One of the toughest assignments any reporter has is to knock on the family’s door of a victim who was killed in an accident or in war.

It’s grieving time and it often feels like an invasion of privacy.

For most of us, we muster the courage to do it because we want the victim’s family to have the chance to let the world know who was taken soon.

It’s not just a case number or “another” fatal. It was a mom, a dad, an aunt, a son, a friend.

It’s not easy for families to discuss and it’s not easy to ask the questions, but this person deserves to be honored.

Today, I’m asking all of you to share your own experiences here of losing someone you love too soon.

I’ll start: I lost my aunt to a drunk driver last night.

Rosemary Larson, 62, was coming home from work in a tiny Minnesota town on the North Dakota border when she was struck on County Road 17 by a Ford Mustang traveling at a high rate of speed.

The driver who killed her was drinking. The three people in the other car were coming back from tubing down the Red Lake river, they sped over railroad tracks, ran a stop sign and broadsided her.  One died.

The TV station’s coverage shows Rosemary’s car in the middle of the field, barely recognizable.

Rosemary, my godmother, we’ll miss you.

She raised a great family, lived on a farm with her husband Roger. He turns 65 today and they were going to celebrate  by going to the lake.

It was never just Rosemary, it’s always been “Rosemary and Roger” and “Roger and Rosemary.” They were joined at the hip the way you’d want a marriage to be.

She was close to my dad, stopping in to give him treats, checking in to share heart surgery stories (both had surgeries performed by the same doctor more than a decade apart) and they’d go to dinner or talk story.

She could have passed for a boot camp drill sergeant when I was growing up. When she spoke, you listened. There was nothing on the fence about her. If Rosemary felt one way, she let you know it and stuck to her guns. And as I grew older it became easier and easier to see she was more bark than bite.

When she smiled, it was glowing and her eyes twinkled. She would give the shirt off her back to help a friend or family member. She may have looked hard on the outside, but she was soft and sweet on the inside.

There’s so much more to Rosemary than can be wrote here.

Her’s was the second drunk driving experience that struck too close to home for me since I wrote the ignition interlock story for The Advertiser earlier this month.

A few  weeks ago, after a card game in Hawaii Kai, my friend and her boyfriend were following us home in her new truck when a drunk woman tried to do an illegal U-Turn at Puuikena Place — while never slowing down — and broadsided her.

They were fortunate: The idiot drunk hit the front wheel well and totaled the car. A nano-second later and she would have struck the driver door. Ten seconds earlier and it could have been our car she hit.

When you’re young, driving drunk can seem like a dirty badge of courage. (“Dude, I can’t believe I made it home last night. I was wasted!”)  As you get older, you realize it’s just stupid and not worth the risk to you or anyone else.

I have lots of friends who have had DUIs, and I’m fortunate that I escaped my party days unscathed and without hurting anyone.

But none of that matters right now.

Rosemary raised a family, was a good wife and friend. She accomplished much, and she was taken too soon.

Please share your stories and experiences. Lives taken too soon deserve to be heard.

Admit it, no matter how old you get, no matter how far away you move, a part of you will always be a momma’s boy or girl at heart.

I have no problem owning up to that, particularly on Mother’s Day.

I haven’t lived in the same city as my folks since 1989 and I left our homestate in 1996, but in some ways I’m closer to my mom and dad than I’ve ever been.

Maybe it’s because as you grow older you can appreciate what they went through for you growing up. Technology has made it so much easier for kids to spread their wings and fly and yet never be further than a plane ride away from home.

And email? It is my personal conduit to back home.

There is a sort of comfort in knowing that every day at about 2 a.m. here in Honolulu I know I can check my earthlink account and there’ll be a message from my mom back home in North Dakota.

If I tell her I’m going for a bike ride, like I did earlier this week, the next email will include a safety tip to “be careful.” If I’m looking at buying a house, the next email will include all the pitfalls: “There’s insurance. Garbage. Electric bills. Taxes … it’s not like renting you know …”

Most of the time it’s nothing but an extended hello just to let me know they’re ok: “Nothing happening here. Dad is going golfing and I played cards with the girls. Lost 35 cents. We’re going for a walk and then to Don’s for supper … the kids next door came over. God, are they handful. They jump all over the place. If you had done that …”

Straight and to the point. What else could you ask for from a mom’s email?

So reliable are these daily e’s that not having one show can only mean one of two things: a) I haven’t called lately so she’s being stubborn, therefore I have to call — which is similar to having to restart a computer; or B) Something is wrong, in which case I need to call immediately.

Fortunately, the latter rarely occurs.

My mom may kill me for doing this, but since it’s Mother’s Day I thought I’d share part of her latest email. I always get a kick out of them. I hope you do, too:

“It’s snowing! The ground is white, can you believe it on the 10th of May? We got an invitation to Maureen’s daughter’s graduation open house next Sunday. Chris called from Texas yesterday man her & Scott are doing well. I was thinking about the day you were learning to ride that little two-wheel bike with no training wheels. I think we spent the whole morning giving you a pushes up & down the sidewalk but you got it mastered.
luv u mom”

Happy Mother’s Day. Feel free to share your own stories and memories here.