BRUNSWICK — Karen McKenna greets a dozen people in a small meeting room at Curtis Memorial Library. A light rain patters over a small garden outside and a couple of kids are browsing in the children’s section.

In here, the conversation is somber. McKenna has invited people to discuss a new book about accidental killings — anything from car crashes to drownings, to medical mistakes or finding out you gave someone COVID-19. Some are considered criminal, like intoxicated or reckless driving. Others don’t end up in court. Still, the people involved have to learn how to live knowing they’ve contributed to another person’s death.

McKenna lost her husband James five years ago in a workplace accident. He was a devoted father who loved his family and the outdoors.

When James died, McKenna said she received an outpouring of support from those around her. She has always wondered what comfort the person on the other side of the accident had been getting.

She declined to speak about the accident and hasn’t been in touch with the people who were there, but she thinks of them often.

“When I first heard how the accident happened, and that someone had made a mistake, my first thought was ‘Oh my god, this is a person who has to live with this for the rest of their life,'” McKenna said in an interview last week. “And my thoughts have returned to that person.”

Sitting behind McKenna is one of the authors of “Accidental Killing: a Survivor’s Handbook,” the Rev. Chris Yaw, whose nonprofit helps people after they’ve unintentionally caused someone’s death. 

She learned about his book from an NPR story in 2023 before it was published and she said she was struck by the loneliness and isolation people face when their mistakes lead to someone’s death.

McKenna recently lost a family member to suicide who had been involved in an accidental killing. She once had a close call when her car hit a patch of black ice and almost slid into a school bus stop.

“It could be one of my sons,” she said. “It could be any one of us, who just on a normal day, our life takes a change.”

BOTTLING IT UP

Yaw, an Episcopal pastor in Detroit, published “Accidental Killing” last fall. His co-author, Maryann Jacobi Gray, died in 2023 from complications following a medical procedure.

The two met after a friend Yaw hired to clean his yard was crushed by his garage door. Yaw said he had decided years earlier not to pay for safety upgrades that would have prevented the man’s death.

Gray often spoke publicly about her own experience. When she was 22, she hit and killed an 8-year-old boy who ran in front of her car. She advocated for compassion for those involved in unintentional deaths — not as victims, but as people suffering a unique form of trauma, one that also deserves resources and understanding.

Not all families who have lost someone to an unintentional killing believe those involved can be forgiven. Many of these cases involve civil lawsuits and settlements, although Yaw said he still feels what his insurance paid to his friend’s family could never be enough.

Yaw and Gray helped establish the Hyacinth Fellowship, a nonprofit for people who have been involved in fatal, accidental events who consider themselves responsible. The organization is named for a Greek myth in which Apollo accidentally kills his friend Hyacinthus, and hyacinth flowers grew where he bled.

“We like that image,” Yaw said during the reading. “That something good can come out of something so terrible.”

The Hyacinth Fellowship offers monthly Zoom support meetings and is trying to start in-person events. It runs a peer support network and offers writing courses to help people process their experiences.

Yaw said he was startled by how few resources existed for a problem that is extremely common. The book includes anecdotes about people who reached out to Gray and Yaw over the years, as well as celebrities who have unintentionally caused deaths. News outlets from all over the country reached out in 2021 after Alec Baldwin shot a prop gun and killed a cinematographer while filming.

“I think that becomes so important for people to see that this happens frequently,” Yaw said in an interview before the talk. “We live in an accidental world.”

The book urges people to have compassion for those involved in accidental killings, particularly self-compassion. But the book acknowledges the importance of accountability and taking ownership for mistakes, criminal or otherwise.

NOT WHAT THEY WOULD WANT

Maria Grotz, who drove from Chatham, Massachusetts, on Monday to see Yaw discuss the book, said she knew about the Hyacinth Fellowhip through Gray’s earlier writings for the blog “Accidental Impacts.”

Grotz lost her younger brother in a crash when she was 17. She was driving him and missed a stop sign.

She said therapy and support from friends and family has helped, but she’s never had access to a community of others sharing the same experience.

“It’s very hard to meet people who understand what I’m talking about,” Grotz said. “It’s like anything else. You want to be with the people who know exactly what you are talking about.”

Grotz said she’s looking forward to volunteering more with the group, particularly in peer support. Maybe she can talk to another 17-year-old in similar shoes.

“I know that my life has been a billion, thousand times impacted by his death,” she said. “And it’s been impacted by his death in ways he wouldn’t have wanted it to have been.”

McKenna, who organized the book talk, said her husband would never have wanted the person involved in his death to suffer.

A few weeks before Yaw’s visit, she dropped off a copy of “Accidental Killing” at the Yarmouth library, where she and her husband would take their sons to check out books that he would read them before bed.

She said her husband was patient and understanding, a man who loved watching families almost as much as his own.

“I guess maybe the reason that it’s important I’m in this, is because the piece of saying, ‘If a family member can forgive people, that maybe feels more hopeful for people who have had this experience,'” she said.