly anxious - I told Jill and reminded myself that this was Elva Diaz’ trial, and not ours. But somehow our bodies were unconvinced by our reasoning.

We haven’t experienced such a bodily reaction since the first weeks after Rachel was killed. We felt as we did when we planned, attended and spoke at Rachel’s memorial services. Only this time the terms under which Rachel could be mentioned were scrupulously regulated: No mention could be made that the trial began on her 22nd birthday. No representations of her image or her name could be visible. A friend of Rachel’s who got a tattoo in her honor was forced to cover it up.

Strangely, though, once the proceedings began, Jill and I felt better. Our hearts slowed to something approaching their normal rate. We were able to sleep. Perhaps the anticipation really was worse than the reality, as with so many odious things in life. Perhaps there is something about the mind-numbing mundanity of the judicial process that makes what would normally be intolerable possible to endure. Perhaps, even this is a blessing.

It is out of our hands, now. Though how much we have ever been in control is questionable. There is something pacifying in the knowledge that whatever could be done has been done and that all that is required of us now is to show up and witness the proceedings.

Not that it has been easy to sit quietly while the facts have been intentionally distorted, confused, and covered up, while those who have sworn before God to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth have done no such thing. Not in every case, but often enough that I can feel the anger rise in my chest like a fist. I swallow hard and keep my mouth shut.

But we have been strengthened by those who have sat beside us day after excruciating day. And we know that those present with us in court represent only a small portion of a much vaster congregation of love, present to us and for Rachel in the ways they are able. One dear friend who could not attend the first day of trial described to us how she had got on her knees in the restroom at work to pray for us as the trial began. Many who hardly know us but who have been touched by Rachel’s story and share our pain, have sent encouraging cards and emails, assuring us of their loving thoughts and prayers. All I can say is that we are truly, truly, humbled and grateful. I feel I owe a debt of love I can never hope to repay. And that has given me a new appreciation of grace.

On Sunday evening we decided to walk the trail to the cross at the top of Mt. Rubidoux. We shared the trail with more people than I imagined. It felt like a pilgrimage. There was a celebratory atmosphere, and an infectious fellowship that made perfect strangers exchange pleasantries and make small talk as we made the ascent. We shared a higher purpose, a common aspiration - making it to the top of the mountain.

We reached the summit just about sunset. The view from the top was spectacular, with a 360 degree view of the Riverside area, so often obscured by smog. Families mingled at the cross and read the inscriptions left in honor of Father Junipero Serra and other local historical dignitaries. We spotted lizards and kangaroo mice. We watched the sun drop behind the coastal mountain range.

In the failing light, we made our descent. The mountain was covered by or made up of huge boulders. On one boulder near the top I saw chiseled into the rock an inscription of the words of Jesus: “Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled...” Jesus spoke those words to his disciples when they received the distressing news that he would be leaving them soon. It was a boulder such as this that sealed their Lord’s tomb, and, against which all their hopes were dashed. But after it was rolled away, the boulder was transformed into another affirmation of God’s ability to overcome any obstacle and to keep his word. Countless people around the world have taken courage from the words written on this rock over the millennia and no doubt thousands have been inspired by them on their way up to or down from the cross on the mountain. Still, they spoke personally to me, again. I took the message to heart.

The following day, as were seated in our places in court, Jill turned to me and said, “Ray is here.” I didn’t understand. I didn’t know who she was talking about. I turned to see my dear friend, Ray Houle, who had traveled all the way from Connecticut to share this difficult ordeal with us. I couldn’t have been more surprised or pleased if God had dispatched an angel straight from heaven. In every way that really counts, I suppose he did.

I’m not saying God or the universe is on our side. I recognize that each person in the courtroom is a precious child of God, and he has no favorites. I have consciously reminded myself of this as I have looked at each face present. Tomorrow, Thursday, June 30, the jury will be tasked with deciding Elva’s level of guilt for her crimes. The outcome is uncertain, and it is out of our control. But I know now more than ever that love is with us. And, since God is love*, that is enough.

HOME ALONE - RABBIT HOLE

2011-06-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

We are in the midst of the criminal trial. I can’t talk about that now, as much for discretion’s sake as because I am at a loss for words. We want to hear the truth and expect justice will inevitably result. But, somehow, it seems, the process is not that simple...

I want to step back a little. A few weeks. Jill was away for a few days, attending another of the many pre-trial hearings in southern California. I encouraged her to stay through the weekend with her father at the cabin in the mountains near Lake Arrowhead that he and his wife have recently remodeled. Janet, his wife, would be away for the weekend, visiting her daughters, and it would be an opportunity for the two of them to spend some time together. From the front deck of the cabin, they could watch mountain bluebirds flit among the branches of the pine trees that grow just out of reach and feed the tree-squirrels that come to beg for the peanuts kept handy for their frequent visits. Time with her Dad, a change of scenery, the beauty of the mountains and the fresh air - Time well spent is good for the soul.

So that left me home alone. What does a married man, whose children are grown or gone do under such circumstances? I don’t hunt or fish or bowl or play poker. I tried to catch up on some reading. I dared to attempt to write. I watched movies I thought Jill would appreciate missing. Jill is long-suffering in her tolerance of my film choices, but every saint has her limits.

I watched “Rabbit Hole”. The film is adapted from a play by David Lindsay-Abaire. It is about a couple, played by Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhardt, who are grieving the death of their young son. Not exactly a feel-good movie. The disc had remained untouched for weeks in its Netflix envelope. I couldn’t find the right time to suggest to Jill that we watch it together. I knew that Mother’s Day wasn’t the right occasion...

The title of the film comes from a graphic novel that the young man who had the misfortune to unavoidably run over the little boy is creating. The premise of his graphic novel is that ours is only one of many possible articulations of the multiverse. Nicole Kidman’s character forges an unlikely friendship with the troubled young man, drawn to him out of the communion of their shared pain. She likes the beautiful idea that somewhere out there another version of herself is happy and her son is alive and well, though she doesn’t really believe it. It is another example of magical thinking. We all do it. Sometimes a little willing suspension of disbelief helps.

I was as inconsolable at times watching the film as the characters themselves. As painful as it was to watch - which is, no doubt, a testament to the authenticity of the writing and the skill of the actors - I found it to be ultimately encouraging. The bereaved parents do find a way to move tentatively and hopefully forward, individually and as a couple. We can’t imagine how they can possibly survive, and yet, somehow they manage. It forces us to marvel at the resilience of the human spirit and the power of love to persist in the face of seemingly overwhelming devastation.

The film is faithful to the real experience of grief. It doesn't exhaust the gamut of possible responses, but it does touch on the big issues and difficulties that grieving people deal with. It is honest enough not to offer cheap and unrealistic prescriptions.

There is no way to predict how the loss of a loved one will affect and reorder one's life and relationships. It is an emotional tsunami.

Those who have walked this road understand. We surprise and disappoint ourselves and others by our reactions and the often bewildering strategies we devise to survive. Some people get stuck. Some try to numb their pain with drugs or alcohol or sexual indulgence. Some withdraw and isolate themselves. Some look to find help in the company of those who have walked the road before them. Some surround themselves with mementos of their lost loved one's life, and some need to rid themselves of the unbearable reminders of what they have lost. Some couples are driven apart. Some become closer. Some embrace the comfort to be found in religious faith, others blame God.

In the film, Nicole Kidman’s character’s mother has also lost a child. The circumstances of the deaths are vastly disparate (one was a little boy hit by a car, the other a 30 year old man who overdosed). This is a source of some friction between the mother and daughter - but they learn to accept the fact that they do share the stark and inescapable fact of loss. I share a similar bond with my mother, though the circumstances of my sister’s and my daughter’s deaths are not so different: they both died in car wrecks when they were 18 years old.

The two women have a crucial and poignant exchange in the basement of the family home while they are storing the little boy’s belongings away to make it less complicated to sell the home:

Becca: "Does it ever go away? "

Nat: "No, I don't think it does. Not for me, it hasn't - has gone on for eleven years. But it changes though."

Becca: "How?"

Nat: "I don't know... the weight of it, I guess. At some point, it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and... carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you... you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and - there it is. 'Oh right, that...' Which could be awful - not all the time. It's kinda..."

[deep breath]

Nat: "not that you like it exactly, but it's what you've got instead of your son. So, you carry it around. And uh... it doesn't go away. Which is..."

Becca: "Which is what?"

Nat: "Fine, actually."

A year or so after Rachel was killed, Jill and I had dinner with a couple who had lost their own son in a motorcycle accident 10 years before. They were still alive. We couldn’t imagine ourselves in their place, 10 years down the road, without Rachel. We didn’t want to. In those days, our grief felt like a mountain had collapsed on us and we could not possibly dig ourselves out of the avalanche. If we could find the strength to dig, we didn’t even know which was was up. Our only hope, we thought, was rescue. We couldn’t help but ask the same question of our friends that Becca asked her mother: Does it get easier? Is there hope for us, down the road? Their answers were similar: “It never goes away. It does become more bearable. The emptiness you feel in Rachel’s absence is itself a presence that will never leave you. As improbable as that may sound to you now, it is strangely comforting.”

The End of the Road

2011-06-18T18:41:00.000-07:00

Today is June 18, 2011. Tomorrow is Father’s Day. Jill and I started the day out right, in our hot-tub, drinking our morning coffee. Afterwards, we had a quiet breakfast, reading the news, and then began to tackle the endless list of chores and minor projects to be done around the house. As we do so often, we turned on the radio and listened to NPR as we worked: we listened to This American Life, and a locally produced acoustic music program called Harmony Ridge. Both shows were appropriately topical, featuring stories and music that revealed and celebrated Fatherhood. I often moved about the backyard in a blur of tears.

Last night I dreamt of the house we lived in when we brought Rachel home from the hospital. Everything was different in my dream, as it would be in real life if we had the opportunity and heart to revisit it. The house was vacant, and as we walked around trying to decide whether or not to replace the carpet, I told Jill that I hand’t realized how much I loved our lives there - I wished I had known well enough to cherish it.

I acknowledge that some of what I feel is nostalgia and not pure grief. Rachel, even if she had not been taken away from us by a drunk driver, would be on her own, living her own life, and not with us. But, in my defense (not that I need to defend myself), I did my best to let go of Rachel when the time came, though my heart was not really in it. Selfishly, I wanted to forbid her to move to southern California to pursue her dream of becoming a forensic scientist. Sometimes, I wish I had been a selfish, overbearing father and pressured and manipulated her into staying close to home. If I had, she would probably still be alive. Does that make it right? It’s difficult in cases like this to separate the intent from the outcome. I think I could live with being a lousy father. I find it hard to live without Rachel, though, somehow, I must.

There is a poem by Ellen Bass that I read a few months after Rachel was killed. It is called “After Our Daughter’s Wedding.” The title is enough to bring me to tears. It describes a mother sitting on a lakeshore after her daughter’s wedding reception, weeping. Her partner asks her, “Do you feel like you’ve given her away?” No, she explains in the rest of the poem, she is weeping from relief that her daughter has survived to see this day, in spite of everything that can and so often does happen. She compares the perils of childhood to that of baby sea-turtle hatchlings hobbling across the beach, exposed under the moonlight - an image that reminds me of a harrowing scene from “Suddenly Last Summer,” where the vision of baby turtles being devoured on the beach by hungry gulls displaces the memory of the violent death of a young woman’s cousin. That movie horrified me, and the image from Ellen Bass’s poem resonates with every parent. As parents, our most basic, instinctual imperative is for us to deliver our children safely into adulthood. Sweet life. Survival. Every year I empathize with the worried birds that guard the yard as their fledgling offspring fresh from the nest test their wings...

I think I could be happy knowing Rachel was “Somewhere Out There,” even if I was denied ever seeing her again. And, to be honest, sometimes I have to pretend that is the case just to be able to survive another day. Just knowing that she is beautifully alive would be enough. I know, we always want what we can’t have...

This American Life featured stories of predictably distant fathers, fathers who could never find the words to say, “I love you.” Of course, it made me consider the kind of father I have been to my children. Clearly I wasted precious time on things that seemed so urgent to me then but, in hindsight, were not of primary importance: Making a living, paying the bills, a clean house, home improvement projects... In the end, love is all that matters. Recently Jill and I watched an episode of MadMen. Don Draper, a newly divorced father of two, seeks advice about his young daughter who is behaving strangely. He is justifiably worried about her. His female friend advises him that as long as his daughter is convinced that he loves her, she will be fine. I hope that is true. I know that love doesn’t make everything ok. But when all else fails, maybe it really is all we need. I hope Rachel was the remarkably confident, amazingly capable young woman she was in part, at least, because she could take her parents’ love for granted.

Thursday, June 23 will be Rachel’s 22 birthday. We have been getting graduation, wedding, and birth announcements from her friends. We are happy for them. We truly are. As much as we can be. Rachel should be here, passing these milestones, and we should be sharing her joy. Instead, we will be driving together as a family - me, Jill, and Erik - to be present at the criminal trial of the woman who killed Rachel. It appears that opening arguments will begin on Rachel’s birthday. Rather than holding our breaths while our daughter makes wishes for a happy future, we will be staring at the back of the head of the woman who killed her, as she tries to evade a reckoning for her crimes. We do not know if this is some kind of cruel joke, an auspicious sign, or maybe, just another one of life’s befuddling little ironies.

It has been a long road, and, I must say, quite a wild and horrible ride. Since February 21, 2008 we have known someday we would arrive at this destination: the criminal trial. It isn’t where we wanted or chose to go. For going on four years, the course of our lives has largely been determined by Elva Diaz - her choices and her actions. We look forward to putting this in our rear view mirror, and breaking the constraint Elva Diaz has on the course of our present life - though she has forever altered its shape and quality. We know that the end of the trial is not the end of the road. The road continues, and we must go on...

The Swing of Life, or, Dance This Mess Around

2011-05-14T17:36:00.001-07:00

Friday, May 13^th was a typical day in the extreme, swinging from sorrow to joy.

Jill and I both went to work with a sense of dread. Not only was there yet another court hearing hanging over our head (this time on the defense’s motion to recuse the deputy district attorney, Kevin Beecham, who has been with us since the beginning of this ordeal) but Jill was scheduled to speak at Orland High School’s Every 15 Minutes program. Rachel graduated from Orland High School in 2007. The program was held in the gym where we chaperoned Rachel’s Senior Prom, where we sat through the difficult Every 15 Minutes program in which Rachel played the role of a DUI fatality, and where, a few short months later, we held her Memorial Service when Rachel was killed. Our family history haunts the place. Proud moments, happy memories and sadness. Simply walking into the building is an emotional roller coaster ride.

Jill was there to lay her heart bare by telling Rachel’s story. Many of those in attendance knew Rachel personally. Some of them remember her participation in the 2007 program. When Jill stood up to speak, the program ceased to be any sort of fiction. Everyone felt the gravity of the reality of the events portrayed. Everyone felt the pain of Jill’s heartbreak. It was almost too real, too much. I kept having to remind myself to breathe, as if not breathing might somehow keep me from falling apart completely. One of the hardest things I have had to endure is to watch my beloved’s heart break, knowing there is nothing I can do to stop or fix it...

You had to be there. The tears and the snot flowed freely as Jill described the events that led to Rachel’s death and the effect it has had on her and on us. People don’t get awards or medals for such things. Maybe they should. I have never witnessed a more courageous and selfless act in my life. I was in awe, and I think everyone else there was as well. I couldn’t peel my eyes off of Jill as she spoke. I was sitting in the front of the auditorium, so I couldn’t see the effect her words had on others. But, when we lingered after everyone else was gone, talking to people who were moved by Rachel’s story, I noticed that the floor of the gym was littered with wads of facial tissue. I wish I had a picture of it.

We were spent. Grief is physically exhausting. We went home afterwards, and climbed into bed. We slept for a while, and felt a little better when we woke. I suggested we grab an early dinner at my sister’s restaurant in town, Farwood Bar and Grill. It didn’t take much to sell Jill on the idea. Mary, our waitress at Farwood, told us that she had attended the Every 15 Minutes event. Because of some painful family history and difficult circumstances in her life, the event had a powerful emotional impact on her, and she told us she was wiped out. She marveled at our strength: She didn’t know how we could do it.

The truth is, neither do we. Before Rachel was killed, we were convinced we could not survive such an ordeal, and we marveled at those who did. We know we are not special or strong. The only explanation we have is that we do what we must. If we have any strength, it is faithfully supplied to us by the Lord simply because we need it.

We had tickets for a B-52’s concert. I remember the first time I saw the B-52’s back in the early 80’s on Saturday Night Live. I was disparaging, dismissive. They were silly. But over the years I grew to love the B-52’s because Jill does, and I love Jill. I bought tickets for the concert, hoping that it would give us something to look forward to beyond the difficult Every 15 Minutes event. We both almost regretted it. After the emotional wringer we had been through, we didn’t know if we had the energy to attend a concert an hour and a half away from our home that didn’t even start until 9:00 p.m.

We went anyway, trusting our instincts. I had bought general admission tickets - standing room only - because we wanted to dance. We had attended a B-52’s concert once before, years ago at Six Flags Over Texas, and security had strictly enforced a no-dancing policy. It was a cruel and unusual prohibition - and we resolved not to suffer it again. We got to the show a little early and staked out a place at the foot of the stage. From the opening beat, we abandoned ourselves to the music, looking and feeling foolish, a couple of aging empty-nesters thrashing out their heartbreak. It felt good. Silly and good. And even and as we danced I knew how silly it was to be dancing with my shattered heart barely held together by this slim thread of love. I really got it then. The B-52’s have known their share of heartbreak and pain - the death of Cindy Wilson’s brother, Ricky. But night after night they get out on stage and dance, dressed in their campy outfits, and sing their silly songs. They make people smile. They make people forget their pain - or dance in spite of it, dance in the face of it. It warmed my heart to see Jill laugh and smile and dance like she did when she was a girl, dancing and singing the silly lyrics of the B-52’s. I found myself fighting back tears even as I danced with abandon. Dancing with tears in my eyes. Joy and sorrow, despair and hope, love and heartbreak, holding hands, together. Dancing the swing of life.

I like to think that though Rachel would no doubt have been a little embarrassed by her parents, she also would have been pleased and proud that we choose to embrace life and its silly little joys, despite the pain.

After the show, Jill and I were tired, but refreshed - sweaty and thirsty and euphoric. We went looking for a place in the casino to get a milkshake for the long drive home. We walked past an older woman in a wheelchair, wearing a beatific smile on her face. She was reverently holding a pair of drumsticks. I recognized them from the show. One of the performers must have given them to her as he or she left the stage. I watched as the woman in the wheelchair took a picture of them with her cellphone camera and sent it off to somebody with whom she wanted to share her joy. I thought of the difficulty of her life, all she must have suffered, must suffer daily. But there she was - and she had received a gift she would have missed otherwise.

In the words of the B-52’s:

Dance this mess around.

Don’t that make you feel a whole lot better?

I’m just askin’

AMUSEMENT

2011-01-22T18:02:00.000-08:00

We finally took down the Christmas lights today. We were the last on our block. It’s not that our Christmas spirit is indomitable: we barely managed the effort to put them up in the first place. In fact, the Christmas lights and the wreath we bought from the Sober Grad Committee and hung outside the front door were all the show of enthusiasm for the holiday we could muster this year. For the first time in our marriage, we didn’t buy and decorate a Christmas tree. We simply could not do it. On Christmas Day, we escaped to the movies and saw True Grit. Movies are amusement: literally speaking, a diversion that causes you not to think.

The reason the lights stayed up until nearly the end of January is that we simply couldn’t find the energy to take them down. It was just easier to keep them burning night after night and let the neighbors believe we just couldn’t let go of the magic of the holidays.

Christmas is just one day out of the year, but it highlights and typifies the hideous transformation of our lives since Rachel was killed by a drunk driver.

It has always been my intention to articulate here the far-reaching consequences of one bad decision. The qualitative change of the character of Christmas for us is just one of the consequences. They are new every morning. The other night Jill and I sat on the couch and watched the season premier of American Idol. I fought back tears as I watched a 16 year old girl dedicate her performance to her loving father. I can’t even watch an inane T.V. program. Rachel was a beautiful singer, but her voice has forever been silenced...

Last weekend Jill and I went to the wedding of one of Rachel’s best friends from high school. Nearly three years have passed now since Rachel was killed. It’s that time: all of the young people she grew up with are graduating from college, getting married, making their own lives. What would Rachel be doing now? I got to watch the father of the bride walk his beautiful daughter down the aisle and trust her to the care of the man she loves and to whom she vows to devote the rest of her life. I can’t help but anticipate what comes next: children, grandchildren I will never know.

These are the brutal realities we must face day after day. We have to live with the realization that there will be no happy ending to our story. Rachel is not coming back. While we are conscious that we still have much (though much less) to be grateful for, we can’t escape that fact. As David said of his first son born to him by Bathsheba, “He cannot come to me, but I must go to him.” We can look forward to joining Rachel in death. Sadly, that is our fondest hope.

I haven’t written anything about the court proceedings, yet. Let’s just say they are going as expected. Elva is playing every card to keep herself out of prison for as long as possible, and her defense is playing right along. She has been in custody in county jail (not prison) since July (six months! - which, of course, will be credited to her as time served), and we still haven’t even had a Preliminary Hearing, let alone begin a trial. Our next court appearance is January 28, which occurs right between my Mom and Dad’s 50^th wedding anniversary, and my Mom’s birthday. I get to miss them both to be with Elva Diaz in court. And I get to miss work and buy a plane ticket to pay for the privilege.

Reading the Signs

2011-01-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

The longest night of the year, December 21, 2010, there is a rare, full lunar eclipse, though we cannot see it because it is hidden behind the clouds.

The last lunar eclipse I am aware of occurred on February 21, 2008, the night our daughter was killed. I worked late that night, mounting a customer’s flat screen television and hooking up her surround sound system. The woman told me that her son was fighting in Iraq. She said she only kept herself from worrying to death by not thinking about his safety. I was silently grateful that my daughter was away at college and not at war.

When I got out of my truck at home, I paused to view the eclipse with no sense of ill omen or impending doom. I’m not superstitious. I went into the house and greeted my wife, Jill, as if our lives would go on in the same blessed way forever. Later, the clouds moved in, and, while we slept, it began to rain. Our daughter was dead before we woke, though we didn’t know it. I have often tormented myself with the thought that I missed something, that I failed to apprehend some obvious message that, had I really been paying attention, could have prevented disaster.

I don’t know what it means that this year’s lunar eclipse occurs on the winter solstice. Now it seems a particularly portentous event. To add to my anxiety, this morning’s devotional reading is from June 23^rd, our daughter’s birthday. It recounts Jesus’ parable of the reluctant wedding guests. Eugene Peterson, the author of the devotional book, says, “We are faced with a life and death summons. The responses we make to God in Christ are the stuff of eternity.”

It is raining again. It is raining, and I am listening. Surely there is some decipherable message here, if I can only find the key to unlock its meaning, if I only I had the ears to hear. I am paying attention, now. I observe the signs. Someone is trying to tell me something. Still, nothing makes any sense...

Everything And Nothing At All

2010-08-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

The woman who killed Rachel has been caught. She was a fugitive for over a year, during which time all of us who love Rachel languished in Limbo.

Dear people, happy for us, have been asking us how we feel. It’s complicated.

Jill and I have been trying to find the right words to describe our feelings. Happiness isn’t really even on the radar. The best we have been able to come up with is: relieved and grateful. We are relieved that the woman who took Rachel’s life and deprived those who love her of the joy of her presence will finally begin to suffer the consequences of her own crimes. We are grateful to those who worked so tirelessly to make it possible to bring Elva Diaz to justice. We are grateful that Rachel’s loved ones have finally been liberated from the Limbo we have been imprisoned in for nearly three years and are finally able to move forward.

Still. Elva Diaz’ capture simply marks the sure beginning of a process we have dreaded since we received the terrible news that Rachel had been killed by a drunk driver.

Our neighbor was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. He had to wait for treatment while the wheels within wheels of bureaucracy turned at their own unhurried pace. While he waited the cancer grew, making the success of the treatment even more doubtful. Finally, his application was approved and a date was set for his treatment. He is pleased to receive the treatment he needs for a chance at survival, but, obviously, he doesn’t relish radiation and chemotherapy.

That is the way I feel right now. I guess I should be pleased that the criminal phase of our ordeal has begun, because the only way to get it over with is to go through it. But the last thing I can think of wanting to do right now is to be confined in a room with my daughter’s killer, to have to look at her, to be forced to listen to her pathetic excuses - as if she were the victim and not my daughter...

We haven’t won the lottery. This is no trip to Disneyland. It is pitiful, even to me, that we must be “happy” to have the privilege of this dreadful experience - our day in court. I would much rather be happy that Rachel would be graduating from college this year, or that she was engaged. But I do know some poor souls who, deprived of their loved ones, do not even have the small consolation of an actual criminal trial. I am sensitive to their plight and grateful that we do not share it.

What I am especially grateful for is that now we have the assurance that there is an end in sight to this part of our ordeal. No court of law is going to bring our daughter back, and no punishment for her killer will make it right. Whatever happens, we will still be bereft of our precious daughter. A conviction for her killer will be something. In this world it is perhaps everything, all there is. Still, we are left with nothing at all...

PUTTING HER AHEAD OF US

2010-07-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

Many people wonder at our courage and strength. I understand that they simply don’t understand. I know, because I used to feel the same way: How could anyone survive the death of a child? It is inconceivable. And, the fact is, we really don’t want to conceive of it. We don’t want to entertain the idea that it could happen to us. The fact that God only chooses certain people for such a trial is a sure sign of their extraordinary character...Isn’t it?

That’s not the way it works. I can’t conceive of any more loss than what I have already suffered: best friend, grandparents, sister, daughter...I know, however, if I don’t die first, other losses will mark my pilgrimage through this valley in the shadow of death. Loss is one of the naked facts we must learn to reckon with and, finally, accept. We are all losers. Jesus tried to teach us: we only gain life by losing it, letting go. We only keep the treasure we give away. It all slips through our fingers eventually; why not let it go, give it up, give it away? We spend so much of our lives trying to cling to what we cannot hold. Our time would be better spent in other more worthwhile pursuits: loving, for one.

This is what I have learned: We endure what we must. I don’t know how the starving AIDS orphans endure their plight. They do it because they must. I have survived the loss of Rachel so far not because I am strong or courageous or virtuous or special, but, simply, because I have no other real option. And that is the way we learn all the hard lessons of life - Not because we choose, but because, at last, we must reconcile ourselves to the given facts of our lives. So much for victorious living. It is much more like surrender, more like defeat. I would not have chosen this path; it is not what I had planned for my life, or my daughter’s. A daughter should steward the memory of her parents, not the other way around. Everything is out of order now…

But look at Christ...His dark agony, his apparent defeat in death on the cross, turned out to be the victory he sought and on which all our hopes depend. He overcame by submitting to his defeat, by suffering and dying. It doesn’t make any sense, but it does give us hope.

In the end, God’s promises are our only hope. A desperate, drowning person will grasp at anything, I know. But on my best days, I truly believe. Some would counsel us simply to put this whole horrendous mess behind us; forget about it and move on. We can’t do that. We live in the present, and Rachel’s life and death has changed the whole landscape of our present lives. Even if we could, we wouldn’t want to. Rachel, our hearts insist, is more than a memory. The only thing that keeps us moving forward instead of dwelling in the past now, is the awareness that it is only in the future that all our hope is realized. We will never find Rachel in the past. We can’t put her behind us. We must put her ahead of us. That is what keeps us going. She cannot come to us, but we shall go to her.

Ambushed

2010-04-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

One of the terms tossed around in grief circles is “ambushed.” (Grief Circles: The club where every member is enlisted against their will)It is used in reference to an unexpected painful reminder of what has been lost. Jill experiences it often when she is out shopping: she sees a mother and daughter out shopping together, maybe even arguing, and she is reminded of Rachel and the fellowship she will never experience with her again in this life. It is difficult, and embarrassing, when you burst into tears in the middle of a department store, or a bank.There are so many losses to grieve...

It happens frequently, and it cannot be avoided. You can't prepare yourself. The other morning I was watching the news as I was putting away the dishes, getting ready for work. A commercial came on - I honestly don’t know what it was advertising - but a father and a daughter are having coffee together. The father remarks that his daughter got home awfully late the night before. She gently reminds him that she is “not 16 anymore.” “Still...” the father answers. The daughter appeases him by saying that he’s not going to have to worry about how late she stays out anymore. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” the father asks. She shows him her engagement ring. They hug and the father tells his daughter that her fiance is a lucky man. As he goes back to his coffee, he drops the bomb: “That’s what I told him last week when we talked!...”

This sweet little snapshot played out in front of me, and I found myself weeping as I continued putting away the dishes. What can you do, but cry and carry on?...

I never had any doubt about Rachel Getting Married. I both anticipated and dreaded the day I would walk her down the aisle and hand her over to another man. When Rachel was only a couple of years old, Jill and I watched “Father of the Bride.” I cried in anticipation of the day I would play second fiddle to another man in my precious little girl's life. I cried the morning of her 17th Birthday, too, just knowing that day was becoming a reality: she was slipping out of my hands...It is no consolation that I don’t have to worry about that anymore...

Sometimes the ambush seems particularly painful and mean spirited - almost personal. Jill and I had a difficult weekend recently: On the heels of the two year anniversary of Rachel’s death, and probably prompted by it, we had a cyclone of upsetting phone calls and developments. We look forward to the end of the workweek, but that Friday was a nightmare, and had us both at our wits' end. We awoke the next morning and tried to continue our routine, lingering in bed a little and then sitting together at the kitchen table to drink coffee and read. Jill went outside to get the newspaper and returned to the table ashen-faced and shaking. Elva’s picture was on the front page, along with an article about the continuing efforts to find and prosecute her. Not a good way to start the day. Though we appreciated the fact that the paper was reporting on this unfinished business, we had no idea the article was going to be published, and we just weren’t ready for it. Ambushed again.

After that shock, we tried to carry on with our plans for the day: rearranging some of the furniture in the house. I decided to put on some music to lighten the mood. I plugged my ipod into our stereo system and programmed it for shuffle. First, I have a confession to make: I currently have 28,614 songs on my playlist (I have the 164 gig ipod). I could listen 24 hours a day for 115 days before a song would be repeated. The second song into the shuffle that morning was “Part Of Your World” from Disney’s “Little Mermaid.” That was “Rachel’s song.” Ariel made a big impression on her as a little girl, and she grew up singing that song. I can hear her singing it in my mind’s ear. “Part Of Your World” was the song her good friends from Orland High sang at Rachel’s memorial service. We continued doing what we were doing in a fog of tears...But what are the odds? Can such a thing be purely coincidental. I don’t know. All I can say is that it doesn’t feel like it. And more than two years on, we still feel under siege...

THE SKY IS FALLING

2010-02-20T12:36:00.000-08:00

Lately, I have been having dreams where I am weeping inconsolably. I don’t know if this is a result of taking anti-depressants - the subconscious mind finding an outlet for what the conscious mind blocks - or if it is simply the reality of Rachel’s loss to us finally settling into the deepest levels of my mind.

I have also had dreams of her being here but not here - back from the dead, but not realizing what has happened to her. In these dreams I try to hold her, try to find some way to keep from breaking the spell that will send her back, away from us.

Two years later, we are still struggling with this loss, as we will, no doubt, for the rest of our lives...

Recently, we visited a newly dedicated memorial to victims of violent crime at the new site of the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. The names of all the recorded victims of violent crime in Riverside County are etched in black marble. Rachel’s name, sadly, is among them.

A plaque inscribed beside the wall states:

A VICTIM’S VOICE WILL BE HEARD

On this wall the names of victims appear.

Violent crime removed their voices from our community.

It is the commitment of the men and women of the

District Attorney’s Office of Riverside County

that a victim’s voice will be heard in our courts

so that justice will fall like mighty rain,

and the lives of our loved ones

will not have been in vain.

Above the entrance to the new facility is written in golden capital letters:

LET JUSTICE BE DONE THOUGH THE HEAVENS MAY FALL

As a family, we are honored that Rachel’s name appears among those written on this wall of remembrance of victims of violent crime. We appreciate that the crime that took her from us is acknowledged for what it is: an act of violence.

But this is not what we had hoped Rachel would be remembered for. She was and is for us so much more than a victim, a name among too many other names scratched upon the surface of a black wall. And the meaning and value of her life is not a matter to be decided in a court of justice.

For us, Rachel was too good, too beautiful, too alive to be just...gone. We still can’t get our minds around the hard, cruel fact of her enduring absence. And those who visit the memorial and read her name written there will never know the real and vibrant and beautiful human being, full of dreams and promise, that Rachel was. In my mind, water should perpetually pour over the memorial wall standing in the center of a black marble bottomed pool to represent the innumerable and unfathomable tears shed by those left to mourn those who have been lost...

What is left for us? Two years out and still waiting, “A VICTIM’S VOICE WILL BE HEARD” and “LET JUSTICE BE DONE THOUGH THE HEAVENS MAY FALL” ring hollow in our ears: The woman who killed our precious daughter so far has successfully eluded the consequences of her actions. Rachel’s voice has not been heard. No one has been able to speak for her, and no one has been made to answer. Justice has not been done, and I don’t know which will come first: a trial, or the sky falling...

Little Blue Pill

2010-01-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

I read Joan Didion’s book, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” which documents the first year of grief after her husband’s death (which happened while their daughter was fighting for her life in the hospital: when it rains it pours!).

I understood what she meant by “Magical Thinking”: the unarticulated expectation that things will return to “normal”, that the lost loved one will walk through the door...When I receive a text message, there is still a split instant before my mind engages and reality reasserts itself when I expect it will be from Rachel. Denial is a powerful thing, and I can’t just rationalize it away. It goes deeper than that; it is an emotional response, arising from a place not governed by the mind. As I read in a poem by Rumi today, “I need more grace than I thought.”

Anyway, Joan Didion researched the medical and psychological literature about grief as she grieved. One of the things she discovered is that even from the beginning of modern psychology, grief, though a natural and normal response to significant loss, has been categorized as a type of temporary insanity. Temporary is the operative word. But does anyone ever return to normal? We can’t. And that’s part of the problem...

Another thing she discovered is that there is indisputable scientific proof that extended periods of grief produce health problems and hasten death. Remember Old Dan and Little Ann from “Where the Red Fern Grows”?

Now I can tolerate a little more the initially offensive encouragements to “get over it.” The problem is, like the enjoinder to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps,” it is impossible. You can’t get over it; you must go through it, and the journey takes as long as it takes. We may find ourselves someday in a green and pleasant land, but it won’t be where we wanted to go...

I have been experiencing mystifying health problems lately, gastro-intestinal problems which I will not detail here (which, also, suspiciously coincided with the horror of the holidays). I feel sick all the time and have no energy. I am used to feeling sick...I just attributed it to the misery of depression. But when I found I couldn’t eat and couldn’t function I knew something was definitely wrong and I needed to seek medical attention. There is no definite diagnosis yet, but of course I am taking pills, which have given me some relief.

One of them is Zoloft, the anti-depressant. It’s depressing to admit I have to take an anti-depresant. Since the beginning of our ordeal, I have wanted to feel whatever I needed to feel, believing that is the only way to make progress towards...what do I call it? Health? Wholeness? Healing? I really don’t believe any of those things are on the horizon. I may learn to accommodate my new disability - as I have the little finger of my right hand which I cannot bend - but I am irremediably changed.

But I am trying it because my body needs a break from the effects of the stress of grief to have a chance to restore itself. Of course, I am trying some nutritional and diet remedies as well. I mean to be kinder to myself, as my dear friend Ray has wisely been advising me since the beginning. Next week I may even join Jill for a yoga class. We are trying to watch more romantic comedies now than tragic dramas...I hope something helps...

I don’t mean to complain. And I am not looking for sympathy. I merely want to state for the record that this too - the ruined health of surviving loved ones - is one of the consequences of DUI.

An Anniversary of Sorts

2009-11-14T18:24:00.000-08:00

In our study of the book of Job, one of the speakers says that God speaks to the suffering in their affliction. Earlier, he had said that God speaks to us in many ways. I suspect that God is always speaking to us, trying to get through to us somehow; it’s just that we can’t hear because we really aren’t listening. That is not to say that God afflicts us so that we will hear. But the truth is, when things are fine, we don’t think we need to hear from God so much.

I know firsthand that God does speak to the suffering in their affliction. Jill and I have never been more certain of anything as we are that God has spoken and continues to speak to us in our grief. Speaking for myself, I fear that is because only now am I finally eager to listen.

In the morning of the day that we learned that Rachel had been killed, Jill and I had read our One-Year Bible. That is and has been part of our routine for years, since we learned of the One-Year Bible from our beloved Brother Sam at Peaster Baptist Church in Peaster, Texas. I had been reading the One-Year Bible the morning of the day we learned of my sister’s death in a single car accident back in 1996. Brother Sam reminded me of Psalm 147:3 (He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds) from that day’s reading (we were all on the same page in those days). But it was another verse from Psalm 147 that caught my eye and the Lord used to speak directly to my heart about Vanessa that day:

He does not delight in the strength of the horse;

He does not take pleasure in the legs of a man.

The Lord favors those who fear Him,

Those who wait for His lovingkindness.

Vanessa was an accomplished horseman and a gifted runner. She had put a sticker in the window of her truck that said, “Fear God”. As proud as we were of her accomplishments, it was her reverence and devotion to the Lord that was the most impressive thing...and what made her a special treasure in His eyes.

So when we got the news about Rachel, I knew there was something in the Bible we had read that morning that God was speaking to us. The Old Testament passage we had read had been from the book of Ezra. Exiled for the past seventy years, the Jews had been permitted to return to their homeland and instructed by Cyrus, king of Persia to rebuild the temple. When they finish the foundation they have a dedication celebration. The song they sing is a song that should be familiar to anyone who has read through the Old Testament:

God is so good!

His faithful love endures forever.

These are the words God spoke to our hearts that morning, and this song has been the constant refrain I have heard in my grief. More often than not it has been a challenge to believe in God’s goodness in the darkness and the pain of losing our daughter. Often, to be honest, I just can’t see it. It has been an act of faith to cling to what we know of His love in spite of everything.

We take longer than a year to read through the One-Year Bible. We’re not “religious” about it. We read it when we can and mark our place for the next reading. So on November 11, 2009 we returned for the first time to the passage we had read the morning of February 21, 2008 (which, incidentally, was the entry for August 6th - so you can see how liberty we have). Coming upon that passage again took us by surprise. But, looking back, the Lord had been preparing me. I had ordered and just received Steven Curtis Chapman’s new cd, “Beauty Will Rise.” The music had been written in response to the death of his daughter, Maria, on May 21, 2008. Before I woke Jill to take our shower (we are passionate about water conservation) I had been listening, reading the liner notes, and weeping as I reflected on the similarities to our own journey of grief...and faith.

We are in a different place than we were 20 months ago. While I am more convinced than ever about the goodness and faithfulness of our loving God, this time different verses from the same day’s passage spoke to me. 1 Corinthians 2:10, from the New Testament passage from that day, says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

Along with the assurance of God’s goodness, faithfulness and love, the promise that the next world is better than we can imagine is a comforting thought as we continue to miss Rachel and grieve for all that we are missing without her in this life. As I’ve said to Jill and others, “Heaven is not the booby prize.”

A final thought from the book of Proverbs rounds out the Lord’s message to us on that red-letter day: “How can we understand the road we travel? It is the Lord who directs our steps.”

This is not the life I planned, expected or desired. The road has been difficult. It certainly has been and continues to be a “long, strange trip.” I don’t understand it. I can’t. But I don’t have to. What I can do is trust in the Lord to lead me where I must go. In the end, I believe this will be right where I need to be, right where He wants me...in His presence, never out of reach of His loving arms.

Another Blow On The Bruise

2009-11-01T03:59:00.000-08:00

Elva Diaz, the drunk driver who killed Rachel made a choice to get behind the wheel of her automobile and drive herself home even though she was fully aware of the likely fatal consequences (that’s why the Riverside D.A.’s office has issued a warrant for her arrest for second degree murder). Finding another way home was too much of an inconvenience. In her judgment, the life and safety of a fellow human being simply wasn’t worth the trouble it would cost to ensure.

The difference between first and second degree murder is intent. Elva Diaz didn’t plan to murder Rachel, even though, for Rachel and for us, the result is the same. As deplorable as her crime is, it wasn’t personal. Until recently. Whether she intended to kill anybody the night she killed Rachel is a matter for the court to decide. But the fact is, the subsequent harm she has inflicted and continues to inflict has been done with sober intent.

I don’t believe in good or bad people. I believe in free will. I believe in good or bad choices. Everyone is capable of anything. It’s simply a matter of choice. We make our choices and, in turn, our choices make us. The character of our choices can become habitual and develop into a life-style. The bargain of free-will is that we are accountable for the choices we make.

As human beings we do our best to make the best of the mess we make of the world because of our bad decisions. Justice isn’t built into the system. If it were, Elva would be dead and not my daughter. Ms. Diaz’ choice to drink and drive would have resulted in the loss of her life, not Rachel’s. What Elva did she cannot undo. Her fatal decision the night of February 21, 2008 determined the course of the rest of her life, a course that still allows her a range of choices, good and bad.

Once we have made a bad decision, committed a crime even, we must ask ourselves: What now? The best choices remaining may not be pleasant or easy, but even then we have the fearful responsibility to choose for good or for evil.

http://news.aol.com/article/drunk-driver-reconciles-with-blind/666660?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fdrunk-driver-reconciles-with-blind%2F666660

We don’t often get the chance to see what might have been. I found this article on the internet about a drunk driver who fled the scene of a crash that caused injury to another man. He was caught. When he sobered up and came to his senses he saw the error of his ways and, against his legal counsel, pled guilty to the charges brought against him and further pledged himself to make restitution for his crime. This man’s crimes are deplorable and worthy of punishment. But he has chosen the only path open to him to find redemption: admitting his wrong-doing and taking responsibility for his actions. His present choices will not change the past. However, he has chosen to set the course for the best possible future. Instead of choosing to continue to victimize his victim, this man has chosen to do the best he can do now to make amends.

I wish I could say the same for Elva Diaz, the woman who killed Rachel. I’m not interested in hearing about her alleged remorse. Her actions speak for themselves. At every step, Ms. Diaz has chosen her own self-interest without regard for the welfare or benefit of anyone else, including her own family. Rather than accept the consequences of her actions, she has chosen to skip bail and become a fugitive. Rather than dedicate her life attempting to redress the harm she has done, she chooses to continue to inflict pain on those who love Rachel. Rather than allowing us to begin to heal and put the dreadfulness of a criminal trial behind us, she ensures that the wound remains raw and open and delivers another blow on the bruise...

NOTHING'S CHANGED

2009-09-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

I need someone to explain to me why the establishments which profit from the irresponsible sale of alcoholic beverages to their patrons bear no liability for the devastation that results. I guess the answer is obvious. Sadly, in a contest between profit and propriety, money wins. As long as there is a buck to be made, the slaughter of innocents will continue. The profiteers will pour another round, turn a blind and jaundiced eye, and wash their hands of the deadly cocktail they have mixed. As far as I am concerned, they are accessories to murder. The drunk is intoxicated and impaired. Those who continue to sell alcohol to their drunk customers make a coldly calculated choice of money over life.

Why are the alcohol industry and its pushers treated differently than, say, the tobacco industry? Statistics indicate that the public pays a high price for maintaining the status quo. We the people effectively subsidize the damage inflicted by the abusers of alcohol to the tune of $1.00 per drink sold in the U.S. Should I be forced to pay for the murder of my own daughter so that a senseless drunk can have the privilege of buying cheap drinks at a seedy bar that has no higher accounting than their own bottom line? The real bottom line is too high to tally, and one that is carefully hidden from public view. 11,000 + casualties and billions of dollars in damages per year are acceptable losses as long as the liquor - and the money - continues to flow.

I continue to read about it everyday in the paper, and it breaks my heart. More than a year and a half after Rachel was killed by a drunk driver: Nothing's changed...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090901/ap_on_he_me/us_med_drunken_driving

ATLANTA – One in 10 binge drinkers got behind the wheel the last time they drank heavily. And half of those drivers left from a bar, restaurant or nightclub after downing five or more drinks, a new study has found.

The study is being called the first to try to measure the likelihood someone will drive after binge drinking. It suggests a need for stepped-up efforts to prevent bars and restaurants from serving people after they're intoxicated, according to its authors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers focused on 14,000 "binge drinkers " — people who said that at least once month that they had five or more drinks on a single occasion. About 12 percent said they had gone driving within two hours of their last bout of heavy drinking.

Of those drivers, more than half took the wheel after drinking in a bar, restaurant or other licensed establishment. And half of the drivers who left an establishment said they had seven or more drinks; a quarter said they'd had at least 10.

Some people can handle alcohol better than others, and eating food or drinking over several hours can soften alcohol's impact. But clearly 10 drinks is a lot, said James Fell of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, a national research organization focused on alcohol policy.

"Almost everybody's going to be intoxicated after 10 drinks," said Fell, who was not involved in the study.

Binge drinking is a main factor behind the more than 11,000 deaths annually from alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes, said Dr. Timothy Naimi, an epidemiologist with the CDC's alcohol program. He led the study, which was released Tuesday and will be in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Nearly every state has a law that in theory prohibits licensed establishments from selling alcohol to drunk patrons. But most states don't have enough enforcement personnel to stop in on bars and watch for over-serving of customers.

"These are among the most disregarded laws in the country," Naimi said.

Without policing, there's little incentive for bars, clubs and restaurants to discourage drinking. Tips depend on keeping patrons happy and buying, noted Jim Mosher, a Washington, D.C.-based legal researcher and consultant on alcohol issues.

The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association, had no immediate comment on the study Monday. The organization's Web site promotes efforts to apprehend and penalize drunk drivers, but also notes voluntary server training and other efforts by restaurants to discourage drunk driving.

The CDC study was based on a telephone survey done in 2003 and 2004, and some things have changed since then. Drunk driving fatalities have decreased, dropping nearly 10 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. There have also been a variety of efforts to reduce drunk driving including court-mandated devices that prevent a car from starting if a driver is drunk.

But most efforts focus on punishing the driver and not preventing drunk driving by focusing on those who enable it.

"The drinking location is really important," said Naimi. "We're trusting these licensed establishments to serve responsibly, and more than half of the intoxicated people who drive have been drinking in these places."

A follow-up survey in 2008 found the situation hadn't changed, he added. Those results haven't yet been released.

GETTING OVER IT

2009-03-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

We are past the arbitrary but, perhaps, psychologically significant one year marker of Rachel’s death. A year of grief. It has been like climbing the Sierras from the central valley towards Nevada. Mountains beyond mountains. Sometimes we didn’t know if we could make it, or if we even wanted to, but we kept putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. We leaned on each other for support, carried each other along when we only wanted to lie down and sleep in the snow.

We are not “over” it, and we never will be. We have only made it over the most physically demanding part of the journey.

We are sadder now than we have ever been. It is a deep, abiding sadness, that characterizes our lives. Though we don’t cry as much as we used to, we face a thousand reminders a day that we will never see our beautiful daughter again in this world. We want to touch the little beauty marks on her face; we want to smell her hair and kiss the top of her head; we want to hear her laugh. But that can never be. We don’t want to get out of bed and face the day. What is the point, now? Wake us up when it is over...

It is as if we have made it over the mountains only to be faced with a measureless expanse of desert stretching before us. We can never go back, but why go on through this wasteland? Is there a promised land just beyond the unreachable horizon? Is Rachel waiting for us over there?

Talitha, Kum!

2009-02-28T20:12:00.000-08:00

This chapter in our lives began, as every day does, with our morning reading. The day we learned Rachel had been killed began with a reading from the book of Ezra. It is a passage I believe God had prepared especially for us to guide us on our journey:

“When the builders completed the foundation of the Lord’s Temple, the priests put on their robes and took their places to blow their trumpets. And the Levites, descendants of Asaph, clashed their cymbals to praise the Lord, just as king David had prescribed. With praise and thanks, they sang this song to the Lord:

‘He is so good!

His faithful love for Israel endures forever!’

Then all the people gave a great shout, praising the Lord because the foundation of the Lord’s Temple had been laid.

But many of he older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first Temple wept aloud when they saw the new Temple’s foundation. The others, however, were shouting for joy. The joyful shouting and weeping mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard far in the distance.”

It is an accurate depiction of our conflicting emotions - grieving for what we have lost, rejoicing for what Rachel has gained - the two mingled together in an indistinguishable cry.

But there is a reminder for us in that passage as well, a reminder that is a challenge for us to affirm the goodness and the faithful love of God through the worst circumstances of our lives. In moments of doubt and confusion, we have chosen to embrace the love and goodness of God. God is love. A drunken woman killed Rachel; that woman was not doing God’s will.

Jill and I are a little off in our Bible reading. We came to the passage for February 21st a few days ahead of schedule. I suspected there would be something significant for us there. We were not disappointed. The passage in our Bible that day was from Mark Chapter 5, the story of Jairus’ daughter.

Jairus, the leader of the local synagogue had a daughter who was gravely ill. He put aside whatever objections he may have had to Jesus’ teachings and His claim to be the Son of God, and begged Him to heal his daughter. Jesus agreed to go with Jairus to heal his daughter, but on the way He was delayed by the pressing crowd with their desperate needs, including a hopeless woman afflicted for twelve years with an incurable hemorrhage. She touches the hem of his robe and is healed instantly. A bleeding woman was considered unclean, and she was not to put herself in path of a holy man. To her surprise, when she confessed her presumption, Jesus reassured her: “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. You have been healed.”

Delayed by this encounter, messengers inform Jairus that his daughter has died and that there is no point in troubling the teacher any further. I can imagine that moment. The last hope dashed. Jesus, though, is unfazed by the tragic news, and encourages Jairus, “Don’t be afraid. Just trust Me.” I don’t know how Jairus felt about those words, but they did continue on to Jairus’ house.

When they get there, the house is fully involved in grief. Jesus cracks the mourners up by telling them they are sadly mistaken: “The child isn’t dead; she is only asleep.”

He tells the scoffers to wait outside. He takes the grieving father and mother and three of his disciples into the little girl’s room. He takes her by the hand and commands her to arise. She does, and the parents are ecstatic. The family is whole again.

I can see how someone would see this as a slap in the face: The story of a daughter brought back to life while our daughter’s ashes sit in an urn on our bedroom dresser. I could look at it that way. But I believe there is a comforting message there for us, a message about faith and hope and love: “Your faith has made you well...Go in peace...Don’t be afraid. Just trust Me...The child isn’t dead; she is only asleep...Little girl, arise!”

Our hope is resurrection. It is a living hope, the hope that gives us strength to go on living.

“If our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died...The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

February 21

2009-02-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

What can I say about February 21st, except that we survived. It was not a day to celebrate, and most of the day we were preoccupied trying not to think about what was most on our minds.

We wanted to spend the day doing something that would honor Rachel and celebrate life. After we spent a little time lingering in bed while we drank our coffee and read the latest issue of The Sun magazine, I made an appointment to donate blood at BloodSource in Chico. Rachel received a scholarship from BloodSource for her efforts organizing blood drives on campus at Orland High School, and donating blood was one of the things Rachel and I shared. Jill is ineligible for the time being because of the tattoo she got in honor of Rachel. I would love to know what she thinks of her mother getting a tattoo. I am sure she would approve.

I had forgotten about the drive into Chico. Because it was exactly one year later, the world looked as it did when we received the news of Rachel’s death: breaking into the blossom of early spring. Spring, with its promise of life, and the beauty of new beginnings...

The road into Chico is the road I was on when Jill called me with the news that Rachel was missing. While she was talking to me, she was visited by police chief Bob Pasero with the news that Rachel was “gone.” The way to BloodSource takes me past the exact spot on the road when I answered the phone and the exact spot I learned that Rachel was dead. It takes me past the exact spot I turned around to go back home, where everything had changed and nothing would ever be the same. How often I have wondered how life would have been if that call had never been necessary, and I could have driven past that otherwise unremarkable spot in the road and into the life that lay ahead, the life that included my daughter’s loving presence and her bright future. There are no roadside monuments to mark those spots in the road where my life was changed, but they are indelibly carved in my mind...

After I gave blood, Jill and I spent some time at the Chico Farmers’ Market. For us, a visit to the Farmer’s Market is always an uplifting experience. There is laughter and fellowship and beauty and an abundance of life. Whether we need produce or not, just to stroll past the vendor’s stalls and look at the fruit of their partnership with earth and to observe people enjoying themselves and one another and the miracle of another day of life is ample reason to justify a visit. There is always a positive energy that pervades the atmosphere at the Farmers’ Market, but, with spring in the air, it was almost palpable. We left refreshed, lighter in spirit.

Unexpectedly, we had lunch with a man we became acquainted with through Rachel’s involvement with the Every 15 Minutes program when she was a senior in high school. At that program Daryl Spessard described his experience losing his daughter Andrea to a drunk driver. Rachel lingered after the program was over to thank Daryl for his presentation and to express her sympathy for the loss of his daughter. Daryl remembered Rachel’s compassion, and he attended her memorial service in Orland and has made a point of making himself available to assist us in our grief. Daryl remembered the significance of February 21st for us, and he arranged to meet us for lunch at a favorite cafe in Chico, Flo’s. Daryl encouraged Jill and I to participate in a Smart Start driver’s education program the following Wednesday night, to share Rachel’s story.

Lunch with Daryl seemed a fitting end to our visit to Chico. It was beginning to cloud up after a beautiful morning and early afternoon. We thought we should head back home. We took the back roads through the countryside to take full advantage of the spectacle of the blossoming almond orchards. It was a sad day, to be sure, but not worse than we feared. We took the time to appreciate the goodness to be found, and we felt better for doing it.

THE SHAPE OF OUR LIVES

2009-02-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

Jill and I made a pilgrimage to New Mexico recently. We get away annually at the beginning of February to celebrate our anniversary. Last year, our 20th, we spent close to home, at a bed and breakfast (The Grateful Bed) in Chico. It was our last “happy” memory. A few short days after we returned we got the news that Rachel had been killed.

We chose New Mexico this year for several reasons: first, we had always wanted to visit Santa Fe - everyone we know who has been there (mostly artists themselves) rave about the amazing art that can be seen there. And the adobe. And the sky...Everything we heard was true - and more. We weren’t adequately prepared for the food...If you go there, bring your appetites!

Secondly, we wanted to visit the Memorial of Perpetual Tears, recently opened in Moriarty, New Mexico, to honor victims of DWI traffic fatalities. Maribeth Robison, my aunt, and her husband, Jim, just “happen” to live around the corner from the memorial site. Maribeth volunteers there creating beautiful memorial pages for an on-site book of remembrance.

The Memorial sits just off Interstate 40 between Albuquerque and points east. It was the vision and labor of love of Sonja Britton whose beloved son, Monty, was killed by a drunk driver in 1991. Since 1994, Sonja has been working to realize her dream of dedicating a memorial to the victims of DWI, a place to honor, to remember, and to heal. With the help of local and state legislators, dedicated donors, and volunteers, the Memorial of Perpetual Tears serves as a constant reminder to drivers traveling the Interstate of the tragic and irreversible consequences of choosing to drink and drive. While the Memorial was originally conceived to honor New Mexican victims, Sonja’s vision couldn’t stop there. She dreams of a National Monument on site. The only thing keeping her from realizing that dream is money...

http://www.dwimemorialofperpetualtears.org

Jill and I recently attended a lecture by Terry Tempest Williams where she discussed her new book “Finding Beauty In A Broken World,” which describes her journey to Rwanda to make mosaics with the victims and survivors of the genocidal horrors that occurred there in 1994. It was a symbolic, but very real, healing act, to create something of beauty out of the broken shards scattered around them. I was reminded of this when Jill and I stood and talked to Sonja in the newly opened visitor’s center at the Memorial of Perpetual Tears. There, in the middle of the floor is an inlaid tile mosaic depicting a tear.

It is a strange and twisted set of circumstances that brought us to the site of the Memorial of Perpetual Tears on February 7, 2009. Needless to say, we wouldn’t have been there except for the twisted set of circumstances that led to the event of February 21, 2008, the day Rachel’s life was taken by a drunk driver. We would give anything for Rachel’s life and for our lives to have made our trip to the Memorial of Perpetual Tears inconceivable. But this is the real shape of our lives. Our hope now, as Sonja Britton has done, is to make some beauty out of the brokenness.

90 Seconds In Hell

2009-01-27T22:01:00.000-08:00

Shortly after Rachel was killed we had an encounter with a book called 90 Minutes In Heaven by Don Piper. He was pronounced dead at the scene of a traffic collision and visited heaven before he was restored to his body in this world.We were given the book by some friends who had lost their son about 10 years ago now. Just after we read the book, we heard that the author was scheduled to give a presentation in Chico on Easter Sunday. It seemed like a divine appointment, so Jill and I went with Erik and Rachel’s boyfriend Jeff. Easter was a hard day, coming as it did so soon after Rachel’s passing, but the talk was hopeful. There were many things I brought home that night that have helped me through this difficult, but hearing of the miraculous work of God in Don’s life that enabled him to be there that night made us all wonder why there was no miracle for Rachel, or for us...But I know that Don would say life in God’s presence is not second best.

Anyway, the other day I had a small breakthrough, and I have been feeling better the last few days. I had written my friend Ray about it, and sent him a quote I had read in The Sun Magazine about living with the awareness that everything and everyone is “already broken.” The writers, Stephen & Ondrea Levine (from Who Dies?) relates the story of a spiritual teacher taking the breaking of a drinking glass in stride. His reaction to the breaking of the glass is “Of course!” It is inevitable that a glass will eventually break, and so we should not be surprised or distressed when it happens. We should use that awareness to heighten our appreciation of the glass. Similarly, we all know humans are not built to last. We and our love ones will pass from this life, and the wise thing to do is come to grips with this fact and live our lives accordingly.

“If we lived our lives as though we were already dead, how much time would there be for self protection and the re-creation of ancient mirages? Only love would be appropriate, only truth.”

They are beautiful words. I acknowledged the truth of them, and I was immediately tested.

I wake Erik up every morning at 6:00 to get ready for school. I generally tap lightly on his door, and he wakes right up - he is a pretty light sleeper and a relatively early riser (for a teen-ager). Monday morning he didn’t respond when I knocked on his door. I knocked again. I knocked again, louder. When there was still no response I opened the door and called his name. I turned the light on dimly and called again. I turned the light on full brightness and yelled his name. I could see his form motionless under his blanket. I was trying to see if there was any movement at all. I couldn’t tell. I started to get light-headed and weak. I couldn’t believe this was happening. How could a perfectly healthy young man wake up dead? How was I going to tell Jill? I stared into the abyss. I was right on the edge. I was afraid to touch him. If he didn’t respond, then I would really have to face the fact that he was dead. I shook him and called his name. He woke up with a smile on his face. He had no idea I was standing at the gates of hell.

To see him respond was such a relief I almost fell to the floor. My heart hurt and I felt weak all day.

Some parents do wake up and find their children have passed in the night. But it isn’t normally the first possibility that enters your mind when your teenager fails to wake up at first knock in the morning on a school day. But that is where our heads are at now. Our confidence in the predictability and safety of the routine is gone. Children can walk out the door and never come back; children can go to sleep and not wake in this world. The worst thing can happen, and it can happen again and again. There is no immunity. There is no security. The horrors that pass through your mind cannot not be ignored: they are real possibilities.

All I can tell you is that the breaking of a glass is not the same as the breaking of a child. Yes, they are both impermanent things in this world as it is. But a human being is many orders of magnitude more precious, and I cannot imagine accepting the loss with equanimity - even if I wanted to. There is wisdom in living with the constant awareness that now is all we have, that life is short and no amount of love is ever enough. But when your child is shattered by the blunt force trauma of a collision with an SUV piloted by an intoxicated driver or simply fails to wake up one morning, there is no denying or escaping the living hell that awaits you. I want to be a noble-minded philosopher, but I have a daddy’s heart.

3:30 am

2009-01-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

Rachel was pronounced dead at 3:30 am. I know that this is an official time and that her spirit more likely left her body shortly after she was hit head-on by a drunk driver at around 12:30 am. The people on duty at the hospital told us that though her body was young and healthy and strong by the time she arrived there was really no hope of saving her life. At that point they were only trying to preserve her body so that they could harvest any salvageable organs. Rachel wanted to be an organ donor and had indicated her wish on her drivers license. Unfortunately, Rachel’s body was so badly damaged by the impact, there was nothing they could save. She was denied even that awful last wish.

It is remarkable that a person as young as Rachel would have the presence of mind to consider and record her intent to donate her organs in case of sudden death. Considering Rachel’s intention to become a forensic scientist, though, I guess it really is not too unexpected. I remember when she asked me if she could donate her organs and if I could help her register when she turned 16 and got her driver’s license. Of course I didn’t want to consider the actual possibility, and I thought at the time that to assent would really be agreeing to nothing. I could be the good guy and say “yes” and not have to live with any real change (unlike, say, agreeing to letting her get her nose pierced). She was surprised to learn that I had already filled out an organ donor card.

I cannot find the words to express what it is like for a father to contemplate the fact of his little girl’s shattered body. I was not there when it happened. I did not see her body, and maybe that is a mercy. I would have been there if I could, even if it had killed me (and I think it would have). There was nothing I could do to save or help her. We weren’t even aware she had been killed until hours after it had happened. We were denied the horrific privilege of attending our daughter’s passing from this life as we attended her entrance.

For days after the wreck, I would lay in bed, wide awake, and listen to my heart pounding in my chest. I marveled it had the strength to make such a commotion, suffering as it was. How do you sleep after such a thing? How do you eat? How do you drink or carry on with a hundred other ordinary, insignificant tasks? Why? We tried to eat and sleep because we knew we must. We pantomimed normal life, knowing nothing would ever be normal again. We were victims of some hideous, debilitating disfigurement, but, somehow, the rest of world was oblivious to our condition.

When I did fall asleep, I would wake up promptly at 3:30 in a panic, my heart pounding against the mattress. It felt like a betrayal to sleep, knowing my daughter needed me. But I was too late; I had already missed her. I had slept through her hour of need, like Jesus’ friends in the garden.

In desperation, I would pray. Everyone I cared for was suffering because of Rachel’s death, so there was plenty of need. I thought that if the enemy was keeping me awake to accuse me of being a crappy father who could not protect or help his daughter, I would spoil his fun by spending the time in prayer. Even if that wasn’t the case, I felt it was something I could do in the darkest hours of the night. And sometimes, the exercise would calm my heart enough that I could go back to sleep.

11 months after the wreck, I still wake at 3:30 in the morning. I open my eyes and the digital numbers glare back at me from the clock on the night stand, an accusation. My heart doesn’t pound anymore like it did when the wounds were fresh, but there is a heaviness I can’t shake...and dreams that haunt me. I pray to save my own life and for my dearest loved ones who still suffer and have not found their footing. I pray for the truth to be revealed about exactly what happened February 21, 2008. I pray for a change in America, so that fathers like me can lay in bed in the darkest hours of the night knowing that their children are safe from harm from drunk drivers. As far as I am concerned THAT is the change we need.

Everything Happy Makes Me Sad...

2009-01-20T16:45:00.000-08:00

Today I pulled my truck over to the side of a country road and listened as Barack Obama took the oath of office and gave his inaugural address. Maybe it sounds silly, but I couldn’t hold back my tears. It was an historic moment for America, regardless of politics.

At one point President Obama quoted scripture and said that “the time has come that we set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” I believe he means what he says. I believe there is hope. I want to see America live up to the bright, but often broken, promise of her principles.

I cried today because I was happy and that made me sad. Sad because I could not share this momentous occasion with Rachel. Sad because this would have been Rachel's first time to vote in a presidential election, and she was denied that privelege. Sad because, though I believe we can and will deliver the “great gift of freedom...to future generations” if we put our hearts and our hands to the project, it will not be for Rachel or her children. For Rachel and for her children and her children’s children that gift was forever denied by a drunk driver.

I still love America. I still care about this world and the welfare of those who inhabit it, though my precious girl is gone from it. The whole world is rejoicing. It is a good day. I am glad I have lived to see it. But everything happy now makes me sad...

To Pray Or Not To Pray

2009-01-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

"...theology must not try to be any clearer about God than God is about Himself." Mike Mason, The Gospel According To Job

Grief is a wicked cocktail: loss, pain, confusion. All thoroughly mixed up.

Would good theology make our grief any easier, I wonder? Would answers ease us into acceptance?

We keep coming back to the same old nagging questions. We admit that God did not cause Rachel to die. We acknowledge that a selfish, drunken woman killed her. But did God allow it to happen? That is the unavoidable issue of the Book of Job that we are studying in our Sunday School class. Job did not deserve to suffer, any more and probably much less than any other merely human that has ever walked this earth. His suffering was “caused” by the devil working through natural, human and spiritual agents. But it is also made clear that God allowed it. Satan had to get God’s permission in order to “test” Job with horrific loss and pain.

The night Rachel was killed, her car failed to start. It had never failed to start before. She and her friend Andre waited and tried to start her car three times before they finally succeeded, delaying Rachel’s departure for half an hour. If the car had started on the first or second attempt, she would be here with us now. If it had failed to start the third time, she would be here with us now. It is a seemingly small thing for God to accomplish: the timing of the ignition of an automobile. Of course, we did not pray that prayer specifically, but we did pray daily for Rachel’s safety. We prayed for her safety early in the morning of February 21, 2008, not knowing she was already dead.

Either God can answer prayer or He can’t. Either God does answers prayer, or He doesn’t. If He can’t or He doesn’t, why are we enjoined to pray? If He can and does then why did He choose to disregard our dearest request, the one we most cared about in this world? We are not perfect, and neither was Rachel, but none of us deserved this. If God can’t be trusted with our “big prayers,” our most heartfelt desires, why waste our breath nagging Him with the insignificant details?

I don’t have the answers. When I don’t understand, all I can do is fall back on what I do know. God did not rescue His own Son from the plans or the hands of evil men though He cried out to His Father to be delivered. We have to conclude that either God is so ineffectual that He could not even help His own beloved Son, or else He chose to allow it. Could we be callous enough to suggest He didn’t care? That would be contrary to what we know of parental instincts. We love our children. We are concerned for their welfare. We do everything in our power to keep them from coming to harm and to spare them unnecessary pain. God, if He is God, must be at least as good a parent as we are.

Of course, God has a plan. But did it have to be this way?

Evil is a choice. Goodness is a choice. We can choose to work with God to build His kingdom or we can work against Him. God often accomplishes His purposes in spite of the choices we make. He uses the very worst intent of the most evil of His rebellious creatures to achieve His good purposes. There is some mysterious alchemy here we cannot fathom.

My daughter is killed by a wicked woman. God’s Son is killed by wicked men. I can’t imagine God scrambling behind the scenes for a contingency plan. I don’t think it works like chess with each player constantly adjusting their game in response to their opponent - God backed into a corner, wondering what move to make next, sacrificing pawns to achieve His ultimate conquest...

The questions are too big, and too confusing. My mind is stretched beyond my capacity to follow my own crooked line of reasoning.

I must resign myself to the fact that I am not God. And I am not big enough or smart enough to judge Him.

Maybe we don’t have to understand. If we did, God would probably have made us smarter than we are, with eyes good enough to see a bigger picture.

I fall back on what I do know - what I have been taught and what I have learned through experience.

The morning Rachel was killed, Jill and I read in our One Year Bible that “God is good. His faithful love endures forever.” We choose to accept or reject that statement, and we are confronted with it again and again in the Bible - and in our own lives. I have learned it is a matter of faith. When the evidence of our experience doesn’t correspond with the truth God has revealed about Himself, we have a choice to make. Like Nicolas Cage to Diane Kruger in National Treasure, God is asking, “Do you trust Me?”

“Faith...is the evidence of things not seen.”

I had a conversation soon after Rachel’s death with a good friend of mine, Josh Moreland. I explained to him that I had grieved the death of my best friend, Erik Kolar, rejecting God, (not that He wasn’t there and ready to embrace me - In my anger and pain I rejected the comfort of His loving presence). And I had grieved the death of my sister, Vanessa Elliott, embracing Him. I have learned it is better to grieve with faith in God’s goodness and love than without it. It is better to trust in Him than to trust in myself.

I don’t know why God allowed my daughter to be killed by a drunken fool. I think it may just be part of the bargain of being. My contention is that I would be offended by any possible explanation. No reason would be good enough for me to allow my daughter to be killed. I am not God...or Abraham even. I would not sacrifice my daughter to achieve any conceivable good. Myself maybe, but not her.

I think it is better that I do not know. I let the question go. Perhaps, someday, with better eyes I will see, with a better mind I will understand. But I resign myself to the fact that I may never know. Rachel is God’s daughter; I ascribe more significance to my contribution than I deserve to take credit for her life.

What I have learned is that presence is better than understanding. When we are in pain we need comfort, not a lecture. That is why Job’s friends were better to him in their silence than in their speech.

Job never understood what was happening to him. He was never given any answers, and the deaths of his children were never justified. Nevertheless, Job clung to God in the darkness for dear life. Of the people who speak in the book, only Job bothers to pray. He continues to pray, and his prayers are not nice, Sunday School prayers.

I believe God is good. I believe His faithful love endures forever. I believe He loves me and He loves Rachel. I don’t understand, but I will cling to Him in spite of my confusion. I pray because it reminds me of my dependence on God for everything I have and am. I pray because prayer reminds me of His loving presence. And that is a comfort.

As Job said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Amen.

I went back to bed and slept in the middle of writing this. I dreamed of an angel telling me, “learning is the head catching up with the heart. You are learning,” she said, and she smiled a beaming, beautiful and loving smile, the kind of smile that blesses your whole day.

I know: it is only a dream...

The Tiniest Light

2009-01-09T18:03:00.000-08:00

The holidays are behind us now. We dreaded them in advance, and they pretty much lived up to our expectations. Christmas morning I was a wreck. Jill and I got out of bed and I wandered around the house in tears, trying not to spoil anyone’s day.

Every year for the previous nine years I have purchased mint sets of the five 50 State Quarters released over the previous year for Rachel and Erik and my two nephews, Levi and Samuel. It was my tribute to my grandfather, William Travis Temple, who was an avid coin collector. We spent many happy and memorable times together searching for coins with a metal detector on the beach (mostly we found pop-tops from soda and beer cans). When the US Mint began the program I thought it would be fun for the kids to look forward to building their collection as the years went by. This year was the tenth and final release of the 50 State Quarters program. I didn’t get to give Rachel her final set.

I purchased a set for Rachel anyway. I couldn’t not do it. We had hung Rachel’s stocking in the usual place. I put the 2008 State Quarters Mint set in her stocking, and it was the only thing in it this year (I should have put a box of Andes in there also, because that was always a non-negotiable treat in her stocking). I didn’t know what else to do. It probably sounds crazy, but it was the only way I could think to send a message of love to my daughter this Christmas.

Well, that set me off, and I struggled all morning to keep my composure. Of course, I couldn’t hide it from Jill. As much as I hate to admit it, she reads me like a book. We held each other in our bedroom, standing beside our dresser, crying. Ida, our family dog, is very sensitive to our emotions. She came and sat our feet, obviously in distress. Just when we thought we weren’t going to make it through the day, Ida farted. The noise surprised even her, and she turned around to see where it had come from. Our tears turned to laughter, our moods were lightened, and, I think, the day was rescued from the brink of complete disaster. God works in mysterious ways.

From “Concerning The Book Which Is The Body Of The Beloved”

by Gregory Orr

If deepest grief is hell

When the animal self

Wants to lie down

In the dark and die also...

If deepest grief is hell,

Then the world returning

(Not soon, not easily)

Must be heaven.

The joke you laughed at

Must be heaven.

Or the funny thing

The cat did

At its food dish.

Whatever

Guides you back

To the world.

That dark so deep

The tiniest light

Will do.

60 Minutes - DWI Deaths: Is it Murder?

2009-01-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694666.shtml

60 Minutes ran a story Jan. 4, 2009 about the growing trend to prosecute traffic fatalities involving DWI offenders as second degree homicides. The story profiled New York state Nassau County District Attorney, Kathleen Rice, who has successfully prosecuted several high-profile DWI murder cases. DA Rice pushes for more severe DWI homicide penalties because "nothing else is working...People drink and drive because they're not afraid of the law, and they think they can get away with it." Stricter penalties are one necessary step in our efforts to change the culture and wake America up to the real consequences of DWI. Those who think that facing 10 years or more in prison for taking a life while driving under the influence is too severe are still under the inexcusable and convenient illusion that DWI is an accident (I didn't know if I pointed this gun in someone's face and pulled the trigger it would kill them!) and have no idea of how much harder it is to face a life sentence without their loved one. I applaud DA Rice's tough stand against the senseless and reckless disregard for human life. I hope her message will spread from coast to coast.

Prohibition VS. Prevention

2009-01-01T14:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20081231/NEWS/812310317/0/APA

This article tells the familiar story of how a habitual drunk continued to drink and drive until the inevitable tragedy finally played out. It illustrates the weaknesses of our current approach to dealing with DUI: convicted DUI offenders continue drinking and driving even when they have had their licenses revoked; drunks with impaired judgment and driving abilities continue to take the wheel and to the roads despite their awareness of the possible consequences.

Prohibition is a failed enterprise. As a nation, we have tried that and it didn’t work. Punishment has limited value as a deterrent. Drunk people have poor judgment by definition and cannot be relied upon to make responsible life and death choices. Tough regulations and punishments are small consolation for a family deprived of their loved one.

Education is necessary, but despite the well publicized consequences of DUI, people, because they are human, continue to make bad choices. Sex education in schools, for instance, hasn’t improved the incidence of unplanned pregnancy or STD’s. We need to educate because it will influence a few, and we need to eliminate the excuse of ignorance completely.

Prevention is the only satisfactory and effective answer. We need to make it physically impossible to get behind the wheel of an automobile while impaired by anything: sleep deprivation, prescription pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs...as well as alcohol. The technology is in development and could be available quickly if we as a people decided it was a priority. Check this article out to see a system already under development by Nissan.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-157940.html

I envision a day when driver impairment detection systems like this are standard equipment in automobiles, like seat belts and air bags are now. Rachel’s seat belt did not save her life. Rachel’s air bag did not save her life. A driver impairment detection system that prevented the woman that killed my daughter from driving her deadly SUV while intoxicated would have saved Rachel’s life. Now I want the woman to suffer, as we suffer, severe, costly, painful, and permanent consequences for what she did to my daughter. But, to put it mildly, I would be so much happier if the tragedy had been prevented in the first place.

Of course, systems like this will add costs to new vehicles. Consumers, automakers and legislators will object. We have to speak louder. We have to make them look us in the eyes and explain why their money is more precious than our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

Even when, eventually, these systems are included as standard equipment, there will be a long period of time when responsible drivers who drive new vehicles will be imperiled by irresponsible drivers who still own old vehicles unequipped with the new technologies. Drunks will continue to plow their old cars into innocent, law abiding citizens. We will have to continue the fight to educate, legislate, prosecute and punish until all those old automobiles have been scrapped and DUI is no longer a threat to us and our loved ones.

There will be lots of little steps to take before this dream is achieved, but, I believe, step by step it can, must, and will be done.

NEW YEAR: TEARS OR CHEERS?

2008-12-31T17:12:00.000-08:00

"...to make an end is to make a beginning."

T. S. Eliot

Jill and I don’t know how to feel today, the last day of 2008. We are torn between tears and cheers. This is the last day of a year our daughter walked this earth with us. At the same time, 2008 is the year she was taken away. Rachel will not see this New Year, or any other for that matter. Every subsequent year will simply be another year without her.

This past weekend we watched CBS Sunday Morning, and they profiled the notable individuals who had passed away this year. Rachel didn’t make the list, of course, because a drunk driver deprived her of the chance to realize her potential. The world will never know the great things she could have done.

Today began like so many others: with tears. We ended a daily devotional book, Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman, that we have been reading through this past year. It felt like another ending was being thrust upon us, as if even this grief were something that must be left behind. To me, at this stage, grief feels like my last link to my dead daughter, the last string stretched thin to breaking. I know this is not true. Love is the tie that binds us together eternally and cannot be broken. But my heart is not there yet.

I am glad this year is over. At the same time, I fear what new horrors the New Year may hold. I want to be hopeful, to anticipate life’s sweet surprises, to believe that we will be able to both cling to our love for Rachel and move forward with confidence. I am thankful for Lindsay and Brian’s baby, Jack, who will be born in 2009, and I look forward to a new president who has a hopeful and progressive vision for the country. But I can’t ignore the lesson I have learned so bitterly: that the worst can happen, even if the worst has already happened before. The woman who killed my daughter has killed my faith in the future. Perhaps that faith was inappropriate in the first place...

Her Eyes, Her Words, My Response

2008-12-21T06:54:00.000-08:00

10 nice things about me

Rachel Amaris Elliott

Well I’m not usually asked to list nice things about myself so some of these may be out of desperation. As you already know I have low self esteem so this may prove to be difficult. Anywho here I go. Ok well I can sing well or so I’m told. I am a generally nice person. I am easy to get along with. I have relatively good pen man ship. I have decent fashion sense…providing that I had time to try on 50 million different outfits. So I’m half way there. Just five more! I know how to save my money and spend it well. A lot of people trust me with secrets. I guess along with that goes a lot of people trust me. I generally know how to act in different situations and I guess that calls for a certain amount of maturity. I have a younger brother and I think that I am a pretty cool sister to have. We have a really great amount of understanding and if you can believe it we rarely fight. Ok for the last one ill go for something physical. I love my eyes. No one can tell me just what color they are. There, there is 10 god things about me! Self esteem:

Boosted!

CLARITY

for RAE 5/24/08

Your eyes:

your eyes were two beautiful

jewels which colored the world.

The world is not the same

without you. Now

everything looks different. Everything

and nothing is clear.

Steven Elliott

BABY'S FIRST ORNAMENT

2008-12-18T20:49:00.000-08:00

Everything has been redefined by this experience. Jill and I decorated the Christmas tree alone this year. Erik had no heart for it. We are going through the motions of a happy family, and it just doesn’t fit anymore. The Christmas tree is almost an insult, a constant reminder of happier times, forever gone.

We got the tree, because that is the tradition. It sat naked in the corner for days. We finally had to deal with it. Jill organized the decorations while I hung the lights, as usual. When we finished, we set about hanging the ornaments. I dreaded the moment when Jill would hang “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament - the ornament that commemorated Rachel’s first Christmas when she was only six months old. We purchase commemorative ornaments every year, but this particular ornament has the most significance in our family. It was a bone of contention between Rachel and me every year. The ornament has a baby bear in a cradle that rocks when it is plugged into a Christmas light socket. Over the years, the tiny motor began to wear out and the cradle would grind as it rocked. It would annoy me when I would get up early and turn the Christmas tree lights on. I would unplug it, so I didn’t have to listen to the incessant grinding. When Rachel would notice that I unplugged it, she would get upset and demand that I plug it back it. It was HER ornament! There was no way of denying Rachel. She was right. I would relent and plug it back in and grin and bear it as I listened to the grinding.

It’s just a silly ornament, made in China, I am sure. It has a silly history, but it is our history. I always imagined that someday Rachel would be hanging “Baby’s First Christmas” on her own tree in her own home and tell the story to her own children, my grand-children, of how she and I used to fight every year about whether to leave it plugged in or unplugged. That is an impossible dream, now. “Baby’s First Christmas” will always hang on our tree as we grow old together and wonder what might have been and what will never be. Jill and I wept and held each other as we held the ornament and tried to decide where to hang Rachel's ornament. We found the right spot.

I plugged it in.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday all my adult life. I love it because it has always been uncomplicated. The powers of commerce have not figured out how to exploit it. We gather with our loved ones, feast, and express our gratitude to Whomever and Whatever has blessed us at this time in this place with the gifts of life and of love with these dear people. The fact is, we all have cause for gratitude. Even if we don’t know Who or What to thank. This is one of the most compelling reason for me to believe in God. Who else could I thank for all the goodness in my life which I did not and could not arrange for myself?

This Thanksgiving was complicated. We were all conflicted. Despite losing Rachel, I knew the family had cause for gratitude. But we could not ignore the empty place at the table. I was asked to say grace. At our last family gathering, after a trip to Chiloquin, Oregon, I broke down in tears and had to excuse myself from the table when I asked the blessing. Rachel should have been there. She had been there the last time. At Thanksgiving, I held my tears and choked back the lump in my throat and focused on the positive: we were glad to be together; we were thankful for the bounty at the table; we were grateful for the joyful news that Lindsay and Brian were expecting a baby boy.

Our last memories of Rachel are of the holidays. Because she was living away from “home” attending school in southern California, we saw her at the traditional holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year. Though the last nine months have been long and dreadful, time has folded upon itself as it pertains to Rachel. The memories feel so recent and vivid, the intervening time seems like a dream. A nightmare. The holidays will be forever haunted by her absence.

Thanksgiving highlighted the struggle for me. I am at a loss to account for what has happened to my beautiful daughter, my family, my life. The good things I expected are lost to me now. There will be unexpected joys, but not the ones I imagined and feel entitled to: Rachel’s bodily presence, her love, her marriage, her children, the marvel and mystery of her life as it unfolds...And still, I know, I have reason to be thankful. To have loved her is more goodness than I could ever have expected, than I could ever have deserved. That she is gone now and I am returned to that state of deprivation I never knew to regret before she entered this world causes me to reflect: knowing what I have lost, am I better off now...or worse? I can only conclude that I am grateful to have known her. It is painful beyond words to miss her. Her death was so unnecessary, so ridiculously preventable; and for that I am angry. Still. I am grateful for her life and her love, and I would be remiss not to offer the thanks that are due for the miracle and blessing she was, and still is to me even in death.

I had a dream the other night that was an answer to an unspoken prayer, the dearest desire of my heart: Rachel came back to me, as an eight-year-old little girl. I knew it could not last, but I held her, just held her and stroked her long, beautiful, silky hair. Jill laughed at me because I brought her back as an eight year old, but this was my dream, and the fulfillment of the longing of my heart: the sweet, uncomplicated affection of her childhood, her unreserved bodily presence.

I have returned again and again to Gratefulness.org to ground my grief in thankfulness. As horrible and miserable as losing Rachel has been, I constantly try to remind myself to be grateful for the sweetness and the goodness I have known because of her. I light a candle and weep. I could easily and justifiably become an angry old bastard. But I know that would dishonor Rachel. I can’t see my way through this grief, but I know when I come out the other side I want to be a better person. I believe, somehow, that thankfulness, gratefulness, gratitude - whatever you call it - is the only bridge, the lifeline of love that still connects me to Rachel and the person I want to be.

NINE MONTHS: 11/21/08

2008-11-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

This morning I stepped right into the routine. I staggered out of bed at 4:30 am and let our dog, Ida, outside. I stood on the patio and braced myself with the chill morning air. The sky was clear and dark as it can only be when the moon is down. The stars were in their glory, shining the brighter for the darkness. As I stood there taking it all in, wondering what the day would bring despite my efforts to order it and keep it all safely predictable, I saw what we used to call a falling star streak across the sky. Falling star, meteor, or space junk? A sign? A portent for a day already fraught with significance, or just another piece of meaningless debris from the unknown reaches of space, disintegrating in the atmosphere before it can be identified?

Nine months. It was on a day that began much like this one nine months ago that we received the news that Rachel had been killed. There were signs, but I could not read them. That night there had been a lunar eclipse. It began to rain. I don't believe in signs. But I do believe it is human to try to connect the dots, to make constellations out of the scatter-shot of stars, to impose where we cannot recognize some significance, some bigger picture.

I dreamed last night of a powerful spirit being, a force of nature personified, that attacked the restaurant I was in (O.K. it was Carl's Jr., if you must know), ripping the roof off and hurling it at the structure - at me. It was a towering, dark pillar of cloud, like a tornado, vaguely but recognizably human in shape. And it had a name. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I could not speak it, and all my efforts to identify it through research ended in frustration.

That is part of the struggle. Is there some personal force behind the seemingly random and impersonal calamities we suffer? Is it a personal attack? Can the assailant be identified and named?

Nine months. The time it took to produce and reveal the miracle of Rachel's life. Of all the terms used to describe that period, I like the word "expectant" the most. It perfectly captures our state. We were waiting for a miracle. But we were not waiting in vain: we were expecting it, anticipating it. We knew this miracle would arrive as surely as the new day, as joyfully as all our childhood Christmases. We marveled as the miracle grew day by day, barely concealed beneath the skin of Jill's swelling belly. We hoped and we wondered. And we were acutely aware of how small a part we played in the magic happening before our eyes. We simply welcomed a child. Love prepared a place, and Rachel grew into it. Of course, when she arrived, she was not what we expected. She was something wholly different, other, new. We do not possess the powers to imagine such a thing. Rachel was a pure gift. We received her and were perfectly, abundantly blessed.

Nine months. We are no longer expecting. This is a period marked by loss. And it is indefinite and terminal. Nothing has been birthed in us but grief in all its aspects, and we expect nothing else. All that we know of the miracle we called Rachel in this life has been revealed. The rest is remembering. What makes it so difficult is that we know what we have lost. There are so many children we could have had. But we do not know to miss or mourn them. We had 18 years to learn how much we loved Rachel. Now she is gone. And that makes all the difference.

PLEASE DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE

2008-11-18T04:39:00.000-08:00

This phrase sums up our approach to the problem of drunk driving: a plea to the common decency and good sense of intoxicated people who would get behind the wheel. I am here to tell you they don't have any, and this approach is pathetically inadequate.

In the months that have elapsed since my daughter Rachel was killed, I have thought long and hard about what it is going to take to keep people from choosing to drive when they are drunk, and prevention is the only satisfactory solution. Our nation is indifferent to the consequences of drunk driving, because most of us are unaffected and believe we are immune. Of course we read stories in the paper everyday, and we think, "What a shame!" When Rachel was killed, the story barely registered in the local newspaper. Because it is such a common occurrence, the story of the life of an innocent, promising, beautiful young lady being senselessly and violently cut short by a drunk driver isn't deemed newsworthy. We don't demand the change required to put an end to the body count. We will not tolerate our freedoms being abridged, until, of course, we are convinced the security of our own live or our loved ones is imperiled. That, of course, is the lesson of the aftermath of 9/11.

Prevention is expensive. And the fact is, people only spend money on what they care about. We can't afford to help the poor AIDS orphans in Africa, but somehow we find the money to pay for our plasma t.v.'s; universal health care is prohibitively expensive, but we can spend trillions of dollars on a pointless war in Iraq and on a bail-out for Wall Street without any debate or public discourse. The public has no idea of the real cost of drunk driving - a price we are already paying. Of course the personal costs are inestimable and catastrophic. But when medical, judicial, penal, social wellfare and productivity costs are tallied the price tag of drunk driving is astronomical. M.A.D.D. reports that in the year 2000 alone, the public paid an estimated 114 billion dollars in costs associated with drunk driving. If we have that kind of money to spend cleaning up the devastation caused by D.U.I., why can't we spend it on the front end and use it to prevent the tragedy in the first place? We would still be out the money, but we just might have our own lives or the lives of our loved ones to show for the investment.

The real problem is indifference. But I can tell you this now as a father who has lost his only and precious daughter to this senseless crime: I would pay any price to have prevented her death; I would sacrifice any "freedom". And you would, too, if you truly believed your life and the lives of your loved ones were imperiled. Unless we do something now to change our approach from and impotent plea to the common decency and good sense of intoxicated drivers to real prevention, we may very well be reading about you or your loved ones next. That is, if the story makes the paper.