Morbid Curiosity

I've been thinking a bit about death lately. This time it's not because I've been depressed, though. About a week and a half ago I called Mom and she told me that her cousin's daughter had been killed in a car accident. Apparently she was driving to work from Manitowoc to Green Bay and for some reason her car crossed the median on I-43 and collided with a semi. Her car and the semi burst into flames, but the semi driver got out fine. She was not so lucky.

Since then, I've had this rather morbid desire to find out any and all information I can about what exactly happened. An autopsy was done and that showed no medical reason for the accident to have happened. I'm still a little surprised that they could actually do an autopsy on a burnt body, but I know next to nothing about forensics. The thing is that there doesn't seem to be any reason for it to have happened. The weather was fine and she was going to work, so alcohol shouldn't be a factor. It's just all very confusing.

I think part of why this is hitting me so hard is that she was only 20 years old. Plus, she's distantly related to me, and she went to school with my sister, who is also only 20. It's just so tragic that this happened. It causes me to worry just a little bit more about my sister, and basically everyone that I care about that drives on a regular basis.

I really wish there were some answers as to why this happened. And, of course, now that more than a week has passed, all the news stations back home aren't even covering the story anymore, so I don't think that there will be any answers coming anytime soon.

There has been some speculation, from what I've heard from Mom. Some people think it was a suicide, which I can't believe. I don't really know her all that well, but Mom says that she seemed very full of life and had no reason to want to kill herself. Mom even told me that there supposedly is a website that is basically saying horrible things, speculating on reasons that this could have been a suicide. I've always made it clear that I will never understand people, but this just makes me sick. Why would people do that? Why badmouth the dead when there are so many live people out there that can actually defend themselves against stuff like this? I just don't get it.

Another thing that I've been thinking about is how horrible it would be to die that way. I kind of hope that she died before the fire broke out, only because I wouldn't want her to suffer. Mom told me about an accident that happened a year or two ago back home where people were joyriding and weaving in and out of construction barrels. I don't know exactly how the accident happened, but she said that something happened to the car (which isn't a huge surprise seeing as the people were drunk) and it burst into flames. Apparently the people couldn't get out of the car, and Mom told me that people said they could hear the screaming from the people in the car a good distance away. It's simply unimaginable how horrible that must have been. That's why I hope, in this case, she was dead before the fire started.

Anyway, that's just been on my mind a lot recently, and I figured that writing about it might help. I still wish there were some way to find answers about this, but I'm guessing there isn't. It's just very sad, and it's probably not something that I'm going to forget about anytime soon.