We lived
in Everett when Mount St. Helens erupted thirty two years ago. A huge thundering boom woke us up that Sunday
morning and we knew what it was as soon as we heard it.
We had been
following the news about the mountain for weeks because Spirit Lake was one of
our favorite camping places and when we lived in Napavine Dave’s favorite
fishing spot on the Toutle river was close enough for him to drive down to fish
early in the morning and be home by breakfast.
In fact, that
is where he was supposed to be that Sunday.
He was going to drive down and stay with my parents, who still lived
within sight of the mountain, fish all weekend then drive home Sunday
afternoon.
Don’t you
wonder sometimes about the twists and turns your life takes? How you get from one place to another...and
how you could be someplace else now...or nowhere at all...if only...?
He couldn’t
reach them when he called so he stayed home.
We watched the devastation on TV all day...and worried...and called
every couple of hours. It was late in
the week before we talked to them.
Isn’t it
always the simplest things? By accident
or design I wonder...who knows? The countless
ups and downs in life...the endless choices that get us from one day to the
next... the fishing trip that didn’t happen because Mom cut a phone line while
gardening.
AT THE
END OF THE DAY...thirty two years later we are seventeen days away from retirement
and sometimes I still wonder...don’t you?
ST HELENS
Where is the
Mountain?
It’s falling
all around you
Can’t you see
it
drifting
everywhere?
Where are the
flowers
that were
growing in the meadows?
On the
graves of those who wouldn’t listen
The ones
entombed forever beneath the Mountain.
~FK~
Oh, the twists and turns of a life! My daughter left Kobe, Japan just hours before the great earthquake there. She took THAT moment to leave, and what others chose another time? There was a little boy who picked up a stick and hit a power-pole in anger at the exact moment the eastern seaboard went black back in '66. How do we account for all the oddities being somewhere? Thank you for the account, and I hope your mother knew that the pattern was set before she cut the phone cord--that his death was not her fault. K
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