The voice on the other end was frantic. “Jill?” she asked me, “Is your mom or dad home?” I told her they were at the game with my sister and brother-in-law; I was the only one home. Then came the words that no one ever wants to hear, “There’s been an accident,” she said.

My mind was racing. Who was it? What happened? She gave me some details and told me to get a hold of my parents. I told her I would and offered to drive everyone out to the scene. She was too worked up to drive but the impact of her words had not quite hit me yet. I think it’s safe to say I didn’t believe her, but who would make a joke like that?

Twenty minutes later, we were in the car and I was getting the details of what happened. My Uncle Tom, his girlfriend, my cousin John, and his wife were involved in a boating accident; they had been out watching the game. When it was over, they piled into John’s speed boat for the long trek home on that fateful foggy night. Coming to a bend in the Monongahela River, it was too dark to see an oncoming barge. At least, that is what my family and I assume.

When a barge is not carrying any coal, there is no weight in it and will stick high out of the water. This was the case that night. The tiny speed boat hit the massive barge head on, and everyone was thrown from it.

After who knows how long, another boater heard screams coming from the black water. He stopped to find two women clinging to debris and life jackets in the middle of the Monongahela, struggling to stay afloat. The women were rushed to the hospital; however, the men were yet to be found. My crew and I arrived a few minutes later.

The sight was like something you would see in a movie. Diving teams, ambulances, policemen, and firemen were everywhere. It was surreal. My cousin ran to the docks shouting her brother’s name into the silent, murky water. “Johnny,” she was yelling, “Where are you? Come back!” I was sitting at the top of the hill alone, still not fully believing or understanding what was unfolding in front of me.

Since I was the first to receive the news, the unbearable task of telling everyone was left to me. Informing one of Tom’s sisters was the hardest of all and to this day, I don’t know why I didn’t tell my cousin and leave her with the burden of telling her mom. The two people that I adamantly refused to call were my grandparents. How was I supposed to tell them that their son was missing?

I was overwhelmed. Little by little, the rest of my family showed up and we started our two day wait. I think I sat at the top of that hill for 12 hours straight, afraid to move and afraid to hear the news we all knew was eventually coming. We watched a tow truck pull the boat out of the water, and my heart completely sunk when I saw it. There was almost no boat left, just a few scrap pieces of metal and a steering wheel.

As the night crept on, we began to lose hope. We wanted to believe that Tom and John were just hurt somewhere, desperately trying to find help, but too many hours had passed, and the men were too familiar with the water. Around 2 a.m., the rescue teams called off the search for the night. Reluctantly, we all went home.

Going home is usually the best part of a bad night; it is a time to crawl under the covers and unwind. This wasn’t the case for my family and me. Being Tom’s neighbors, we pulled into our driveway and were at his house, struck with the thought that he may never be home again. His boat was already out of the water and sat parked in the driveway. I remember thinking, “Enough is enough. Just let me sleep, and I’ll wake up tomorrow and realize this didn’t really happen.”

When we returned early the next morning, half the town was there to pray and give support. The rescue teams were back in action, scraping hooks along the bottom of the river, hoping to find something. But, I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t think about the fact that one of those hooks could potentially find my uncle. My young, strong uncle that grew up boating on the Mon couldn’t possibly be down there, and I didn’t want a hook snagging him like some fisherman making his big catch.

After a morning and partial afternoon of waiting, my mom came up to me and said, “They found someone.” A little while later, we found out that they actually found both men, laying about ten feet apart from one another at the bottom of a river I knew and once loved. My head was going a mile a minute. “This isn’t happening,” I was thinking. “It’s not fair; this isn’t right.”

At that point, I didn’t think I would ever be able to boat again. I could not imagine spending a day having fun on the water knowing it took a member of my family away. This was the river that I spent every weekend of my childhood on; so many of my best memories happened there, memories with Tom. I couldn’t shake the image of him lying down there and was appalled by the thought of swimming in his death bed. That’s what this wonderful river was to me that day, a death bed. It took me a long time to get over that thought.

It’s been almost exactly two years to the day that that barge took away Tom’s life. I want people to hear his story. He was a great father, son, brother, uncle, and friend. I was just getting to know him in my adult life and justly feel ripped off that our relationship ended so suddenly, leaving me, and everyone else, without a chance to say goodbye and tell him how much he meant to us. I like to think he knew though.

He didn’t get to see either of his daughters graduate high school, get married, have children, and just plain grow up. And if anyone in the world deserved to live a full life, it was Tom.

The double funeral was one of the hardest things I have ever gone through in my life. Walking into one room and seeing your uncle then looking in the other room and seeing another family member is gut wrenching. I felt nauseous, and the thought of how unfair this was ran through my head for the millionth time. That is all I could think about. They barely looked like themselves.

I wanted to stay strong for Tom’s two daughters, but I also wanted to sit in the corner and cry until my body dried up. I opted for staying strong, although I did break down when John’s sister played Garth Brook’s “The River” and dedicated it to Tom and John. I can’t hear that song to this day without crying. The coroner said that Tom was one of the healthiest bodies he had ever worked on. It is still unbelievable to me that someone that healthy can be taken away so quickly.

After the funeral, we began the dreadful job of cleaning his house. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t help as much as I should have. I know it’s selfish, but it was hard going through Tom’s things. There were clothes in his dryer and plates in his sink, misleading signs that made me think he was coming home. I just wanted to forget about the past week and tending to his personal things forced me to accept it. In the end, I’m happy I did it. I left remembering my uncle in life, not in death.