The title gives it away: “The Life Before Her Eyes”. Right before you die, people often say that you see your life passing before you. Uma’s character (Diana) is actually the one who got shot and died–not her friend, Maureen. The movie tells you Diana had an abortion. She picked the baby name “Emma” with her friend which we saw among the little crosses. And the child in her life flash is also “Emma” and is always running away from her, and she is searching in the woods for her; this represents her feeling of loss over the baby. Also her child tells her “You hate me”–which is her guilt for aborting the child, that the child would think she hated her that’s why she aborted her. What we see in the whole movie is what passes through Diana’s mind the moment before she decides to sacrifice herself. She knows her friend is good and she feels she is not. The movie is what Diana’s life could have been. She was the woman with her husband only since it never happened because she died that day it was her seeing herself which is the whole premise of the movie, her life passing before her eyes. You notice you never see the friend in her adult life. Also, she tells the woman at the memorial she is “not” one of the survivors. And Diana’s mother cries her name in anguish the moment she is shot. Mothers tend to know this type of thing. Her mother knew it was she who had been killed. Furthermore, there’s no way a college professor is going to be with a 17 year-old girl. It was all her fantasy that we, the viewing audience, see as Diana made the decision to die so her friend could live.
P.S.–Who’s Lauren?