Editor's Note: One Year Later, We Remember

Monday marks one year since four young women were killed in a horrific Cutchogue limo crash.

This Saturday afternoon was so much like last year's Saturday, a deceptively sunny day that held no hint of the nightmare that was to unfold. This year, just like last year, a full schedule of summer events dotted the North Fork landscape, including a pig roast at the Orient Fire Department, a chicken barbecue at the First Baptist Church of Cutchogue.

The events went on, as they always have for years, annual traditions beloved by the community. Life goes on, as it must, as people try to make sense of the unexplainable, move forward after a loss so great it's changed all of us forever.

We try to move forward, but the truth is, those who were there that night will never be the same.

EMTs, police, firefighters, reporters, all of us who stood there in the waning light of that awful Saturday, watching as the worst scene we've ever experienced unfolded were marked, branded by the awful truth that life can sometimes be more cruel than anything we can comprehend.

I drive by the corner of Route 48 and Depot Lane every single day, sometimes more than once, and every time, every single time, the tears come.

As a reporter, forced to write about the worst thing seen in a lifetime, it's necessary to try and put the emotions on hold, write about the subsequent litigation and investigation and calls for green turning arrows and enhanced police presence on Route 48.

But as a human being, as a mother whose son is the very same age as those beautiful young girls, every time I write about that dark day, my heart remembers, and the pain, it's still there, raw and gripping and just always, always present.

Today, this reporter is not writing a news story about facts or details or litigation or traffic signals.

I'm writing today to say, from my heart, how very, very sorry I am for the parents and friends and many, many who loved Brittney Schulman, Lauren Baruch, Stephanie Belli and Amy Grabina.

So sorry and filled with grief that those smiling, happy, strong and talented young women, with all their dreams yet to unfold, lost their lives that day. Those four beautiful young women will never get married, have children, watch their parents grow old, live the lives they were born to experience.

I think about those four young women every day, and I know, here on the North Fork, I'm not alone. As a mother, my heart aches with real pain for those parents, who were just going about their lives that day when the worst possible thing that can ever happen to any parent happened, when they got the phone call that their beloved girls would never be coming home again.

Yes, we must go on. The circle of life demands that we continue attending events and taking photos and chronicling life in a small town filled with so much good and beauty. But it doesn't mean that we don't remember, that our hearts don't still break, for four young women we never met but who've become a part of our lives now, forever.

I went by that spot on Saturday, where four white crosses, along with faded flowers and teddy bears adorn a pole on the north side of the road, and said a prayer for Brittney, Lauren, Stephanie and Amy.

Just as I did one year ago, I cried. And I guess I always will, because some sorrows are too deep. We can learn to live with the heartache, but we never forget.

We ache, too, for the four young women injured in the accident, Joelle M. Dimonte, Melissa Angela Crai, Alicia Arundel, and Olga Lipets. They survived, yes, but their lives, too, are forever changed now.

In the following days there will likely be a sea of articles about that night and about what's happening to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

But for now, just for this one moment on the morning of July 18, I want to focus only on those four girls, out for a sunny day on the North Fork with beloved friends, smiling and laughing and sharing the joy of being together when, in one single moment, it was all gone.

I want to tell them that I'll never forget them. And that July 18 has forever become a day to remember their lives, forever.