Issue #47, March 2, 2007

Twentysomething…

Drive Safely

By David Lion Rattiner

Last week, a 26-year-old chef named Philip Mahl lost control of his car in East Hampton while driving along Route 27, and hit a telephone pole. The car was completely destroyed in the horrifying wreck and he didn’t survive. When rescuers got to him he was still alive, but his injuries were so severe that he passed away at the hospital. He was a good friend of mine.

Philip worked as a chef at the Maidstone Club, went to college to study cooking in France and spoke fluent French as well as Spanish. He was a true world traveler, having been all over Europe and really taking in culture and sharing it through his cooking with his friends and family. Philip was also hysterically funny. I remember the first time I met him and we started talking about our backgrounds. We clicked when we both learned that we are half-Jewish and Catholic. Philip’s dad is a Jewish lawyer and his mother is of Mexican decent. “You are Jirish and I’m a Jexican!” he joked. Philip’s sense of humor and love of life earned him many friends. He was one of those people that immediately impressed you when you met him. He was the kind of guy that you could meet once, then see ten years later and still remember his name and the time you met. He was the kind of guy that left an impression on you.

It is so difficult to express to you how surprised I am that this happened to a guy like this, and how much it has changed my perspective. Sure, I have read the statistics and I have heard stories about horrible car accidents and have even had very close friends lose very close friends behind the wheel. But I’ve never lost a direct friend and to be honest, never in a million years thought that I would. Call me naïve, because I was.

Yes, people die in accidents, it is a part of living with cars. But it has never hit so close to home for me. I look at my cell phone with his name in the contacts folder and don’t know what to do with it. I write this and still feel like he is still around, like he just got a new job and had to move so I just lost touch with him. It is so weird.

Maybe something like this has already happened to you, or maybe you knew Philip, so you know the surprised feeling I’m talking about. It is impossible to ignore the feelings of faith, purpose and meaning to life that overwhelm you. It is impossible to ignore the anger towards everything that has to do with his death. The car should have been made safer, damn it. The roads should have been clearer, the telephone pole should not have been there.

But there is nobody to blame, no way to make this different, which puts me in a position of checkmate frustration all of us just have to accept. Call it life.

I keep trying to find some good in this incident. Maybe Philip has shown thousands of people how important it is to be safe on the road. Maybe he has already saved people from an accident. Maybe you have a son or a daughter or are a new driver yourself and have heard about this accident and have changed your poor driving habits because of it or will ensure that others do so. Maybe it is all part of a master plan and there is some hidden reason that nobody else will know about except for the man upstairs. Maybe there is no reason to it.

I’ve decided that I’m going to believe that this accident has a meaning because it just makes sense to do that. What the hell is the point of saying this is just “one of those things?” I don’t see that. There is a point to everything.

Personally, I will drive much more carefully on the road and perhaps you will too, after reading about this. I’ve also learned to appreciate life a little more because the truth is that it could have been any one of us.

I can assure you that Philip was a guy that appreciated life and lived it because he enjoyed it. Anybody that met him could figure that out within thirty seconds. Having a positive attitude towards life was his choice and I for one appreciated the fact that he made that decision when he was around. What am I saying? He is still around.

Please, seriously, drive carefully.