On a gray day when I saw no blue in the sky, I saw this reflection of pieces of blue sky in water that shimmered on a beach. Water that reflected what I could not see clearly above me. Sometimes, I thought, the sky is bluer in its reflection than it appears in the sky.

Reflect literally means “bend back,” and today I am bending back my thoughts, watching the nearly cloudless October blue sky above me, and I am thinking of the journey of the past twenty years.

The October day twenty years ago changed my life and those of my family forever. My daughter was killed in a one-car crash less than half a mile from our home.

When she died, she was one of the 41,907 persons who died in car crashes that year in this country, and she was one of the 329 15-year-old passengers who died in car crashes. Of the 1493 persons who died in car crashes in our state that year, she was one. But she was not just a statistic. She was and is my daughter and will be always.

And when on an anniversary or on an ordinary day, someone remembers her or tells a story of her mischief or her kindness, those reflections allow me to see the blue sky in a reflection that I might have missed otherwise. Thank you for those stories.

https://fartheralongbook.com/2013/10/11/seventeen-years/