Can You Help a Family Shattered by a Horrible Tragedy?

I got to write the Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily blog for six days this month and donated to some wonderful causes each day. But there's a cause that, unfortunately, popped up after my Causes and Effect run was over that I need share:

The I-275 Wrong-Way Tragedy" GoFundMe campaign exists because of a horrific accident that occurred the morning of December 12th. A 59-year-old man was driving the wrong way on Interstate 275 in Canton, Michigan, that morning and slammed head-on into another car, killing Nicholas Pare, 33, and his fianceé, Sharon McIntyre, 32.

Police found an open bottle of vodka in the car that was going the wrong way and say that alcohol was possibly involved in the crash.

Nicholas Pare and Sharon McIntyre were innocent victims. So are the three children they leave behind, ages 7, 13, and 15.

Authorities are waiting for toxicology tests to come back before charging the wrong-way driver (who, of course, sustained non-life-threatening injuries). Right now, they won't say if the driver was drunk or not, but you don't have to be a genius to figure out that he probably was. An open container of alcohol in the car and driving the wrong way on a freeway at 10:40am on a Tuesday morning are pretty good pieces of evidence, if you ask me.

Drunk driving sucks. Consider these statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

• In 2015, 10,265 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (29%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.
• Of the 1,132 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2015, 209 (16%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver.
• In 2015, nearly 1.1 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. That’s 1% of the 111 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among U.S. adults each year.

Those numbers sicken me, and until this country decides to do something drastic to combat our drunk driving problem, they will just get worse.

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe it's mandatory ignition interlock devices on all cars, like I wrote about back in 2015. Or maybe it's a zero-tolerance policy for impaired driving. Or harsher sentences for first-time offenders. Or something no one else has even thought of yet. I just know that something has to be done. Human lives depend on it.

I grew up the son of an alcoholic father, which is one reason why the subject of drunk driving gets my blood boiling. As I wrote in a post about another tragedy back in 2009:

My father was an alcoholic who had more DUIs than I could even count. On more than one occasion, he hit parked cars and all I can remember is thanking God that the cars were parked and empty. As a kid, riding in the car with my dad while he was intoxicated was a regular occurrence. I will never forget how scared I was, wondering if I was going to make it home alive, but too terrified to speak up about it. 

Whenever I hear about an incident like the one that killed Nicholas Pare and Sharon McIntyre, I think about my dad. And I'm grateful that he never physically hurt anyone as a result of his drunk driving.

Today my family made a $20.00 donation to the GoFundMe campaign for Nicholas and Sharon's family. It will help them pay for two funerals and start a fund to take care of three kids who have had their lives completely shattered, just in time for Christmas. If you have any extra money at all this holiday season, please consider making a donation, too. It doesn't have to be a large donation. Just something. Anything at all. Believe me, every little bit will help immensely.

And, as a final reminder... If you drink, please don't even think about driving. Because so often it's other people who end up suffering the greatest pain.

Below is a direct link to the GoFundMe campaign. If you donate, feel free to let me know in the comments below. It will make my heart happy to know that I was able to round up an extra donation or two for a family going through hell this holiday season.

Rest in peace, Nicholas and Sharon.

Click here to donate: I-275 Wrong-Way Tragedy" GoFundMe campaign

This family has been torn apart and the kids need your help.

Causes and Effect, 12/12/17: Help Mark Dahlem & His Family Battle Brain Cancer (YouCaring campaign)

The sixth and final post of my six-day-long stint as writer of the Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily blog can be found over at Tumblr. Here's the link to today's post:

Helping a Police Officer and His Family Battle Brain Cancer

Today, the Help Mark Dahlem & His Family Battle Brain Cancer YouCaring campaign is the recipient of a $10.00 donation from my family.

If you would like to make a contribution to this campaign, you can do so here:

Help Mark Dahlem & His Family Battle Brain Cancer

Six down, zero to go.

Thanks again to Melinda Newman for letting me come back and have another chance to participate in this incredibly fulfilling exercise in humanity.

Peace.

The End of My Month-Long Causes and Effect Blog Run

(Note: For the month of December, I took over the Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily blog, which was created by Melinda Newman in 2013. Today was my thirty-first and final post for that blog. The words below made up the majority that post, entitled "Three Final Donations to Wrap us 2015.")

I have a confession to make:

I almost backed out of taking over this blog for the month of December.

When I found out late last year that Causes and Effect creator Melinda Newman was looking for 12 individuals to take over the reins of the blog in 2015, I was quick to throw my name into the ring. And I was incredibly excited when I got picked to be one of the blog's writers for a whole month. The only downside was that I was assigned to December and had to wait almost a whole year before I could dive into writing.

Then life happened.

Despite being grossly underemployed for the second year in a row, 2015 was a great year for me. But the lack of a decent income reared its ugly head around mid-year when a series of unfortunate events started to happen. At times I felt a bit like Lemony Snicket.

First the washing machine broke. Not surprising, really, since it came with the house when we bought it ten years ago, and it had probably been in the house at least ten years before that. Buying a new one was inevitable. While we were at it, my wife and I decided to splurge and buy a matching dryer, too. After all, the dryer was also pretty ancient, and we had never bought a brand new washer or dryer before. So forking over the money for a shiny pair of appliances wasn't that painful.

Speaking of pain, as 2015 went along I started waking up with a sore back and neck with some regularity, which I attributed to the fact that our mattress was about 15 years old. So my wife and I opened up the checkbook to buy a new mattress and foundation.

See, that's the problem when you age: everything you own ages, too. And it needs replacing. Like our gas range, which decided to die in the middle of baking a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies in late October. And the custom canvas awnings above our front and side doors that got shredded in a November wind storm and had to be replaced. Again, these were things that came along with the house and had just worn out. (For what it's worth, I had no idea that awnings could be so damn expensive.)

Things settled down a bit until some annoying episodes of atrial fibrillation--an irregular heart rhythm--started kicking my ass. After almost 18 years of having that condition kept in check by medication, I decided to have a catheter ablation done on my heart to try and fix the problem permanently. Because we buy our own health insurance, which has a pretty high deductible, that procedure ended up costing us quite a bit out-of-pocket. It was definitely well worth it, but it was also another unexpected expense incurred in 2015.

Lastly, just to put some icing on the proverbial cake, my wife and I bought a second car late in the year. Having one car is something we've done for a long time, but sometimes it's a bit inconvenient. So when the opportunity to buy a 2007 Ford Focus that a friend of ours was selling at a ridiculously good price presented itself, we figured what the hell. (Believe it or not, the car was the cheapest of all the purchases I've mentioned in this post.)

Now back to my concerns about this blog. It wasn't the writing that I was worried about; it was the money. Because the idea behind Causes and Effect isn't only to write about charities and good causes, it's to donate to them, too. At least $10.00 a day times 31 days meant that my family would be spending at least another $310.00 during the month of December (which is more than we paid for the Focus!).

I wondered if I should just throw in the towel and tell Melinda that I couldn't do the blog. Surely she'd understand. And it wasn't like she wouldn't be able to find somebody else to do it, right? But something inside of me told me to stick with it.

There are two things I know about money:

1. It really isn't everything.

2. There's always somebody who needs it more than you do.

I think that's the essence of the Causes and Effect blog. The idea that giving, even if it sometimes hurts a little, is the most incredibly rewarding thing you can do. Knowing that you are helping others and making a difference, no matter how small, just makes you feel good.

Writing the Causes and Effect blog this month has been one of the most amazing, gratifying things I've ever done. It's taught me so much, not just about writing--like how hard it is to sit down and write a reasonably meaningful piece every single day--but about life. I’m so glad I didn't back out of this wonderful opportunity.

Thanks to Melinda Newman (and Brian Mansfield) for having faith in my ability to take care of this blog for 31 days. Hopefully I've done a decent job. And a very special thanks to my wife, Kathy, for her willingness to let Causes and Effect become an integral part of our lives for the month of December. I couldn’t have done it without her.

Now let's just hope the refrigerator, dishwasher, and furnace behave themselves for a while longer.

"Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides....When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back." --Anne Lamott

Causes and Effect, 12/31/15: The Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, Shatterproof, and the Herren Project

The thirty-first--and final--post of my month-long stint as writer of the Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily blog can be found over at Tumblr. Here's the link to today's post:

Three Final Donations to Wrap up 2015

Today, three separate charities--the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, Shatterproof, and the Herren Project--are recipients of $10.00 donations from my family. If you would like to make a contribution to any (or all) of these charities, you can do so at these links:

The Partnership for Drug-Free Kids

Shatterproof

The Herren Project

Thirty-one down. No more to go. I'm done. It's been a great ride.

Peace.

Causes and Effect, 12/15/15: Heifer International

The fifteenth post of my month-long stint as writer of the Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily blog can be found over at Tumblr. Here's the link to today's post:

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Today, Heifer International is the recipient of a $20.00 donation from my family. If you would like to make a contribution to Heifer International, you can do so here:

Heifer International donation page

Fifteen down, sixteen to go.

Peace.

Countdown to Causes and Effect

(Note: I wrote about this same subject back in January, but as December inches closer I wanted to write about it again. Maybe that's weird, but it's my blog, so I guess I can do whatever I want, right?)

On January 1, 2013, Melinda Newman, former West Coast Bureau Chief/Deputy Editor for Billboard Magazine and now a freelance writer, started a blog. The name of that blog was "Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily," and the first sentence of Melinda's first post summed up the blog's purpose quite nicely:

"Join me on this journey as I commit to donating at least $10 every day of 2013."

The idea for the blog came to Melinda "in a flash of inspiration, or maybe desperation," after a friend asked her if she was working on a book. The idea stuck with Melinda for months, and she felt a responsibility to follow through, calling the blog "an experiment to see what happens to my heart and my spirit and my soul" over the year.

In 2014, Brian Mansfield took over the blog. Brian is a former USA Today music writer and currently works as the Content Director at Shore Fire Media. Like Melinda, Brian did an incredible job over his 365 days of giving and writing. But it was a monumental task.

So for 2015, Melinda decided to divide the Causes and Effect duties among 12 different writers, each of whom would be responsible for a different month. Thankfully, I was chosen to be one of those 12 writers.

December is my assigned month.

Over the last several weeks, I've been thinking about different charities and causes that mean a lot to me. I also asked my friends for suggestions. At first I thought coming up with 31 organizations to donate to would be difficult; now--surprise!--I have a list that exceeds 31. (Thank God there aren't any rules that say I can only give to one cause each day.)

Nine days from now, I will take over the reins of Causes and Effect. For my donations I plan to follow Melinda's original guidelines. As she wrote in her first post: "Some of the giving will be to recognized international charities, but others will be to Kickstarter campaigns that catch my eye, friends’ 5Ks, and maybe even to homeless people on the street. The only criteria is to give the money to some outlet that needs it that day more than I do."

I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about this gig, primarily because I've never written blog posts for 31 consecutive days. Hopefully I'll be able to live up to the high standards established by Melinda and Brian; and by the 11 bloggers who have preceded me in 2015.

I'm thinking I'll probably be posting links to my daily Causes and Effect posts on this blog, too. I figure the more exposure I can give the causes I donate to, the better. But just to be sure you don't miss anything, I urge you to follow the Causes and Effect blog. Here's the direct link:

http://myyearofgivingdaily.tumblr.com

You can also sign up to get the blog's daily posts emailed to you. If you go to the blog, you'll see a button at the top of the page that says, "Followmyyearofgivingdaily." If you click that, you can sign up.

This 31-day journey will definitely make doing my federal taxes a little more difficult this time around, but it will be totally worth it. I hope you'll join me.

Peace.

"I don’t expect my $10 to change the world, but my hope is it will somehow change me." --Melinda Newman