As much as I dislike using them, this should probably have a trigger warning simply because there is fairly graphic detail of a hit and run accident in this one.
How long should someone feel bad for taking another person's life because of stupidity? Bad driving, drunk driving, didn't think the gun was loaded, wasn't watching - all those things and all the other stupid ways people are killed because someone wasn't paying attention - or deliberately ignored common sense (never mind the law) and killed another human.
So how long should the killer feel guilty? I'm not talking jail, I'm talking about how long should they feel guilty before they shrug off their actions and skip through the rest of their life like it never happened. Several people have asked me this during the course of my life. Recently, because someone I was once friends with got in a car blind drunk and killed a person and because the exact same thing happened thirty-two years ago when my fiance was the victim and I, the witness.
I don't have a straight answer for this question. I have a question for this question. How long do you think it will be before I forget what my fiance looked like sprawled across the hood of your car? How long before Zia Hoya's mother gets the trial images of her daughter's dead body out of her mind? How long before we can close our eyes and not see the horror you put us through? That long.
You took a life. You ruined families' lives and yet you have zero remorse, zero consequences and you tie up the justice system with your 'not guilty' pleas and your crying at sentencing hearings because six months is too long for a man's life. And you, how dare you plead not guilty when you confessed to the news stations, the papers, your friends? How dare you presume to try the victim by asking why she was there in the first place? She was sixteen. She was in trouble, in the middle of the fucking desert and you killed her. How dare you think that four years is too long for you? Her mother has the rest of her life to try to forget. I know, because any time it comes up, I'm right back there on the highway turning a slow-motion full circle looking for Andy only to see him laying on the hood of a station wagon, seconds before her car takes off.
My fiance was an only child; his parents had to bury him. I am sure they died thinking of the amazing man who was their son. The son who immigrated with them from Hungary and learned English on the boat to Australia. The son who strove to become an American citizen so he could serve his country of choice in the Air Force and in two police departments. The son they lost because a selfish 'it's not that far' 'I'm not that drunk' driver got in a car and blacked out, careening into him and missing me by less than six inches.
How long before I forget the way his body bounced as he hit the ground when she took off after she came to? 150 feet. That's how far his body flew. YOU brought this back front and centre into my life because of your selfish, stupid behaviour and yet you want to know how long you need to feel guilty? How long before everyone who has gone through what I've been through can't remember? Perhaps that's about how long you should feel guilty. Perhaps that's how long you should work to repair what you destroyed.