Remembrance Event

October 19, 2013
I came home from a long and very emotional day of work (on a Saturday too) and saw a bunch of sunflowers sitting on the T.V. stand.

I assume they were for me since Jeff and I are the only ones home this weekend.

Jeff didn't know the irony of this. Today was our Family Remembrance Event. A yearly event I stress about for months and months until it's finally over. Each year we publish a memoriam of stories of teens who were killed in car crashes the previous year. Just before we publicly release the book, we hold a remembrance event for all of the families we've worked with. It's basically a giant grief support group where each family can share their story and how they're doing. We've done this for six years and it never gets easier. You learn to distance yourself from these teens and their families until you meet them in person and then the emotions you've held back come flooding out. And you realize that for some of these families, they've been coming for six years, every year.

I love these families. I really do. They are amazing and courageous. I so wish I could take away even an ounce of their pain. It's their pain that drives me to keep working on this project year after year.

This year our grief counselor was unable to attend our remembrance event. I was in a panic for weeks until one night on a walk I remembered hearing a presentation from the director of The Bradley Center for Grieving Children and Families. An early morning phone call and I was talking to Carrie Moore about our project and need for someone to come and help our families. She graciously accepted. As part of her presentation she showed a video (that I'd seen before and which I'd remembered on my walk) about her own journey through grief. Her husband was killed in an airplane crash 17 years ago. One of the other men killed in the crash had some sunflower seeds with him. A year after the crash what had once been a black hole in the earth had turned into a mountainside of sunflowers where none had been before the crash. 

Jeff's sweet gesture reminded me that our Heavenly Father loves these families and gives them strength to overcome their darkest times. These Teen Memoriams are inspired.... hopefully to teach others who read them but more importantly to give the families some healing. 

You can download our 2011 Teen Memoriam, "Unfinished Stories," at http://health.utah.gov/vipp/pdf/MotorVehicle/2012TeenMemoriam_FINAL.pdf.