Mary Angel

(6/2018) I can’t thank you enough for your friendship with my son. He has cherished his time growing up with you, from hanging out at the movies to hanging out in our basement. I watched you grow up and loved seeing how the Nerf battles slowly matured into military maneuvers in our yard. The pool parties with all of the friends yelling and splashing were some of my favorite pictures to scrapbook. I am so proud of the young people you two have become.

It seems like only yesterday you were having sleepovers and playdates and now you are in high school, looking forward to your future (whether it be college, military, or a full-time job). I miss the days when a playdate and a sleepover were all that was required to make the "best weekend ever!" Now it seems you are not entirely satisfied with such simple things. It has come to my attention that now you have turned to driving recklessly and texting to find excitement in life. I am truly not sure what to say to you concerning this and not for lack of much thought and prayer on my part.

I have been genuinely disturbed and saddened by the thought of your bright future being snuffed out so carelessly. Although you are not my child by birth, you have spent enough time in my home to be considered one of us. We love you like our own and wish only the best for you. So I have given a lot of consideration to this letter and what to say to get through to you. I feel I only have one chance to reach you with reason, sincerity, and love. So with my whole heart invested, here I go…

I would like to ask you to stop driving so recklessly. I would like you to think about yourself and your future and the plans you have discussed with my son and us around our dinner table. How much you are looking forward to going to college and getting involved in some of the clubs and joining the band. How you are sure you are going to meet your future wife and have three kids and a great job that you love. I want you think about that all going away because you wanted to speed around that bend while texting. I know right now you think you are invincible and God knows I wish that were true, but unfortunately I have seen too many funerals for teenagers who are far from invincible. If none of these thoughts ring true to you, then I would ask you to consider how your parents would feel when they are told you are never coming home again. Think about how their hearts will ache for the rest of their lives.

I suspect none of this is getting through to you. Not that I think you are being disrespectful, but more that you are reading this and thinking how silly I sound. To this I would say, "What if you were fine after you drove recklessly while texting?" What if, you were fine, but my child was in the car with you and I was the one hearing that he would never be coming home again. You are fine except for the fact that you have to live the rest of your life knowing that you killed your best friend. That you had to face me and my husband at the funeral, knowing that you were solely responsible for the death of another human being, the one human being that you made a pact with when you were ten years old to be best friends forever. The person who was going to be the best man in your wedding and Godfather to those three children. The fact is that you will not be the Godfather to his kids or be in his wedding because you have erased those events from existence. I will never see my son graduate from college, get married, or have children. For heaven sake, I will never meet my grandchildren.

At this point there would be nothing I could say, nothing anyone could say. It would be too late and there would be no turning back the clock. So that is why I am writing now instead of waiting. I know this is not the future you would want for anyone. This is a future that can be avoided and avoided very simply. Consider those around you, consider how much you are loved (by your family and ours and so many others). Would it be terrible if you waited until you stopped the car to read that Tweet, or pulled over to the side of the road to read your Instagram account or keep up a streak? If I told you that you could save a life by not texting for fifteen minutes, would you wait?

Sincerely,

Your Best Friend’s Mom

Please talk to every teenager you know. Please ask them to wait! It really is a simple request.

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