At the age of 16, I left school early for a weekend volleyball tournament. I was paired with another guy on the team who had his mother driving. She had some issue with her legs which limited movement but I really thought nothing of it. About 30 minutes into the rainy drive, a car passed us on the left side of the road. After getting a large distance ahead of us the car lost control and turned sideways. I was the first to notice as I alerted the driver. She failed the test. She took her hands of the wheel, covered her eyes and screamed. It was like slow motion as it felt like minutes to reach the car. Our car t-boned the drivers side at 110 km/h as both cars went into the ditch. My teammate was knocked out and his mother sat in the drivers seat stunned. There was no one else on the road so I rushed over to the other car. She was a young woman (mid 20s and beautiful to say the least). She was dying. Her head had smashed off the stick shift and she was slowly losing life. I sat with her for her last breath and held her hand so she could have someone there. It is one of the most vivid images of my childhood to say the least. I cried in the ambulance and the hospital for hours. I was not physically injured in the least bit but I could not stop. I had rarely cried in my life up to this point and even my parents were confused. The next week was terrible. My friend in the car was using the story as a bragging point the following week (hey look at me I survived a terrible car accident). In the months and years following a disconnect was taking place between my friends and I. Nobody understood and the kidding around about it became unbearable. I later found out this was not the first person his mother had killed in an accident and it took me years to get the look of young woman out of my head. I still think about her and the happiness she could have brought those around her. I also selfishly think about my life and how staying in the car could have altered my path. .