It amazes me when I see people riding motorcycles without helmets, because I guess it just isn’t macho to be wearing a helmet on a Harley, a crotch rocket or whatever.

But, I just want to paint a picture of what it is like to work with those individuals who had accidents on their motorcycles that were not wearing helmets. They were permanently brain injured, living in a group home away from their friends and families.

My wife and I worked six years with them, and we saw up close the pure hell they lived in everyday of their lives, bound to wheel chairs, not able to talk, trapped in their young bodies.

I saw twisted arms and legs because their brain didn’t tell them to move them anymore.

I saw the pain, frustration, loneliness, isolation and the feelings expressed on their faces of being trapped inside their own bodies. I saw tears of fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters who wanted the person they once knew and loved back, which would never happen.

I’m not out to change the helmet law in Maine, which I really don’t understand why there isn’t one in a state that is so safety conscious.

I am out to tell as many people though about the absolute pain and heart ache I have seen on the faces of the head injured who, if only, had put on a helmet before they got on their wheels might have been OK.

Jim Merrill, Auburn