Ann Lee wakes up to her dead child's memory every morning. Pictures of Whitney, forever 4 years old, adorn almost every wall. The child's room, home to abandoned Barbies and teddy bears, is the same as the day she died almost two years ago.

On the floor is a single pink crayon, left behind by the little girl who almost followed her mother's instructions to clean her room. Lee sees it every day but cannot bring herself to pick it up.

"When I wake up, that is the first thing that hits me: `God, how am I going to get through another day,' " said Lee, whose daughter died when a drunken driver plowed into the rear of her car on Jan. 29, 1995.

It is not asking too much, she said, to require the young man who caused the death of her child to think of her, too, one afternoon a week.

Every Friday for the next 10 years, as part of his sentence, Brandon Blenden must write a $1 check and mail it to Lee and her husband, Jack. Included on every one of the checks, in that space where most people write memos to themselves like "for rent" or "electric bill," are the words "for the death of your daughter, Whitney."

Blenden, 17 at the time of the crash on Old U.S. Hwy. 49 near Gulfport, was convicted this fall of driving under the influence and causing death, the Mississippi equivalent to vehicular manslaughter. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Judge John Whitfield of the Harrison County Circuit Court.

To make certain that Blenden did not forget the child whose life he took, the judge also ordered him to pay a $520 fine, in weekly increments mailed to the family of the victim. The $520 fine will take 10 years for the inmate to repay, and week by week by week he must face up to the tragedy he caused, Whitfield said.

The sentence, part of a trend of alternative sentencing by judges who have found that jail time is not a strong enough message for criminals, would never have been levied if the Lees had not agreed to it, the judge said.

Lee not only agreed, she welcomed it.

She knows that some parents would not want to be reminded, week after week, of their child's death, the manner of it, or the person who caused that heartbreak.

But in a house that has become a shrine to a dead child, for a 37-year-old mother who uses giant photographs of her dead daughter in a tireless war against drunken drivers, there is less pain in it than a sad satisfaction.

"It's not like I don't remember that she is gone until I see that check," said Lee, who has traveled the Deep South to make speeches and has successfully lobbied the Mississippi Legislature for tougher laws.

She made her daughter a promise in the 49 hours Whitney lay in a coma in the hospital. "You will not die in vain. I will not let anybody forget you, or how you died," Lee said.

"I keep the checks in a drawer. I haven't cashed them. What do you do with a $1 check? But at least I know that he has to be reminded of her once a week. He will have to think about her, and what he did.

"But no one has won. No one wins, in this."

Lee's daughter died because a young man, working his way through a six-pack on Super Bowl Sunday, did not notice the line of cars stopped at an intersection as he drove to his girlfriend's house, Lee said.

It somehow did not register in Blenden's mind that the cars he approached were not moving as he came up behind the Lee car, and he slammed on his brakes much too late, she said. The impact crumpled her car. The trunk and rear bumper were forced through the back seat, crushing the child.

Whitney was strapped in her car seat, correctly. Her body showed little of the trauma that was inflicted upon her. She was damaged inside, especially in her head.

After Blenden's eventual conviction--the case is under appeal-- Whitfield said he considered ways to "make him constantly reflect upon the severity of his conduct." He once considered placing a photo of Whitney in the cell.

"As we have seen, just incarcerating people does not force them to actually address the conduct itself," Whitfield said. "I am just trying to find some alternative, and not just with drunk driving, to the traditional form of sentencing. It doesn't work."

He is satisfied that this sentence is working.

"The first week that he had to write that check, his attorney said that it was very difficult for him to do," Whitfield said. "He actually started crying and was very nervous."

Lee has met with the young man, and they have cried together. She said she believes he is sorry, and she is sorry for him. He has a wife and baby, the child conceived after her own child was killed.

"I made a bad judgment," he said earlier this year, after his sentencing. "I am truly sorry. I just pray for forgiveness."

Lee wants to be sure that he, at least for the near future, does not push her daughter out of his conscience.

Every week she reaches into her mailbox and finds her proof.

Wayne Woodall, Blenden's lawyer, declared, "Remorsefulness is not a question."

His client has placed flowers on the child's grave, Woodall said, without a court order to do so.

If his conviction stands, Blenden will serve at least a quarter of his jail time. The judge also tacked on five years' probation, in which he must talk to youth groups once a month about the "effects of his decision" to drink and drive, Whitfield said.

In the meantime, Lee is traveling somewhere every week, pleading with young people not to make such a decision. She carries poster-size pictures of Whitney, alive and dead, to drive home her argument.

She was one of the victims of such crashes who persuaded legislators to tighten drunken-driving laws earlier this year, making it more difficult for offenders to avoid losing their driver's licenses.

The crusade is how she holds herself together, Lee said, because she is fighting back. "I want my children to know you don't have to be a victim, then do nothing," she said.

It is harder than ever now, at Christmas. There is one stocking fewer hanging over the fireplace. She had to force herself not to put one up for her dead child.

She cannot go on this way forever, she knows. She thinks of giving the toys in her daughter's room away, but not now. Meanwhile, every place she goes, everything she does, reminds her of her child.