Dear Jerry

Has it really been a year since you hurtled into my life while being rudely hurtled out of your own? Not long after the hit-and-run accident that brought us briefly together, I saw that your loved ones had planted a cross in the ground at the crash site. I've wondered if they needed the landowner's blessing to do this.

This eventually developed into a two-part memorial to you. Close to the curb where your motorcycle went airborne, a heart-shaped patch of mulch marked "JERRY" faces Katy Freeway traffic. The cross still stands on the downslope a few yards away, on the edge of the detention pond where your body came to rest until LifeFlight arrived to take it away.

Eventually, I became comfortable enough to resume running in this area again. (I run exclusively facing the oncoming traffic now. I still carry my cell phone with me and I'm very good about wearing my Road ID -- two choices that I still heartily endorse for anyone who runs outdoors.) During those runs, I could pause by that intersection to look at the changing selection of seasonal items that they're leaving in your memory. During my last run-by, I took note of the Happy Birthday balloons. You're certainly on their minds.

The driver of the truck that hit you is still unidentified. Sadly, a year later no one has been able to come forward with information that could hold someone accountable. Crime Stoppers still has the Jerardo Luis case in their "unsolved" files, and a reward could still be out there for the right person that picks up the phone and dials 713-222-TIPS.

With the passage of some time, I came to accept that there was really nothing I could have done to save you that night. Anyhow, I resolved to do something to make myself feel less helpless in a crisis, so a couple of months ago I took part in a mass CPR/AED training by the Red Cross in the NFL Texans practice "bubble."

During the class I got really good pointers on how to remove rubber gloves without getting cooties on my hands and how to roll unconscious persons into a "recovery position" so they wind up in a good place to gain consciousness and puke. Oh, and I also learned that delivering sets of chest compressions are a pretty good workout in itself. By the end of the morning, I joked that perhaps I should bring one of the dummies home as cross-training equipment.

Doing a thousand practice compressions on dummies couldn't have helped your situation last April. But I guess I do feel better knowing that maybe I'll be better prepared to help someone else in a different type of emergency. I suppose that's one important takeaway I gained from the whole ordeal: We can't change the past, but with a little foresight and preparation, maybe we still have a shot at making the future better.

I'd like to think that I'm now driving sober more often. Mind you, to me driving sober is much more than just a BAC number. It's the having the mindfulness of the responsibility we take when we pilot a car on the roads, and a focused awareness of what's around you. Uncontrolled, the amount of kinetic energy that two tons of steel and plastic has at highway speeds can really ruin a lot of lives. I've wondered if your hit-and-run driver may have been occupied on a cell phone, or simply neglectful of checking a blind spot that terrible night.

As I remember all this, I am affirmed in my belief that the act of running is a declaration of my vitality. To go outdoors, draw breath under the skies and propel my legs over the ground is my acceptance of an innate directive to pursue the horizon. All the while, I'm mindful that this ability -- and my very life -- could be taken from me at an hour and in a manner we have no way of predicting. As a witness pointed out to me afterwards, I was crossing that very intersection less than a minute before the wreck.

Once in a while, especially when crossing that curb at Memorial Brook Boulevard, I feel like I truly am running some of these miles for you and others who won't run on the earth again. Rest in peace.