The gift of life is special

The fragility of life has been brought to the forefront of the public’s consciousness in the last several issues of the Examiner. In ways that could never be planned — and certainly that we never would want to plan — readers have been reminded time and time again of the rapidity with which a life can be cut short.

And whether the victim is 17, 18, 72 or 78 the message is the same – a person’s life is precious and it can all be lost in an instant.

Today’s issue of the Examiner includes a story about Ian Alspaugh, 17, of Mill-stone Township, who died as a result of injuries suffered in an automobile accident Sunday on Route 537 in Jackson.

Alspaugh, who was finishing his junior year at Allentown High School, was a passenger in a car driven by his friend, Allen-town High School senior Andrea Gardner, 18, of Upper Freehold. Gardner remained in critical condition on Tuesday at Jersey Shore Medical Center, Neptune.

Alspaugh became the second student in the AHS junior class to die in a motor vehicle accident this year.

Jeffrey Buckalew Jr., 17, another junior at the high school, died on April 23 following a motor vehicle accident in which he was involved in March.

Our hearts go out not only to the families of these two young men, but to their friends and classmates who have had and will have to struggle for answers to the question, why?

Unfortunately, we have no easy answers for them.

Last week’s edition also carried a story that reported how a Forked River couple, Ernest Mackey, 78, and his wife, Florence, 72, were killed in a crash on Route 539 in Upper Freehold.

State police arrested a Trenton man hours after the accident and charged him with operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of a fatal motor vehicle accident.

Are there any lessons to be learned from all of the death and destruction that has occurred on neighborhood roads that many of us travel every day?

This is all we can say with a degree of certainty — that every person who has been lost in these horrific accidents was special in his or her own way, and much loved, and the best thing we can do to honor them is not to take for granted — not even for a minute — the gift of life we have been given.