Her name was Jennifer. It was February 10, 2000. I was in the chair, with the drape wrapped around my neck, just about to have my hair cut when my phone rang. It was my old manager. He said he needed me at his restaurant immediately. I countered with, but it’s my day off. He said come now.

I was a manager at a different restaurant in the company. I had started my career at his. It was a training store for the region, so I went. It was somewhat busy. The lunch rush was just finishing up. He pulled me into the banquet room and shut the door. The words he said next changed my world forever.

“Jennifer is dead.”

Those words just hung there. I honestly don’t remember how long. I choked back a sob, “What, how”?

Jennifer was an untamed spirit. She lived on the edge. She was fearless and unapologetic about life. I met her in the fall of 1999 during her training. I was still a supervisor at the training store. I got divorced in August of 1999 and was in a bad place. She, another female manager named Sarah, and I bonded.

We were single women, in the good old boy’s club. We stuck together out of respect and necessity. We hung out at the local dive bar every Thursday night for “Ladies Night.” She knew the band. It was low key, but we would have a few drinks, maybe dance. If we stayed out really late, we would hit Denny’s for breakfast. It was Jennifer, Sarah, and I.

I lived just a few blocks from Sarah’s store so we would meet up there. Jennifer lived a bit further. She would drive us and drop me off at the end of the night. They knew my limits. I never felt I had to overdo it when it came to having drinks at the bar. Jennifer seemed to always push her limits. I think there was a part of Sarah and me that always expected drinking and driving would be Jennifer’s downfall. It wasn’t. It was distracted driving that killed her.

February 9 was a Wednesday. I don’t recall why we ended up going out if we were celebrating something, or just needed to blow off some steam. We hit the bar, we watched the band. We closed the bar down and went for breakfast. It got late, and Sarah had to open in the morning, but there we were at 2:30 in the morning, having the time of our lives. I will forever be grateful for that.

Jennifer was due in at 11 AM for the lunch rush and to close. By 11:30 managers were calling back and forth, looking for her. They even sent an employee to her apartment to see if she’d slept in. He had to take a detour to get there. Later we learned, the street had been blocked off because of the accident.

It was February 10 in Minnesota. It had started to rain that morning. Black ice formed. She might have stood a chance, I guess we’ll never know. Later we learned, the police officer who was first on the scene pulled her out of the car with a tube of mascara in her hand. She was always running, cramming as much life into every minute as she could. But this time she went too far, did too much. They performed CPR at the scene.

I heard that at the hospital they cracked open her chest to try and get her heart to start. It wasn’t until they did everything, tried everything that the doctors learned there was nothing to be done. The black ice caused her to lose control. Her car spun into oncoming traffic where she was T-boned. The impact snapped her neck, and she died instantly.

Her name was Jennifer. She was 26 years old. She was my friend, and distracted driving killed her.