Rationalizing a death

I live in a small community, probably a lot like the community many of you are living in.  Unfortunately, our small community has had more then a few teens/young adults die by terrible accidents in the past few years.  As the mother of 3 young men I am not only saddened but scared to death.  One of these young men is the son of a neighbor.  We were recently talking and she made the comment that she can't believe how people will come up to her and say the dumbest things.  "He was drinking, wasn't he?' (No he wasn't)  'I suppose they were drag racing' ( No they weren't)  'That's what happens when you are out at all hours of the night' (They were leaving her house after having dinner with her and her husband at about 6 pm).  My friend, especially in her grief, cannot believe someone would be so judgmental about how a young person had died.  My response, in my infinite wisdom as a mother of 3 sons who do stupid things, was that this was not judgement talking but fear.  I have done it myself, well at least internally.  We are all scared to death that this can, and might, happen to our kids.  If the teen who died was drinking, doing drugs, racing, AND had felonies then we can breath a sigh of relief as then our kids will then be safe.  Our kid doesn't do those things so we don't have to worry about them. We don't want to admit that accidents will happen because they looked down on the floor for a CD, or that they turned their head for too long to look at a cool car, etc. etc.  Because if that is what happened then it could happen to our kid too.  We want to rationalize what happened even when there is no rationalization.

I am a good mom, actually a great mom.  I have expectations for my sons, rules at my house, consequences for actions, we sit down and discuss their actions and actions of friends and what short and long term consequences are, my sons come to me when they have problems but I am not their friend and not worried about being their friend.  My kids are great kids, but still in the process of developing the ability to reason (studies show it isn't fully developed in males until age 25!).  Now my husband claims that one of my favorite hobbies is worrying.  He says I actually enjoy it as I make up things just so I can worry. I admit I worry.  Why wouldn't I worry?  Knowing that they are still developing that ability to reason and that bad things can still happen to good people I do say a 'Hail Mary' every time they walk out that door.  I can be the best mom ever, have the best kids ever, lecture all I want, put them in the safest cars possible, only allow them to drive between the hours of - and - and I could still get that terrible knock on the door.

Of course we want to rationalize.