My son Seamus died ten years ago today. This is the last photo of him - snapped on a flip phone by my husband at our neighborhood park, 2 hrs before they were struck by a careless driver in a crosswalk. He sent it w/ a text that said, "He knows 'uphill' and 'downhill' now!" 1/8 
I got the call around 11am. I remember sprinting through the parking lot to the ER in a blind panic. Seeing people standing in line, calmly filling out paperwork, I burst through a set of double doors marked "do not enter" and a nurse said, "This must be mom." 2/8
A crowd of doctors and nurses gathered outside Seamus's room, watching whatever was happening inside, but they wouldn't let me see him. Eric was incoherent, wrapped in bloody bandages, deep in shock. A social worker kept telling me to sit down, drink water. 3/8
Finally they rolled Seamus down the hall for a CT scan. He was wearing a diaper and had no visible injuries. I pressed his hand to my cheek in between scans and watched the doctors receiving images on computers, searching for signs of relief. A nurse held back tears. 4/8
We roamed the halls for hours, through 2 surgeries, until he was admitted to PICU where updates became more grim as the night wore on. Then morning, more tests, and the words, spoken so calmly: "Time of death, 1:25." I remember a chime, and a surgeon sobbing at his bedside. 5/8
Eric erased our phone numbers on the dry-erase board and wrote "Bye bye buddy." Leaving the hospital, my brother drove and we had to take the car seat out to make room. I remember it rolling around the back of our Subaru when he turned, Cheerios crunching underfoot. 6/8
Cars are the #1 killer of children in the U.S. - I wish we could muster more outrage at this fact. Simple changes could save so many lives. The driver who killed Seamus was ticketed and fined, but retained his driving privileges. The intersection remains a literal death trap. 7/8
If you've made it through this thread I have 3 requests: 1) Learn to pronounce Seamus "Shay-mus" 2) Think of Seamus DuBarry the next time you see the moon (he loved the moon), and 3) Consider what a car can do to a human body, and design cities/drive accordingly. 8/8
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