Elizabeth Ann Collazo (Lizzie) is with us. Always.

 

She is someone we love, someone we respect, someone we cherish, and someone who has given us all so much.

 

We honor her.

 

This musical collection is a tribute of love to her, and to all we love who have gone before us and who will go after.

 

We speak about her all through the album, but, to quickly summarize her personality, over the almost 19 years she was here with us, Lizzie had a wild, brilliant, fiery nature, always passionate, curious, and loving. Quick to laugh…and to anger. She loved animals and often used to bring home strays, hiding them in her room from her parents.

 

A complicated relationship was ever-present between KC, Lizzie’s birth mother, and Lizzie, as Lizzie was raised by KC’s parents. However, the two became close and were continuing to grow ever closer over the last several years of her short stay here on Earth.

 

Lizzie and her two sisters, Cathy and Samantha, had an extremely tight and loving relationship from the beginning, that never wanes.

 

On New Years Eve, 2003, she was a passenger in a car with two other friends, one driving and one in the back seat, when a lady in an SUV, in the left-turn lane on the other side of the street ahead of them, inexplicably decided to go ahead and make that left turn, badly miscalculating, or perhaps not even seeing, the car Lizzie was in, with its headlights on, coming toward her in their lane. The ensuing accident killed the male passenger in the back seat, a friend of Lizzie, there at the scene, while Lizzie and the driver were taken to the hospital. The driver survived. Lizzie survived for 6 days and on the 7th, she was gone. (We have intentionally left out the names of the driver and the other passenger who passed away, since our efforts at contacting the driver or the family of the passenger havent been successful. If, in time, they reach out to us and give us their blessing to include the names of those involved, we will)

 

One would think that these young people, still kids, really, driving on a New Year’s Eve, would be high, not wearing seat belts, speeding, or whatnot. That, however, was not the case here, as none of them had any alcohol or drugs in their blood, they were wearing seat belts, and they were not speeding or driving wildly. This was simply some tragic mistake by a distracted driver in a large vehicle.

 

Liz had such deep intelligence and creativity, and possibly even a bit of clairvoyance, that most people who met her could tell right away that this was a standout, unique, and special human being.

 

We found a poem in her belongings that described a girl in a car accident. It was with a whole lot of her other writings, so, we believe she wrote it. Lizzie was very drawn to sad, and sometimes morbid, stories, poems and songs, such as this one. This was a big part of her personality.

 

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