Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush Page A

up. And neither did my friends, with the exception of Regan. I remember when the story of the crash appeared in the press during the 2000 presidential campaign, two of George's cousins, with whom we're very close, were shocked. I'd never told them. I didn't even get to tell my own daughters. A Texas Department of Public Safety officer on our protection detail did that when George was governor. He assumed they already knew.
    But when one of Barbara's and Jenna's best friends committed suicide during their junior year of high school, I insisted that we go over right away to see his parents. I tried to do for them what I couldn't do for the Douglases.
    Once I became a mother myself, I thought more about the Douglases. I began to understand how devastating their grief must be. On some level, only when I had children could I begin to comprehend the enormity for them of losing Mike. Only then, when I could imagine that it was Barbara or Jenna.
    Looking back now, with the wisdom of another forty-five years, I know that I should have gone to see the Douglases; I should have reached out to them. At seventeen, I assumed that they would prefer I vanish, that I would only remind them of their loss. But in retrospect, I think all of us--not only me but all of Mike's friends--should have been more solicitous of them. We weren't. We were so close to leaving Midland; in a few short months we all went off to college. We did not grasp what a difference a simple visit would make. But having friends now who have lost their own children, as well as knowing the parents of Barbara's and Jenna's friends who have died--the boy who was killed coming home from the Texas-Oklahoma game their freshman year in college, the girl who died with her date when their car skidded off the treacherous, winding roads heading back to Washington and Lee University in Virginia, the same little girl who had shown Barbara and Jenna around school and had become their first friend when we moved to Austin--I know from these parents that they like being with Barbara and Jenna. Having their child's friends remember them, and also remember the child they have lost, gives them another way to remain connected to that adored child who is forever gone.
    To them, those children will always be seventeen or eighteen years old, a little bit older than I was in 1963. Their futures exist only in the ache of imagination. I see that now, but I did not see it then.
    In the aftermath, all I felt was guilty, very guilty. In fact, I still do. It is a guilt I will carry for the rest of my life, far more visible to me than the scar etched in the bump of my knee. At some point most people in these situations come to make a mental peace with the fact that it was an accident. And that it cannot be changed. There is no great clock to unwind, no choice that can somehow miraculously be made again.
    But I can never absolve myself of the guilt. And the guilt isn't simply from Mike dying. The guilt is from all the implications, from the way those few seconds spun out and enfolded so many other lives. The reverberations seem to go on forever, like the ripples from an unsinkable stone. There are the hard, inner circles wrapping around Mike's parents and Mike's sister, whose lives were changed and ruined. His parents grieved until their deaths. And then there are the more distant ripples, encompassing all of his friends and my friends. It is a grief that they had as well.

    Since I became a public person, I've gotten many letters--letters from strangers, from mothers, aunts, cousins, teachers, and friends--asking if I could write a note of encouragement to a young driver who had been in a terrible accident. Each time, I've answered. I've told them that, although you will never get over what happened, there will come a time in your life when you can move on. And I've always suggested that they talk to the people whom they love. Or that they speak to a counselor or a spiritual or pastoral adviser. Sometimes