‘People make mistakes’
Family finds compassion amid grief
Imagine this: in the early hours of a summer morning, you find out your beloved son — just 16 years old and brimming with life and optimism — is dead.
He was killed in a two-vehicle crash just before 1 a.m. on July 4, 2021, with his lifelong friend, age 17, at the wheel. Others are injured, including the driver.
Nearly seven months go by, painful months when you are left to wonder what might have been and to mourn for what will never be. All that potential, all that positivity, extinguished.
You will never see your son graduate, get his driver’s licence, begin a career, get married or start a family.
And then, on Jan. 28, 2022, the police issue a news release listing the charges being laid against your son’s friend: dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death. Dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm. Operating a motor vehicle with a low blood drug concentration.
The car was neither insured nor registered, and the driver was not supposed to drive with passengers or without an appropriate accompanying driver.
The case has not yet been called in court.
What would you do?
Would you rage against the careless mistakes the driver made, and hope that, if convicted, he faces the harshest punishment possible?
Would you shun the driver and his family and harbour a lifelong resentment?
Michelle Thorne, whose son Travis Wheaton was the boy killed in the crash in Newfoundland and Labrador, has done none of those things. Instead, she and other members of her family have reached out to the youth with compassion and understanding.
“One night of bad decisions doesn’t automatically make a bad person,” Michelle Thorne told SaltWire Network. “We’ve been scared for him. We’ve been worried for him every single day.”
She and her two daughters have decided to try and help others as a way of honouring Travis’s life.
Michelle’s brother, Cory Thorne, feels the same and says having the youth become another statistic in the justice system does no one any good. He is raising money for the youth’s legal counsel.
He recalls the teen driver limping into the funeral home after Travis died, bandaged up and struggling to breathe.
“I hugged him and I told him that we do not blame him for any of this,” Cory Thorne wrote in his GoFundMe post. “People make mistakes.”
Michelle Thorne says any funds left over will be used to create a foundation to help young people stay on a healthy path through exercise and mental wellness. It would provide gym memberships to kids who can’t afford them, and other supports.
In digging deep and summoning forgiveness rather than animosity at a time when their pain is still profoundly felt, the Thorne family sets an example for us all.
Their generosity of spirit is a welcome change from the discord, ugliness and confrontation we’ve witnessed in this country of late.