FORT WALTON BEACH — An oil painting of Amy Jamieson’s oldest child, Tim, hangs in her dining room.
She likes the portrait best in the evenings. That’s when the deep red and gold hues of his face and hair catch the light in a way that brings him back to her.
“I like it at night when the lights are down,” Jamieson said. “It’s like he’s sitting in here.”
A friend painted the portrait for Jamieson after Tim’s death July 31, 1998.
The 16-year-old died after being hit by a drunken driver in a head-on collision on U.S. Highway 98 on Okaloosa Island. He and a friend were on their way home from their jobs in Destin.
Fifteen years have passed since Jamieson buried Tim and found herself desperate to make sense of the loss.
“It’s not the natural order of things,” she said.
Within months Jamieson, a Realtor, helped found a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She channeled her grief into fundraising, assisting other victims, helping with DUI checkpoints and anything else that would raise awareness.
She was fueled by an urgency to get all the drunken drivers off the roads so no other mothers would have to share her pain.
“After Tim died, I was like, ‘We need to go get them!’ ” she recalled. “It was like this vigilante thing.”
The vehemence has subsided, but she continues to speak and raise money on MADD’s behalf.
Jamieson remains a fierce opponent of those who choose to drink and drive.
“If I see someone I think is impaired, I will follow that person home,” she said. “I’d rather apologize to that person if it’s just bad driving than do nothing.”
That outlook is all part of her determination to make the world around her a better place and bring something good from Tim’s death.
“I just keep looking at all the blessings,” said Jamieson, who also serves on the Fort Walton Beach City Council. “That’s what I hold on to.”
She has found hope in her Christian faith, the congregation at Hurlburt Chapel and the support of close friends and her boyfriend, Rick McCullough.
Her surviving son, Ryan, lives locally and has two daughters, Lexi and Hanna.
“I love being a grandma!” Jamieson said.
But no matter how full her life has become, she hasn’t forgotten the events of the morning Tim died.
“Sometimes it feels like yesterday and sometimes it feels longer,” she said.
She was in Orlando when she got the call, and had to fly home not knowing if Tim was dead or alive. When she finally reached Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, he had no brain activity.
She spent an hour and a half at his bedside, able to hold his hand and talk to him before he died.
The weeks that followed were a dark time for her and Ryan, who was 15 that year.
“For the first four or five months, it took everything I had not to follow Tim,” she said. “It was almost like I was the living dead, a robot, sort of.”
She missed everything about her shy boy who had grown into an outgoing young man with a huge heart.
“He didn’t judge people,” Jamieson said. “He was part of every clique in the school.”
Jamieson learned to live with the numbness, often going out of her way to avoid the stretch of U.S. 98 where Tim was hit.
“I still don’t like driving in the same lane that it happened,” she said. “I hate the month of July.”
But she finds satisfaction in telling Tim’s story. She believes it can encourage others to stop and think before making a reckless decision.
Jamieson even keeps photos of Tim’s wrecked Chevy Camaro close by, pasted onto a sheet of poster board that she displays when speaking to young people. She also shows them the worn, bloodstained seat belt that she cut from the car after the crash.
“They had it at Holmes Auto Body and I went there to go see the car,” she recalled. “I saw it in there and that’s when I took it, not knowing that I’d be doing what I’m doing now.”
Even after 15 years, it brings her comfort.
“It was one of the last things that touched him,” Jamieson said. “I knew without that seat belt I wouldn’t have had that chance to spend that final moment with him.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Kari C. Barlow at 850-315-4438 or kbarlow@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @KariBnwfdn.