If this pandemic has taught us – many of us, anyway – how fleeting and precious this gift of life is, summer also typically brings with it cautionary tales.
With these, we hear of life-altering injuries or even death after a child falls from a couple of storeys of a townhouse because someone left a window open to enjoy a summer breeze. Or of someone drowning after swimming out too far, or the mayhem resulting from a cigarette butt carelessly tossed onto a parched forest floor.
Some tragedies are unavoidable.
Others are not.
Most of us, especially young people, give not a shadow of a thought to the prospect that today could be our last.
A coroner has determined that South Surrey teenager Jack Stroud’s death in the summer of 2018 resulted from a risky game played on the BNSF railway tracks in Crescent Beach. The 15-year-old was struck by a train.
READ ALSO: ‘Dangerous game’ on rail line killed South Surrey teen in 2018: Coroner
It’s common, again especially for young people, to take risks. This is simply because death, at least to people Jack’s age, seems to be far over the horizon – a far-away event in life that happens when one is old and gray, and after a full and lengthy life has been lived.
Sadly, it doesn’t always work that way.
This summer we should all strive to make sure this young fellow’s untimely and accidental death was not in vain.
We can accomplish this by embracing safe practices for ourselves and our loved ones, wherever we are and whatever we are doing, not only this summer but into the foreseeable future.
– Now-Leader
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