"Drive as if our lives depend on it..because they do."

The below article can be found on www.drivingdownheartache.org. It was written by one of my and my husbands' Marks best friend, Joe St.Onge. Pictured above was my beautiful husband that had the sheer pleasure of holding one of his best friends newborn...but would never hold his own newborn due to road tragedy. Please read this article fully, share and remind people that LIFE ends in less than a moment. Car Crashes are 100% preventable and we CAN drive down heartache on our roadways if we choose to.

The phone rang late Friday night, October 24th, but we didn’t get up. We just let it go. A minute later, the phone rang again. I reluctantly answered the phone (no caller ID then). I will never forget Mark’s dad saying somberly, “we lost Mark tonight.” I don’t remember if I dropped the phone or set it on the bed. I just sank. My wife picked up the phone and listened to the horrific details of what had just happened. Before I knew it, my wife was driving us to the hospital, to see Melissa, Mark’s parents, and Phil (Melissa’s brother, who was in critical condition). I vividly remember walking up and Melissa meeting me outside the hospital. Here is this woman, 9 months pregnant, having just lost her husband and father to her unborn child. She asks me how I am doing? What an extraordinary human being…

Mark and I lived together after college when both of us eventually met our future wives. He was such a great guy, so full of life. I was so incredibly happy for Mark & Melissa when they got married. The one thing I admired about Mark, more than anything, was his ability to just let things go. To Mark, there were far worse things in life, to let the little things bother him. Not to say he didn’t occasionally get frustrated with the computer at work or the AC at the house, but most of the time LIFE just didn’t get to him.

Although I will say, his limitless confidence made me laugh when they got pregnant. He was so adamant that their lives wouldn’t change one bit. As a father of a 1-year old, I had an ongoing debate with Mark, knowing that sleepless nights were ahead and what the throws of a newborn would bring to their life. Who knows, I could have been wrong. As laid back as Mark was, he would have been the one guy to figure it out. Unfortunately, we will never know. That is my biggest struggle with his death and the timing of it.

Melissa was 9 months pregnant when a reckless driver barreled through a blatant red light, taking away Mark’s chance to prove me wrong. More importantly, he lost the chance to hold his daughter, Madisyn Grace, who would come into this world just two weeks later. I lost my mom when I was 2 years old, so I could relate to the pain, at least more than most. To this day, almost 16 years later, I still wish that Mark could have had the chance to hold his daughter, just once.

My dad told me that there will always be a hole in your heart, but it gets smaller over time. It will always be there. While he is right about that, I still think about Mark almost every time I go through an intersection, catch a road marker out of the corner of my eye, sit at a red light, or hear about an accident, even though his was definitely no accident. (It was a CRASH).

Through his devoted wife, Melissa, The Mark Wandall Traffic Safety Act has made a lasting “mark” on our roads. I hope and pray that his life will save others, many others. We can help save lives, too. So let’s all drive, as if our lives depended on it…because they do. (Joe St.Onge)

Melissa's thoughts: Michael Dreznes, ED of IRF Global sent out his newsletter this morning and had staggering GLOBAL statistics in them. In the last 3 months 50,000 people have died of Covid-19. Simply devastating not even 1 person dying (from anything) is ever acceptable. In those same last 3 months 300,000 people have died GLOBALLY due to roadway tragedy. Unacceptable when roadway tragedy is preventable. We have a problem and we have safety solutions that our policy makers MUST help to implement globally in order to save lives.

In a time when less vehicles are on our roadways Speeding violations are up! We need and MUST do better so we can simply save lives. Our trauma centers do not need any more people to help right now. Please...help me to help others see that NO one wins when we make reckless decisions on our roadways. Safety laws were put into place to keep us all safe! I am tired of roadway tragedy and tired of having to tell another family member that they will never make sense of this sudden loss but will be beside them to help navigate their new found life. Roadway tragedy is a public health crisis and I would challenge our policy makers to get more involved in safety solutions in order to drive down heartache on our roadways.

I miss my husband more today than I did the day he tragically died due to a red light runner. He will never be a statistic...he was a human being that deserved to live, celebrate life and walk beside our now 16 year old daughter. Being a single parent was never on my "to do list" - I can not re-write my story but I choose to make sure that I can help implement safety solutions so that less families will be left unaffected due to roadway tragedy. It takes a moment to end a life and it takes a moment to save a life...what will YOU choose?

#NCSR #SafetySavesLives #DrivingDownHeartache #StopOnRed #RedLightSafetyCamerasSaveLives