Walking Thunder

My father died on an otherwise unassuming winter day in 2002. His death was not an expected one and, as you might imagine, it rocked my family and I to the core. He and my mother had been thoroughly divorced and separated by then, but it would have been hard to tell by the way she reacted. "Sometimes love persists even when it fails to unite, Michael." Dad said that to me once.

He worked in a veneer mill, my dad did. He had for... Well, all his life, really. It was under a large corporation, just one of the many wood processing plants they owned. The place had an impressive safety record prior to what happened, too. Especially when one considers the kind of work they do there. Accidents are bound to happen though; no streak will last forever. Such was the case at my dad's mill.

There are a lot of moving parts in a veneer mill. Conveyor belts, giant knives that clip and peel the wood, plenty of spinning wheels and pulleys and so forth. It's easy to maim yourself beyond recognition or function at just about every turn. Sure, there are guards and safety regulations, but all the precautions in the world are useless against a perfect storm. That's where my father found himself that day.

It was a wood chipper that got him. He had been working near it when something happened. Despite an investigation being launched afterwards, no one managed to discern how or why, only that he went in head first. It's likely that a piece of stray veneer managed to snag him and pull him onto the conveyor belt that fed into the series of spinning blades and grinders. People only knew something was wrong when the chipper began smoking and making an awful stuttering sound.

The blades had got caught in his steel toe boots.

They installed a metal detector sometime after that.

That was how my father died. We got a coffin for him despite the fact that the only thing even remotely intact were his feet. Buried him in a nice little spot at one of the local cemeteries. It was a good service, too. Dad was never partial to religion and the priest really hammed it up, but I think he would have liked the serenity of it. Mom cried. Brother cried. I cried. It was an awful end to a great man, we all knew. I think that's what hurt the most, just knowing how he went. People - mainly his coworkers - had plenty of condolences.

I didn't like it when people referred to his death as a "passing." That's no way to describe what happened to him. Passing infers peace, it makes it seem like he went in his sleep or with a smile on his face. He didn't though. He went into that chipper screaming in terror. I can't know that he died like that for sure, no one can, but how he could he not have?

The weeks that followed were hard on everyone. My brother, Scott, he'd just have bouts of sobbing most every night. That's what his wife told me one night over the phone, asking me for help or advice. It's understandable, a normal reaction. Mom took to the bottle quite a bit more than usual. Vodka was her drink of choice. She would get real angry and sad when she drank too much. She always drank too much during that period, too. It was, in a way, healthy and normal for them both, I think. Of course, the death of a loved one is a good excuse to develop a bad habit and getting too lost in your grief can drive you to some dark places. I'm not trying to say anyone was well or happy, of course not, just that they were undergoing the stages of grief as well as they could.

But eventually the grief would run its course and my mom would sober up and my brother wouldn't be so goddamn quiet all the time. And it did, too. One year later and they were both much better than they had been initially. Therapy and group sessions helped them get through things. They leaned on each other and on me. That's why family is there.

I did not recover like they did though. Denial, denial, denial. Years of it. I knew my father was dead, that was not a truth I could reject so easily as a full grown man. The feelings of it, though? The sense of loss, the sheer pain of it? I could deny all of that forever as far as I was concerned. Just keep pushing it down and down. Only that wasn't healthy. My mother and brother processed that internal shit in their own ways. It was hard, yeah, it was never not going to be. But in a year, two years, five years, they were functional and living like they were alive. I was not.