One
My parents and sister died when I was eleven years old. I followed them fifteen years later.
Before I tell you how I died, though, I should start with how my family perished. Dates don’t mean much to me these days, and many of the specifics of my life are blurry now, but I think it was sometime in the nineteen-nineties. Dad spent most of his time at the law firm where he worked and Mom stayed home, raising the two of us, keeping house, and watching soap operas. We ate dinners together, Dad joining us when he made it home on time, but I don’t remember being particularly close as a family. My sister, Nicole, was fifteen and right in the middle of that phase most kids go through, where they think they know everything and that their family is the most embarrassing thing in the world. We didn’t have much in common and rarely played together, even when we were younger. She had her friends and I had mine, and our two groups never mingled - at least not on purpose. The four-year age difference between her and me might not seem like much to most adults, but to kids, it may well have been the Grand Canyon. I desperately wish now that I had taken advantage of what time we had. I’d give anything to be able to see her again. I visit with Mom and Dad from time to time, but even after a hundred years - by Earth reckoning - Nicole still has not come to us, despite the promises she gave me the last time I saw her.
Dad had won a few big cases recently, and as a reward was invited to use the company-owned townhouse at a fancy ski resort in Aspen, Colorado. So, we found ourselves going on a rare vacation as an entire family. None of us had ever really skied before, we lived in Los Angeles, after all, but we still had a great time. Even Nicole forgot about being a moody grump and managed to have fun. Some of my best memories of her come from that trip. Those will never fade, no matter how long eternity lasts. Unfortunately, we only got to spend a week there before we had to get back home. I don’t remember why, if I ever knew in the first place, but I’m fairly certain it was work-related. Whatever the reason, after one last day out on the slopes, we loaded our luggage into the rental car and began driving to the airport. We never made it.
I was only eleven so I was more interested in arguing with Nicole over whose turn it was with the Game Boy than what the weather conditions were or how attentive Dad was to the road, so I have no idea what exactly happened. All I know was that Dad suddenly slammed on the brakes at the same time as Mom screamed. The car began to spin and then lurched violently. Airbags were a recent invention and Dad had decided against a model equipped with them in order to save a few bucks. I’m not sure they would have helped anyway. Nicole, Mom, and I were all wearing our seatbelts, so we were not thrown about the inside of the car when it began rolling over. Dad, however, had no such protection. Metal screeched and crumpled, glass shattered and luggage flew as the car bounced horrendously with each consecutive revolution. I’m fairly certain Dad was dead before we landed in the river. Mom drowned a few minutes later. I remember the sense of panic I felt as icy cold water filled the cabin and the terrible shock against my skin when it reached me. I remember how it sapped all my strength instantly and paralyzed my muscles so that I couldn’t free myself, no matter how much I wanted to. What I don’t remember is Nicole releasing my seatbelt and shoving me through the broken passenger door window or her desperate but ultimately futile attempts to free Mom. Those were details I only learned about after my own death years later.
When I woke up the next day, laying in a hospital bed, wrapped in warm blankets and surrounded by the concerned faces of people I did not know, I was told that I had been found on the edge of the shore by a passing motorist about a hundred yards downstream. He was a rich kid, living off his trust fund and always chasing the next thrill. You know, the kind of kid that makes people shake their heads and grumble about good-for-nothing layabouts. I don’t know about any of that. All I know is that, many years later, when his time finally came, I put in a good word for him with the boss. My parents were found by the emergency responders, still in the car. They didn’t find Nicole until after the spring thaw. The current had swept her away, as it had me. She wound up lodged under a thick sheet of ice in an eddy nearly a mile downstream. To this day I don’t know how I managed to escape that same fate.
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After the funeral - which I don’t really remember - I bounced from foster home to foster home until I aged out at eighteen. The system wasn’t very good back then, and many of the foster parents I wound up with were only in it for the stipends the state gave them to pay for my needs, most of which wound up lining their pockets instead of providing me with ones that didn’t have holes in them. I can’t honestly say I was much better though. When I wasn’t getting into fights at school or having screaming matches with my foster parents I was sulking in my room, playing violent video games instead of doing my homework. I never did graduate high school, though I got my GED after I was out on my own and realized I needed something if I ever wanted to land a decent job.
I bounced from one dead-end job to another for a few years before finally landing one with a logging company that was recruiting at job fairs in L.A. I had never been good with numbers and I was even worse with people, so working in the woods was a good fit for me. The money was good and the hard work gave me an outlet for my anger. I found myself getting into a lot fewer fights - when I was sober, at least. Timber crews work hard and party even harder, but somehow I managed to toe the line and keep myself out of jail or from getting fired, unlike many of my friends. After a few years of trimming limbs and sawing logs that the more experienced guys felled, the company decided it was time I learned to cut down trees. I trained under a crusty, foul-mouthed old codger who was getting ready to retire and quickly took to the task. I spent the next four years felling trees without a single accident. Unfortunately, the incident that ended that record also ended my life.
One of the most dangerous parts of cutting down a tree is not making sure it lands safely - though that is a very serious consideration - but ensuring that when it begins to fall, the base doesn’t bounce back and hit anyone as the weight of the tree is suddenly released from the trunk and its center of gravity shifts. There’s a certain art to it, and making the correct cuts in the right places takes skill gained from proper training and experience. On the day in question - my last day - I was with my crew felling the trees the foresters had marked a few days prior. It was straightforward work and the forest wasn’t very dense as we were working in an area that had been logged only a few years before. It was about mid-day, if my fuzzy memory serves me right, and we were getting ready to break for lunch. I had made my final cut on a nice 20-foot Douglas Fir and stepped aside to watch it fall. The wood began to snap and pop, just like I’d heard hundreds of times before and I smiled in anticipation of the crash that indicated another job well done, but that smile faded as the tree began to twist in an entirely unexpected manner. My spotter shouted something and my mind instantly began to analyze what was happening. There must have been a twist in the grain that we hadn’t noticed, or maybe a hidden knot or any of a dozen other possible issues. Whatever the case, the tree was not falling where I had intended. Even as I watched the base of the tree begin to push back and rush straight towards me my feet didn’t get the message to move. “Crap,” I thought as the jagged trunk got closer and closer. “This is really going to hurt.”
End of Chapter One