Renee Pisarz knows how crazy it all sounds, but she doesn't care.

In the year since her teenage son was killed in a traffic accident, the 56-year-old Scarsdale mom says she has found comfort in an unexpected way: communicating with her son from the spiritual realm.

She plans to write a book about the experience and is prepared to defend herself against skeptics.

"I don't want it to come across that I'm a grieving mom, and I miss my son so much that I've gone off the deep end," she said. "You tell me I'm full of hot air, and I will tell you exactly what I'm feeling. I'm not shy about it. I'm not crazy."

Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New City, Howard Lasner has immersed himself in news clippings and research papers to combat teen driving accidents.

He hopes that his teenage son's death in a friend's car can lead to state and local laws that help protect young drivers.

"We all have a role to play in this," he said. "It's not something that can be easily done unless all the parties come together: the schools, the parents, the kids, the police, the Legislature."

The unexpected deaths of these two teens left their parents unprepared to make sense of the tragedies. But they knew they had to find a way.

That is the common thread in the disparate approaches to healing. And in their cases, coping ranged from developing an agenda for advocacy to developing a belief in the afterlife.

Clear message

Stephen Pisarz died at the age of 18 after he lost control of his 1995 Acura Integra on Teakettle Spout Road in Mahopac on Feb. 18, 2006.

One of the strongest messages Renee Pisarz said she received from her son came in January, on her 56th birthday.

While walking on a commercial street with her sister, Pisarz said, she felt an energy that made her stop in her tracks. She turned to look into a photo shop beside them and saw a picture frame decorated with a red sports jersey adorned with the number "54."

She said "54" had always been her son's number, so much so that he listed it on his MySpace.com Web site with the explanation, "Don't Ask Why."

The boy's father, Marty Pisarz, also got a sign from his son on his birthday last fall, according to Renee Pisarz. Marty Pisarz bought a bottle of Limoncello, an Italian liqueur, and noticed that the company's slogan was "Pizzazz in a glass."

"Pizaz" was their son's nickname.

"We can't be exact on everything, but he gets the message across," Renee Pisarz said. "I have no doubt in my mind that life continues. He was such a gift when he was here physically, and he's still such a gift."

She is documenting the ways she and her son communicate and plans to write a book, she said. The working title is "Live 54: A Mother's Journey From Grief to Healing."

"This is my purpose now," she said. "A mother's love,it's unconditional love. And that never dies. That always stays with you."

Getting active

Ben Lasner's death has haunted his family as well. The 15-year-old had been en route to a friend's house to play video games in December 2004.

But Lasner was killed when the car's driver, Michael Buffamante, 17, smashed into a utility pole on Route 9W in Clarkstown.

A judge later found Buffamante guilty of speeding, driving 73 mph in a 55 mph zone.

Sitting with his wife and daughter amid photos of Ben, Howard Lasner described how he buried himself in research as he struggled to cope with the grief. He read every newspaper article about teen driving he could find, digging up statistics.

He has concluded that speeding is the main culprit, and he is reaching out to local and state officials to change the laws. One of his missions is to ban plea bargaining for speeding if the driver is younger than 25.

"Nobody ever talks about the more common occurrence of speeding -it happens every day," Howard Lasner said. "As a society, we need to emphasize the dangers of speeding just as much as alcohol and drugs."

He also wants the legal driving age pushed back, saying the new system of graduated licenses is a poor solution and offers "a false sense of security."

His family is talking with Clarkstown police about sponsoring lectures on the dangers of speeding.

'Bad dream'

Friends of the two teens also have had to find ways to cope.

Stephen Pisarz's friends flooded his MySpace.com page with farewell messages within minutes of learning he had died.

"It's so sad just the thought of knowing that I'm never gonna see or talk to you ever again," one friend wrote on the site.

"It shouldn't have been you in the car," wrote another. "I wish it was me in there and not you."

Five buddies tattooed "R.I.P.S.P." on their inner wrists in his memory.

In Rockland, a friend of Ben Lasner's still carries a newspaper clipping from two years ago, detailing the teenager's fatal crash.

Their pain can be matched -and outweighed -only by a parent's.

"You don't really ever get over something like this," said Marti Lasner, Ben's mother. "It still, in a lot of ways, feels like he's going to come home. It just seems like a bad dream."

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