I remember being immortal, I was in my twenties, living in Hawaii, working high construction, chasing skirts, swilling bubbles, jumping off of balconies into swimming pools, fucking with gals you just met in a sneaked hotel room, riding fast bikes into the black night, sleeping on the beach. That was my first brush with the darkness of death. We were talking by a small fire on Sunset Beach on the west shore of Oahu, it was around 1 or 2 in the morning, about 10 of us had biked over just before dusk, to be there to get an early start on the surfing. Out of nowhere a brilliant bluewhite flash lights up the night, the is a sharp loud crash,a shower of sparks a few hundred feet inland and another lower more powerful explosion, smoke, more sparks,,,,silence,dead silence. All of this had happened in a space of 15-20 seconds. The first thought was we had unknowingly gotten on a Naval gunnery range, but there were no more rounds. We went over to where the explosion was, I don't know qiute how to describe how we got there, it was kind of a scared shitless crawl run,back toward the road,where our bikes were parked. When we got there we found the car, the car that had gone out of control left the highway,slid silently thru the wet grass and taken out a powerline pole and transformer,the second explosion was the transformer landing on top of the car, there were 4 people in the car, 2 girls,2 guys,2 unharmed,1 injured with a broken arm,leg and ribs and one pretty young girl about my age,was not breathing, no pulse, no movement, still warm, limp,hard to carry away from the car she was so limp, other than some facial lacs no bleeding,just limp,very,very limp. we cover her with a blanket,but not her face,still hoping we are wrong. Finally about 30 minutes later police and ambulances arrive, they care for the injured guy and take him to Kaneohe Hospital,he will survive, the pretty young girl did not, sad, so sad.

What brings this up to the surface is the death last night of a first cousin of my son-in-law, his name was Clay, he was 27, he was a Fireman/Paramedic. Clay and Cory (Cory is my son-in-law) were more like siblings,both only children, both firefighters, Clay worked for the Galveston FD, Cory for the Longview FD, both love fishing and being outdoors. Clay was a gregarious, full of life young man, still single and living large on the Strand. He had just bought a new bike about a week ago, he had spent the afternoon Sunday cleaning it after being at the beach that morning, His roomate said he wanted to "blow dry" it, he did not wear his helmet, that is irrelavent as he lost control and hit a fence at what police described as "a very high rate of speed" he died instantly. His parents,one can't imagine the pain of outliving your children, I never want to, I lost both my parents before I was 17, that was bad enough. Life is full of pain and loss but also happiness, joy and exuberence. Clay in his final few moments of exuberence has left his parents with a life of pain.

It is so sad, we will miss him, his Pickup with flames on the front fenders won't be pullin in the driveway to go fishin' anymore.
Sadness
Steve