This was meant to be.
Allison was Martha’s second of three daughters. Smart, compassionate, and funny, a friend to everyone she had not yet met. She moved to Boston, became an underwriter, and excelled in her career in ways that surprised even her mother, who still laughs about the girl who used to disappear to her bed when chores came around. She was about to be promoted and move to Chicago. She had told her mother she never wanted attention brought to herself. She would have been mortified, Martha says with a smile, by how much attention she is getting now.
On April 30th, 2016, the first beautiful day of spring in Boston, Allison was on her motor scooter heading to brunch with a friend. She stopped at a light. A duck boat stopped safely behind her. But the driver was also giving the tour, looking back at his passengers, entertaining them. As he talked, he crept forward. When the light turned green, he gunned it. Allison had nowhere to go. Her friend survived. Allison did not.
The morning after the accident, while standing in a parking lot, Martha and her husband were introduced to Kathy, a certified grief counselor who specialized in the loss of a child. Martha had always told herself she would never go to a grief counselor, but now she looked at this woman and thought: if all grief counselors are like Kathy, maybe there is something to this after all.
She says now that this meeting was no accident. Their daughter’s death was a surprise to them. It was not a surprise to God.
From that morning forward, God kept placing people and moments exactly where they needed to be. A senator who walked into a library meeting at the exact right time. A City Council that said yes when they say no to nearly everyone. A bill signed by the governor just seven months after Allison died, requiring duck boats in Massachusetts to have dedicated tour guides separate from the driver, sensors, and cameras. People told them it was nearly impossible. It happened anyway.
At the funeral, a close friend leaned in and said something to Martha that confirmed everything she had already begun to feel in her heart.
Mighty movements are started by mothers in mourning.
Martha will tell you that she and her husband did not know what they were doing. They just felt, as she puts it, like little children holding onto God’s finger and tottering along, and He was showing them what to do. Who to see. Where to go next.
They are still going. Martha is now involved with Families for Safe Streets, a national organization working to make roads safer for everyone. On November 15th, she is leading the World Day of Remembrance for traffic victims in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, honoring those who were hit and killed in crashes. The work that began in a parking lot the morning after Allison died is still moving.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. That is the verse Martha carries. And everything in this conversation is proof of it.
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