It’s July 12th, 2008,
William Jameson is sentenced to 7 years in prison.

Its July 31st, 2005,
William Jameson, age 32, sits at the bar in Papillion, Nebraska, finishing the last sip of his twelfth beer of the night. He grabs his keys and gets in his car to head home to his wife and two children. He is is driving his car down Giles Road southbound at about 11:30 pm. He drunkenly, starts to veer into the northbound lanes. Going 90 miles per hour, with a blood alcohol content of 0.13, double the legal limit, he doesn’t see the headlights coming towards him, within a matter of seconds, the front of the car heading towards him collapsed through the windshield.  Seeing only the blood and the broken glass,
William Jameson runs away. Too drunk to realize that he had just taken a life, he left the body in the other car left to bleed out.

It’s July 31st, 2005,
Grego Watson, age 43, sits at a car auction that he attends weekly near Papillion, Nebraska. He grabs his keys and gets in his car to head home to his loving wife and two happy children. Heading down Giles Road northbound at around 11:30 pm. He sees headlights coming quick towards him. To quick to move, to quick to think, the front of his car is compressed straight through his body. Those bright headlights being the last thing he would ever see. Blood staining the cloth car seats, he lays lifeless in the driver's seat, leaving the world and his family behind.

It’s July 27th, 2005,
I am 5 years old and we were at my cousins first birthday party, when a man I didn’t know came in and everyone dropped silent. Everyone's eyes fluttered around the room shocked that this man was here. I came to know that this was my Uncle Grego, I was confused why I didn’t know him. I mean, he was my uncle right? My mom told me that Uncle Grego hadn’t gotten along with some people in my family for sometime. But as the party went on, he became part of the family again. I came to like him, he was extremely kind hearted and funny, and I was happy to have a new uncle in my life. Well, for 5 days at least.

It’s August 1st 2005,
Tears, that is what I remember most about this day. So many tears. My grandpa got a phone call saying that his brother had been killed. Tears streaming down his face, he announced to us what had happened. I had never seen him cry before. I remember the sobs that rang through my house, I remember my mom telling me that something horrible had happened, I remember being confused because to me, death was just something that happened in the movies, I remember dressing up in a black dress with black tights and black shoes, I remember placing the metal cross I was given when I was baptised in my uncle’s casket, I remember all the tears cried by every person in the funeral home, I remember hearing that “he was taken to soon”, I remember my aunt on her knees sobbing at the cemetery as his casket was lowered into the ground, I remember crying because my uncle who I had met only 5 days before, was dead.

It’s July 12th, 2008,
William Jameson is handcuffed and being taken away, when he tries to say an apology to my family. The last words he heard before being put behind bars were from my cousin, Joe Watson. “If you want to say sorry, save it. Noone wants to hear it. You had a choice. You could have called a cab”.

It’s May 14th, 2018,
I am 18 years old, now writing this.  I was too young to know the full story on what happened to my Uncle Grego when it first happened. I had always thought that he had simply just died and that was it. When I was about 10, I found out that it was from a drunk driver. I thought it was a rare situation, and that nobody drank and drove, except the man who killed my uncle. But now, older and having more understanding on the way the world works, I know that drinking and driving is everywhere, I know that everyday in our country, 28 people are killed in result of drinking and driving, I know that everyday 28 families are put through what my family went through, I know that  drinking and driving is a choice and I know that those 28 daily deaths can be prevented, and what I know the most is that my uncle could still be alive if a different choice had been made on July 31st, 2005.

The idea of not drinking and driving is advertised and embedded into our brains in school, in advertisements, on billboards, it's everywhere. What's not everywhere are the sounds of the sobs I heard, the pictures of my uncles demolished car with shards of bloody glass scattered around it, what’s not shown everywhere is the sight of my widowed aunt sobbing, completely broken because a drunken decision took him away from his family. The idea of drinking and driving is shown everywhere, not the affliction it puts on a family. I believe that when a tragedy happens, one of the best ways to cope with it is to find something that can be taken out of it, not only to better yourself, but to better the world around you. Even though his death was 13 years ago, my uncle’s death affects my family and I all the time. We may not still be grieving, but I can tell you that my parents won’t even drive home if they had a drink at dinner, I can tell you that I stress the idea of not drinking and driving to all my friends, I can tell you that I have called several rides for people to keep them from drinking and driving, I can tell you that I never want anyone else’s family to experience a loss due to drinking and driving.

After have living through such a harrowing thing, the phrase drinking and driving physically ills me, and writing this, having to use those words so many times has been challenging, but if having to say the word and allocating my family's experience will prevent someone from making the choice to drink and drive, I’ll say the words a million times.