My friend Tom Riness died 40 years ago today in a car-train accident in rural Michigan. He was 21. Nobody knows what happened. Tom was on his way to work (as a surveyor) on a cold winter morning. Perhaps he was wearing headphones and didn't hear the train whistle. Perhaps he tried unsuccessfully to race the train. Perhaps he tried to stop but slid on the ice. Perhaps he killed himself.
I have thought about Tom many times over the years, always fondly. I miss him. It saddens me that I have had 40 wonderful years to live that he never had. I'm sure that he would have had a long and successful career as an architect, for he had just received his degree in architecture and had even designed a house already. I know that he wanted kids and would have had a large, loving family. A few days before he died, he asked me to be in his wedding. The house that he designed, as far as I know, is still there, a tangible tribute to the man who conceived it.
Tom's father had a fatal heart attack a year or so before Tom died. A day or so after Tom died, we had a blizzard. One of Tom's friends brought his tractor over to clear the roadway, so that people could pay their respects to Tom's mother. The tractor slid into the ditch, pinning the friend against the seat. He suffocated. A year or so after Tom died, his brother Bill died in a motorcycle accident on a lonely road near Bad Axe. In the space of four or five years, Tom's mother lost her husband and both of her sons. It's heartbreaking.
Life is precious and fragile. Don't take it for granted.
