I died on October 21, 1967, it was a Saturday. A beautiful sunny fall Saturday, a perfect day for hunting. The last thing that I remember of that life was the feeling of the compressed air that passed my right temple as it exited the 410 shot gun’s barrel just ahead of the lead beads that inflicted my fatal head wound. I don’t remember the impact, only the feeling of breeze against my ear. But I know that my young life was extinguished. I’m guessing and I’m hoping that my death certificate recorded that my cause of death was by hunting accident. I can only imagine that a few days later there was a funeral, my family cried, my classmates tried to attach themselves to the tragedy and I was buried. In that other time and place, I probably have a tombstone at the city cemetery beside my grandparents and mother and father. And that was the end of it, my first life.
But to only me, on that day, the lead shot missed hitting my head. The gun did fire and I can still hear the blast and feel the force of hot gas as it passed my ear. But as I crossed the fence and the gun’s hammer caught on the barbed wire, my friend grabbed the gun stock just as it fired. That small touch changed the trajectory just enough that the beaded shots traveled harmlessly past. After recovering from the subsequent cold sweat and discussing how lucky I was, although shaken, I continued on with my morning of hunting with my future brother-in-law. And we both went on to raise our families.
October 21, 1967, my first life or death fork in the road.
Such is the life of John.
DistantShipSmoke 