Some songs expand our capacity for love and kindness. Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis is mine.
Seventeen months after the song was released, my friends and I experienced a tragedy that forced us into grief long before we were ready. One of our dear friends and her entire family were killed by a drunk driver while on their Fourth of July road trip.
I still remember the moment my neighbor-friend told me what happened—I honestly thought she was joking. We were young. Death felt like a far-off rumor—something meant for later, not now. Not before high school. Not before we figured out homecoming and lockers and how to navigate that larger-than-life high school floorplan.
Instead, we were figuring out how to smile again. What to wear to a funeral. How to support each other through something that felt surreal.
I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but we created a book in honor of our friend. We poured ourselves into it—writing, designing, organizing pages filled with memories and meaning. It became our way of grieving together. We ping-ponged between denial, anger, sadness, and numbness. I rarely dipped a toe into acceptance—because how could I? How do you accept that someone else’s reckless night ends the lives of a kind, vibrant family? A car bursting into flames, erasing their futures.
Acceptance felt cruel.
Then, just three months later, two of my teammates were killed by a separate drunk driver. At that point, I had no words left. I was mad. I was sad. And I was even farther from peace.
Music had always been my place of hope—the one place I believed I might find the answers to the universe if I just listened closely enough. And in some ways, I did. Don’t Look Back in Anger became a source of solace, illuminating the idea that while we can't change the past, we can choose how we carry it.
For that 14-year-old version of me, heavy with rage, resentment, and unanswered questions, this song expressed the confusion and guilt that lived tangled up inside me. It offered an invitation I desperately needed: to stop sitting in anger. To believe that maybe I could take something from the pain, without being defined by it.
There’s an Irish belief held in my family— Una, my Irish grandmother shared it with me before her passing: when someone passes, they leave behind a gift. Not always something you can hold, but something you can cherish. A moment, an insight, a part of yourself you hadn’t known was there. And it’s up to you to find it.
I’ve never written about this before. Just thinking about it now is a bittersweet realization of how much these moments—this grief—shaped me in the best ways possible.
Before that 4th of July road trip in 1997, my friend and I were trying to find time to hang out. But swimming kept getting in the way. Swim practice. Swim meets. Pool time. I loved it—it was my first love—but it wasn’t my only love. I had friendships, family, and yes my interests in significant others started to pique during this time too.
When I looked back at the time, I felt regret for choosing the pool over plans with my lost friend. When I finally let that regret come to the surface, I realized the anger I was carrying wasn’t just towards the drivers. It was toward myself—for putting something as replaceable as swim practice ahead of something as irreplaceable as friendship.
That realization was the gift.
It helped me redefine what matters most. It taught me that I can make time for friendships, no matter how full life gets. That choosing a connection is always worth it. And that forgiveness—real, soul-deep forgiveness—is possible. For the men whose decisions stole lives. For a young girl who didn’t yet understand how fragile life can be. And for the people we all are, doing the best we can with what we know at the time.
It took years to sit with the hurt, the silence, and the sharp edges of grief. But eventually, I found a way forward—to honor their lives without looking back in anger.
As I’ve continued around the sun, I’ve lost others—family, friends, colleagues. Some too soon, some after long goodbyes. And each time I step towards acceptance, it’s this song that finds me. The one that reminds me of the gifts left behind. The one that helps me carry them forward—with love, and without anger.
