Accepting responsibility

Personal responsibility is a very important concept that a lot of people seem to ignore.  When something is your fault, do you own up to your responsibility?  Or, do you try to pass the blame, or ignore it altogether?

I want to tell you a story today about a time when a lady believed so much in personal responsibility that she even accepted responsibility when the event in question was not even really her fault.  I believe that this lady did a very honorable thing, even if it was far beyond what her true responsibility was.  This story revolves around a very painful event in my life.

In September 1979, my younger sister was killed by a drunk driver.  She was only 15 years old at the time of her death.   Her name  was Charlotte.

One day, after school, Charlotte had to stay late for a practice session for a fire baton twirling group that she was a member of.  The practice session lasted for several hours after school ended.  After the practice ended, Charlotte was driving home.  Yes, although Charlotte was only 15 she was driving.  This was perfectly legal, because we lived in Louisiana at the time, and the legal driving age there was 15 years old, and she had a legitimate driver’s license.

We lived about 10 miles outside the city.  As Charlotte drove home, out in the countryside, she came to a hill, and as she reached the top of that hill, her life changed in a heartbeat.  There was an older man, perhaps in his 60′s, although I don’t recall his age, who was coming to the top of the same hill from the other direction.  He was drunk, and he was driving on the wrong side of the road.  Because they met each other at the very peak of the hill, they had very little time to react to one another, since they didn’t see each other coming.  The man was drunk anyway, so perhaps he would not have been able to react in any event.  Charlotte was a young driver, so perhaps her reaction time was slower than an experienced driver.  Whatever the reason, they hit each other head-on at the top of that hill.  The drunk fellow died instantly, as he was thrown from his vehicle.  My sister, Charlotte did not die immediately, but rather lived long enough to be sent to a hospital.  But, as I said, her life was changed, because before she was able to make it to the hospital, she passed away.

It’s a sad story, no doubt, and it had a major impact on my life, but how is this related to personal responsibility?  Well, that comes a bit later.

A few weeks or maybe a couple of months after this traffic accident, a lady showed up at my father’s office.  My father didn’t know who the lady was, but she said that she wanted to speak to my father in private.  So, my father invited her into his private office, and they sat down to talk.  The lady told my father that she was the wife of the man who killed my sister.  She apologized to my father, and begged his forgiveness.  My father, as would be expected, was quite shocked by this.  It is not often that somebody would do something like this.  The lady was taking personal responsibility for something that her husband did!

This really had a deep impact on my father.  He told the lady that he could understand how she felt, because they had both lost a loved on on that highway that night.  He did not blame the lady, or get mad at her.  It was not her fault, after all.

I thought about this incident the other day, and it really struck me how honorable this lady was in her actions.  I had not really thought about this for perhaps 20 years or more, and when I remembered it, it brought a bit of a tear to my eye.  Both for the memory of my sister, and the honor that this lady showed in a trying time.

That was more than 30 years ago, and I don’t know for sure, but suspect that the lady has passed on by now.  Wherever she is, I hope that she is resting in peace, or living in peace, because she did an honorable thing, no doubt.  I certainly harbor no ill will toward her. In fact, I don’t even feel any anger toward her husband either.