Ian McDonald

Death is among the most ordinary of experiences. After all, everyone dies. In this sense it is no big thing. Indeed, there is a view which holds that death should not concern us at all since, as the philosopher Epicurus long ago pointed out: "Death is nothing to us, since when we are death has not come, and when death has come we are not."

The sorrow of the death of anyone we love stays with us forever. To some extent time heals but never entirely. Every person, but every child especially, represents such a miracle of potential achievement and creativity, that his or her death is a huge catastrophe. John Donne, the poet and priest, long ago perceived the truth that any person's death diminishes each of us who remain alive. And, in the case of a child's death, we are all diminished that much more because the loss of potential is so much greater.

Appalling loss of lives

All this talk of death is not because I am in morbid mood. In fact, the world today appears to be especially bright and promising and those I love are for the time being well and happy. I raise the subject because hardly a day passes without all of us being reminded of the truly appalling loss of life in road accidents. Worldwide, 1.2 million people annually die on the roads and up to 50 million are injured. Statistics available for 2002 show that the top cause of death worldwide among persons 15-19 years old is road traffic injury. The World Health Organisation puts the global cost of road injuries at US$518 billion per year. In Guyana, we are guilty of more than our fair share of this worldwide slaughter and mayhem.

The terrible and terrifying horror of so many road deaths is an epidemic, a plague, a curse upon the nation as serious, for instance, as that other terrible and growing scourge, Aids. More than one child a week is being killed on the roads, most of them while playing or walking on the roadside. I think of my own children and shiver at the horror of any child's death and death of such a senseless, unforgiving, mad and stupid kind.

There is a most beautiful poem by the Jamaican Lorna Goodison called Song For My Son which describes a mother bending over her son in bed:

"I hover over his milk-stained

breath

and listen for its rise

every one an assurance that he is

alive

and if God bargains

I strike a deal with him,

for his life I owe you something,

anything

but please let no harm come to

him."

No column of mine or anyone lasts for long in the memory of the reader. But, if ever I make a plea for one of my columns to be remembered for a little while, I make the plea now. Whoever is reading - do not use the roads in any way that might kill. From thisday onwards drive that much slower, take many fewer chances, do not drink when you know you have to drive. Alcohol begets careless speed and speed begets death.

Above all, look out always where children are, look out with your mind and heart as well as your eyes. Look out for the children. Do not run the slightest risk if killing a child. It will haunt you forever. The death of even one more child on our roads will diminish you, diminish me, spoil all our lives a little, place a stain on the nation that never really ever will rub out clean.