Wednesday, July 1, 2009

A Wake Up Call- Part 2

I wrote last week about how the show on Oprah last week touched me. It's truly a story that I have thought about countless times since watching it and I could NOT get Brenda Slaby (the mother in the story) out of my mind. Every time she crossed my mind I thought about how brave she was to tell her story and what a blessing her sharing her tragedy was to me and so many others.



I considered leaving her a comment on the Oprah website but was fearful she might not read them all given the volume of comments and the ugliness of many of those comments. I kept thinking how much I wanted to let her know what it meant to me- and could not get it out of my mind.



So the other morning after writing my blog about her story, I was on Facebook and decided to look for her. I put in her name and immediately pulled up her profile and picture. I was thrilled and immediately sent her a short message. I basically just told her thank you for sharing her story, told her how much it touched and changed me, mentioned I had blogged about it, and told her I was praying for her and her family. I just wanted her to know that she was making a difference. I clicked send and hoped and prayed that she would read it.



Well read it she did and then she responded. Her message said:



Shannon,



Your blog was amazing. I may never understand why this happened to me, but I want to honor Cecilia's memory by doing positive things in her memory. I appreciate your comments. I hope that you will always remember my baby girl and remind young mothers you know how short life can be. Kidsandcars.org is a great web site for parents to go to when looking for ideas to keep their kids safe in and around cars.



Brenda



I immediately went to kidsandcars.org and it is a fabulous site full of information, stories, and links. On the site there was a link to a fabulous story in the Washington Post by Gene Weingarten.



Fatal Distraction



Please take a minute to read this truly wonderful article. It is touching and heart breaking and sheds light on the many complicated and misunderstood reasons these unthinkable deaths continue to happen.