Ryan

I just published Jose’s photographs and railed on people not wearing seatbelts, a subject that increasingly drives me batty, when I go to look up the next set of photos.

Of course Ryan wasn’t wearing her seatbelt either.

To be fair, she was killed by a drunk driver going the wrong way on Highway 14, but she was also in a Volvo — a notoriously safe car — and so I have to wonder if she had taken two seconds to buckle up how things may have ended up differently.

She was twenty five.

Her descanso has an elaborate stone marker, etched with text and a photograph of her staring at the camera. The photo seems professionally shot with her hair and makeup done.

Flowers and candles adorn her memorial, a sad pop of color against the bleak, Pacific Northwest gray, providing a brief bit of calm juxtaposed against the cars sailing by on Highway 14 just a few feet away.