It was a December day and I was in the 9th grade, staying after school with my good friend Marilyn to work on a Home Ec project. I remember we were making skirts on the sewing machines, and I had gotten behind on mine so I was trying to catch up. My mom had agreed to pick us up when we were finished and give Marilyn a ride home.
It was just starting to get dark outside when we pulled into her neighborhood, and we were greeted by the eerie sight of many flashing emergency lights and a lot of commotion going on at a nearby construction site. We briefly checked out the scene as we drove by, but really couldn't see much except several emergency vehicles on hand. Marilyn offhandedly remarked that her dad was working at that site, and the three of us wondered what was happening. We pulled into her driveway and she got out and waved goodbye. Little did any of us suspect that upon opening her front door, she was about to enter a scene of tragic chaos.
After getting home and eating dinner, I stretched out on my bed with the radio on (CKLW was my station of choice in those days) and began to do my Latin homework. I struggled with it for awhile, then decided to call Marilyn, who was also in my class, to collaborate. Her mother answered the phone, and when I asked to speak to my friend, she told me that Marilyn was unable to talk right then; that her father had died that afternoon. My mind began whirling in shock and disbelief. I knew Jack fairly well and liked him, he always talked and joked with us kids. It was all I could do to stammer "OK, thank you" as I hung up. I turned to my mom and began to cry; she hugged and comforted me as best as she could.
After awhile I returned to my bedroom, staring numbly at the school books still open on my bed. The radio was still playing and the news came on. That's when I heard the horrific news that Jack had been crushed to death when the underground construction site he was working at had caved in on top of him. I had never dealt with death before in my 14 years and this was a devastating way to hear that grim news, delivered so impersonally and matter-of-factly by a news commentator. I called for my mom and I remember she laid down on the bed and cried with me.
Somehow, I went to school the next day. Our Latin teacher, knowing that Marilyn and I were friends, asked me why she wasn't in class. I vividly remember feeling very uncomfortable and on the verge of tears when I answered in front of the whole class that her father had died the night before. After class, the teacher walked with me down the hall and asked me about what had happened. Later I found out that she wrote Marilyn a compassionate letter, telling how her own father had also died suddenly when she was a teenager.
I recall standing in the gym at lunch time and talking with a group of girls about the tragedy. One of the things my mother had said to comfort me was that Jack had probably not suffered because the accident most likely had happened very quickly. I repeated it to this group of girls and one of them scoffed at me, saying, "Of course he suffered, he slowly suffocated to death!" My mind immediately went into another tailspin, imagining how he probably died thinking about his family, wondering how they would get along without him, thinking about not being able to see his four kids grow up. I went home sick that afternoon and I wasn't faking it--I was literally sick at heart.
It was the first time I ever had to deal with death, and it was particularly tough because it came in such a shocking and tragic way.
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