A mother's message, in aftermath of tragedy

Like her regret that she didn't check her 17-year-old's Facebook page so she could have seen how much her daughter was hiding her drinking with friends.

Or the wish that parents who saw Taylor Meyer drunk in the bleachers of King Philip Regional High School's Oct. 17 homecoming game had picked up the phone to call Meyer then, not days later, when her only daughter was already dead after another drinking party.

Timing and awareness are everything, Meyer has learned.

Since January, Meyer has told her story at 15 schools, from Rockport to Franklin, North Attleborough to Canton. Among her five remaining engagements is a speech at Newton South High School today.

"I could have sat in my shell and had nothing good come from this," she said in an interview. "But Taylor wouldn't want that."

Her message to parents: Check up on your children. Find out what they are saying to each other on Facebook, where they are going, when they will be home. Her message to young people: Watch each other's back. Don't let a friend wander off from a party or leave with a drunken friend.

"Taylor would want them to learn from this and never let their friends be alone when they are not capable of making good decisions by themselves," Meyer said. "The buddy system is the simplest of all concepts."

In an interview with the Globe last week, Meyer recounted the toll her daughter's death has taken and the toll her rigorous speaking schedule takes as well.

"I have no idea how I stand up there every single time," Meyer said, her voice thick with emotion. "It's torture."

She offers her presentation beside a large portrait of Taylor and an intimate slide show of photos from her life: birthdays, vacations, taking a turn placing the angel on top of the Christmas tree. "I tell them, look at these pictures, and realize that she's you," Meyer said.

The Plainville mother of three still replays the night in October when she drifted off to sleep instead of calling Taylor as she usually did when her daughter was out with friends.

In the hours that followed, Taylor, a senior honors student with plans to study accounting in college, was stumbling drunk and alone from a postgame drinking bash in the depths of the Norfolk woods.

"It's unimaginable," Meyer said.

"You hope for the best. You sit for three days hoping it isn't going to happen to her. But I knew my daughter. I knew she wasn't off with someone she met on the Internet."

She assumed Taylor had fallen and broken a leg when she failed to return home. "But after two days I realized that she was so tough she would have dragged . . . out of those woods if she could, no matter what. And then I knew."

Taylor had initially planned to spend Friday night at a friend's house. She failed to return home on Saturday, and her mother called police at 5 p.m., according to reports at the time. Taylor was found, 41 hours after she was reported missing, in a shallow swamp near the old Norfolk Airport.

Police later charged an 18-year-old with bringing beer to the party. But in the weeks that followed, the tragedy did not appear to stop underage drinking in Plainville, Norfolk, Wrentham, or other suburban towns, as police continued to report other underage drinking parties. Kathi Meyer attended arraignments of one group of teenagers a month after Taylor's death and took back the pink, memorial bracelets she had given them in Taylor's honor.

Meyer wrote Taylor's eulogy, a wrenching stream of consciousness written at 3 a.m. the night before the funeral that shared thoughts on how such a wonderful girl could have made such a bad choice and how teenagers need to think carefully before they follow suit.

"It's been six days since I saw my little girl . . . who has turned out to be so beautiful. So shining. So alive and meaningful that I can't grasp the thought of never seeing her again," Meyer wrote. "I look at all her pictures, and I feel her. . . . She just reaped joy and saw the humor in everything.

Seven months later, Meyer says, she has good days and bad.

"Today I had a really bad day," she admitted. "I found my old BlackBerry and all my old text messages. There was a picture Taylor sent of a bouquet of lilacs on Oct. 20, a year to the day we found her. It said, 'I love you, Mummy dearest.' And I cried my eyes out."

And so she finds some strength in spreading her message: Teenagers need to know that bad decisions are simply that, bad decisions, "but that they can come with severe consequences."

Meyer passes out bumper stickers at speaking engagements that carry the initials TLM, for Taylor Lee Meyer. They also pose this question: "Who's got your back? Use the buddy system."

Meyer's words are as powerful as the response to them. Parents, for the most part, have sent a deluge of supportive and thankful e-mails, save for one who accused Meyer of being selfish and asked her to stop putting schoolchildren through such trauma.

Teens, too, have had frightening epiphanies that many have shared, including the realization of how their choices affect others.

"One girl came up to me afterward, and she was hysterically crying as she talked about an underage house party she was at," Meyer said. "She said: 'The police came, and I ran into the woods and was lost. I fell in the swamp. And all I could think about was how I could have been your daughter.'

"I put my hands on her shoulders and said: 'You're going to be OK because you're learning from this. That will never be you.' "

On June 7, Meyer will sit in the rows of other King Philip parents while their children's caps fly in the annual rite of passage. Taylor's, of course, will be missing. But Meyer wants to support her daughter's friends and feels she should be there.

That morning, she will probably drive to St. Mary's Cemetery in Attleboro Falls. Two Sundays ago, Meyer and her 11-year-old son stood by Taylor's grave and spent two hours flying a kite covered with personal, handwritten messages from classmates.

"It was windy, . . . and I know that came from her," Meyer said. "It gave us something to do on Mother's Day."

Bolton can be reached at mmbolton1@verizon.net.