Chapter 3 - Seven Eleven

Chapter 3

I don’t really remember the night before he died. It was probably like any other night hoping the kids would fall asleep with out too many glasses of water and good-night kisses after their story. I’d like to say I gave him that last good night kiss, but I really can’t remember. I remember that morning. We were in a rush, I needed to get to Garberville for an appointment; Cameron was due to get a vaccination from our local doctor. We were going to stay in a motel in Garberville that night, meet up with some friends there and start our trip for Washington State the next day. I had the car packed with those few things I wanted to move with me from the house, and then I tied our bikes on top. I had left all my antiques, furniture, dishes and many other things, thinking I could get them later. I felt lucky to be getting out and away from the boy’s father and able to start over with my sons. I didn’t need anything. I had no idea then that it would be more than five years before I would return to California and many more years after that before I would go up the mountain to the house again. No idea how drastically my life was about to change.

It was only a few miles from the house on the Zenia Bluff road where the car went off the cliff. I have no idea why, I have run it over in my mind a million times. I had driven that road in the dark, in the rain, in the snow, and that day was a sunny summer morning. I looked in the backseat and Cameron was asleep, I looked in the front seat and Thomas was asleep and I looked up and oh shit, we were going off the cliff and that was the last conscious thought I had. Much later I though it was strange that I didn’t have time to think of anyone or anything except one split second of “oh shit.” I woke up on a branch about 20 feet up in a fir tree. Oh shit, was the first thing that again came to my mind. Years later I read in a Carlos Castenada book, that Don Juan said most people are unprepared and go to their deaths saying oh shit. I can see that, that was me, only I didn’t die, I entered a living hell.

I could still hear the car crashing down the mountain, and I don’t remember how I got down from the tree. I had been thrown out of the car near the top of the mountain and so had Thomas. I saw him lying on the ground and went to pick him up – I dropped him. I picked him up again and I laid him next to the trunk of a large fir tree so he wouldn’t roll down the hill. I told him I was so glad to see him and that we were going to be fine. He had a cut on his leg and in the back of my mind I thought it was odd that it wasn’t bleeding. I told him I was going up to the road for help and that I would be right back. I crawled up to the road on my hands and knees, my leg was broken, I was pretty sure of that. I pulled large rocks out onto the road and wrote “help” with them and an arrow pointing downhill. Not many cars traveled this road and I wanted to make sure the next one stopped. I came back to where Thomas was lying and told him that I had to go down the mountain to find Cameron and I would be back to get him. His eyes were still open, but I know now he must have been in shock. I wonder if he heard me, I wonder if he understood why I left him.

I slid and crawled down the side of the embankment and after what seemed an eternity, I saw Cameron sitting on a rock. He had blood all over him, but he was not crying, just sitting there, when he saw me he started to cry. Sometime before this I had started screaming for help. It was not like my voice, this desperate calling I could hear but could not stop.

There was no way with my broken leg, I could get Cameron up the hill. Thankfully someone was working the land up the other side of Dobyn’s Creek, he heard my cries and came down his side of the mountain, crossed the creek and found Cam and I. He took Cam and we agreed he should hurry and get to Thomas and I would make my way as fast as I could. I was crying, but thinking the worst had already happened, we were all ok, we were all alive, I was so overjoyed, so thankful. My dress must have been ripped off in the accident and I just realized that I was in my underwear. I saw, not too far from me, one of my bags of clothing I had packed for the trip. Then I started looking around and saw our stuff was strewn across the mountain. I limped over to the closest bag, found something to wear and started climbing up the mountain.

When I got near the top, others had gathered on the road and two men came down and helped me get up on the road. Thomas I said, where is Thomas, why isn’t he here, why is he still down there by the tree? An ambulance had come by then and the medics said that they were afraid to move him. They thought that he had internal bleeding or something and they didn’t want me to go down, just wait for him to be brought up. Cameron had many surface cuts and scratches but seemed to be ok, though we would all go to the hospital as soon as they brought Thomas. Oh what was taking so long? It seemed an eternity and when they finally brought him he was unconscious. They put him in the ambulance and told me that he would be fine. That I shouldn’t sit by him as it might disturb him. This is one of the worst parts. They are professionals, why did they tell me he was ok when they must have known that he was dying. Did they think that by telling me he was going to be alright, that is what I wanted to hear? Well they were wrong, Thomas died before he got to the hospital and I never got to be close with him again and I regret the loss of that opportunity so much. It haunts me that I was not holding him when he died, that I let a bunch of strangers tell me what to do. Maybe I focus on that because it is hard to focus on the actually loss of him that afternoon. When we were in the ambulance on the mountain though, I still believed what they were telling me, that they just had to stabilize Thomas and we would go and meet the helicopter that would take us to the hospital. Finally the helicopter took us off the mountain and down to Garberville, and as soon as we landed we were rushed away in an ambulance. I can’t even remember how it happened, but as soon as we got there someone came out to say Thomas was dead. I rushed past them into the room and saw Thomas on a table, I hugged him and he made a sound. I thought he was alive. No, they said, that is just air, he is dead. Not alive, how can that be, they said he was going to be fine. Dead, no this can’t be. How can this be? Dead. Noooooo.

Cam and I were admitted to a room. It was now late and our friends had gone home. About 3 AM, I kissed a sleeping Cam and left the hospital. It seems odd now that no one tried to stop me, but it was a small town, a one floor place. I limped down the main street until I got to the hotel where my friends were staying. At dawn, we went and got Cam. I asked if I could see Thomas and they said he was already in Eureka, which was 2 hours away. Wow, no one asked or mentioned it to me. I had to find Thomas, I had to see him. A few neighbors from Zenia had come down to town when they heard the news. It was weird, I can remember saying to them, yes, Thomas is dead, but not really getting it. No one knew what to say or how to act. I realized that we had no way to deal with my son’s death. I was shocked at how unprepared we were for an event of this kind. We let the hospital and the crematorium tell us what to do. We had no funeral, no ceremony. Luckily our really good friends from LA were there and could take me to Eureka to see Thomas.

When I got there, I was taken into a hallway, where T was laying on a cart. I knew right away it was not him. He was gone; his body was nothing without him in it. I looked over and I saw his little shoes in the garbage can. I wish I had grabbed them. Later they gave me a box covered in white paper with his ashes in it. We just stood around the parking lot a long time. Where to go from here. It was finally decided that since we were heading to Port Townsend yesterday, and we were already in Eureka today, we might as well keep going north; our friends would take us the rest of the way to Seattle and Port Townsend.

Those are the bones of what happened that day, July 11, 1983. It takes two pages to tell and it has taken me twenty years to be able to tell it.