After funeral service for Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, an alleged drunk driver’s senseless act should anger all of us

If there was any justice in the world, the man alleged to have killed Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau would be sentenced to watching the brothers’ Funeral Mass every day for the rest of his life.

He would watch it once a day, from its beginning to its end. He would wait 24 hours before he would have to watch it again, because the man alleged to have killed Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau deserves to have time to contemplate and wallow in the pain that he has brought upon the brothers’ parents, their wives and children, their friends and coaches and mentors from every hockey team and league that the two of them ever knew, the communities that treasured them most: South Jersey and New England and western Canada and central Ohio.

If there was any justice in the world, the man alleged to have killed Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau … to have downed five or six beers and climbed behind the wheel of his Jeep Grand Cherokee … to have sped up to try to pass two vehicles on County Road 551 in Salem County on Thursday, Aug. 29 … to have swerved to the right and struck the brothers from behind as they were riding their bicycles on the night before their sister’s wedding … would have been at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Media on Monday, on a perfect morning that warmed to a perfect summer afternoon.

There, for two hours, mourners trudged into the church, alone and in pairs and in clusters, in dark suits and tasteful dresses, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses … both for the blinding sunshine and for the tears that did not stop. There, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman lingered by the back of the church, his presence a testament to the effect of the tragedy on the league and the entire sport.

There, four tour buses, white with black trim, pulled into a nearby parking lot, and professional players, many of whom were Johnny’s teammates with the Columbus Blue Jackets and Calgary Flames, poured out. There, a few minutes before noon, a dozen Delaware County police choppers rumbled onto the parish’s property, escorting a few vans and two giant black buses to the front of the church. There, at 11:58 a.m., 16 pallbearers — eight for Johnny, eight for Matthew — shepherded two mahogany caskets into the vestibule.

» READ MORE: Johnny and Matty Gaudreau were more than hockey. They were inspirations to their South Jersey community.

If there was any justice in the world, the man alleged to have killed Johnny, who was 31, and Matthew, who was 29, would have watched that parade of grief go by Monday. And he would have seen, too, the guardrails that parish officials and police had set up to keep the public away and to have the media cordoned off in one area outside the church. Johnny’s accomplished career, his fame in the sport, had drawn an outsized measure of attention to the funeral — cameras and live blogs and second-by-second coverage that transformed private sorrow into a public story, that added a layer of awkward tension to the scene. Every person who entered that church was already heartbroken. Now every person had reason to wonder whether his or her anguish would be blasted out online in real time.

If there was any justice in the world, the man alleged to have killed Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau — his name is Sean Higgins, and he is 43, and he has been charged with two counts of death by auto — would ask himself the most direct and difficult question of all: Why? Why did he get behind the wheel that night?

Drunk driving is one of our last universal taboos, one of the last acts that is regarded as inexcusable and unforgivable. Fatalities from it have fallen 36% since 1982, according to research from the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility. The social campaign to make drunk driving beyond the pale stands as a great collective action against a horrible problem. And still, there he was on that darkened county road on the night of Thursday, Aug. 29. And there were all those people at St. Mary Magdalen on Monday, struggling with the fallout of that indefensible decision.

If there was any justice in the world, none of them would have had to be there.

If there was any justice in the world, the man alleged to have killed Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau would have to listen to the homily that Rev. Anthony Penna, who knew the brothers while they were students at Boston College, delivered Monday. “We’ve been robbed of something here,” Penna said, “of two wonderful young men who had dreams to chase down.” He would hear stories of brothers who were so close that they shared the same room until they went off to college, who “had an intensity to their love,” Penna said, “that was unbelievable.”

Then, the man would listen to the eulogies that Madeline Gaudreau — Matthew’s wife — and Meredith Gaudreau — Johnny’s wife — somehow managed to complete. He would hear Madeline describe “living in a nightmare I can’t wake up from” and implore the congregation “not to drink and drive. Please, do not put another family through this torture.” And he would hear Meredith marvel that Johnny never got tired of returning to South Jersey, of vacationing down the Shore, of sharing every special and enjoyable moment of his life with his family — marvel that a professional athlete who earned millions of dollars, who could have it all, already had everything he wanted.

“He didn’t have a bad bone in his body,” she said.

If there was any justice in the world, the man alleged to have killed Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau would watch and listen until Meredith was almost finished speaking. Until she revealed that she is pregnant with her and Johnny’s third child, just as Madeline is pregnant with her and Matthew’s first. Until the man understood, finally and forever, the anger and seasick sadness that he had caused. Until he understood the awful truth of what he’d done: Those children will never know their daddies, and no one who attended that Funeral Mass on Monday, no one who loved Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, will ever fully heal.