Sunday, November 2, 2008

Bad Things that have Happened to Good Kids

This past week two friends of my kids from Cedar City were seriously injured in separate accidents.

Erik Bettridge, 14 years old, was injured on October 25th in a motorcycle accident. He was life flighted to Primary Children's Hospital with serious head injuries. He remains in a drug induced coma to keep him from moving which would cause more injury to his brain. He will be in this comatose state for at least 2 more weeks. It will be several months before they know what kind of recovery he will make.
http://www.carepages.com/carepages/Erikspace

While my kids were at the hospital, yesterday, visiting Erik's family, Shellise found out that a friend of hers, Chase Roberts, 14 years old, was also in that hospital. Again, life flighted there this week, because he was accidentally shot in the neck by his little sister. He will be permanently paralyzed from the chest down.
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=4651169

This has been traumatizing to my kids. It makes you realize how precious life is and how things can change in the blink of an eye or as Shellise says, "a beat of the heart".

Our hearts go out to these families. We are praying for them. We hope that they will find peace in knowing that there are many people that care about them and wish them the very best during these hard times.

While I am on this subject, I am remembering the tragic events that took place in our family last December 13th. My cousin's son, Dustin Wright, 15 years old, was killed in a rollover accident in Millard County, in a car being recklessly driven by his 16 year old friend. These past 10 months have been full of pain and heartache for all of our family over the loss of this young man. He had so much going for him and his death is a great loss to all.

I hope that we never take for granted the lives we have and remember that it can be gone in a split second. Bad things can happen to good people. Let's all be a little more loving and caring to those around us. Lets remember what is really important... it's not the things we have, but the memories that we share with family and friends that we will take with us.

6 comments:

Kate said...

Ang also knows both of these kids too. It has been scary and very sad. We are praying for both and hope that they have the peace that they need.

Valerie said...

So sorry to hear about that. We'll keep them in our prayers.

Valerie said...

Oh -- and about the borders for the pictures. If you have a walmart photo account (or if you don't, you can sign up for one), you can upload your pictures there and then in the editing section there are several borders you can choose from to add.

Andrea said...

That is so sad. When I hear about things like this it makes me want to be so much more careful with certain things. I also think about how I'm going to teach my kids about being safe in cars and stuff. I'm a little scared for them to be teenagers.

Lara Neves said...

We've heard a lot about both of these kids, and then the other one who died. It makes me heartsick.

I have heard that Erik is doing a lot better, though. Thank goodness.

Lara Neves said...

Sherrie: Here are the ward boundaries...it's kind of kooky.

First of all, they split two wards to make a third.

The new ward is everything west of 4200, everything south of Center (Shadow Mountain) and then everything North of the new Stake Center on Cross HOllows Road...Sunset Canyon estates.

I hope that makes sense! The Bishop is Garrett White, if you remember him. He was in the Bishopric when we first moved in to this ward, and then Adam Christian took his place when he moved.