Even after the eight-hour trip, I was restless. A van from my motel picked me up the driver, it turned out, was a neighbor of the Fairbanks family. On Wednesday afternoon, I flew to San Luis Obispo. Monday from a friend, Tim Ryan, entertainment writer for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The accident happened on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This time, I loved those people disappearing down that dark and bottomless whirlpool. This time, it was my friends whose lives were being distilled into a few pithy paragraphs on the obituary pages. Immune to grief.Įxcept that Jeff, the managing editor of the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, was a dedicated friend: kind, generous with praise, supportive when you were struggling, never jealous of your success.Įxcept that Ann, the Telegram-Tribune's senior reporter, was brilliant and compassionate: someone who never held it against you that you weren't nearly as smart as she was.Įxcept that Siena, just 12 years old, was a quiet, determined child, who held her own in a family full of strong women.Įxcept that this time, I knew these people. Maybe you get inoculated against death, I sometimes thought. A pang of sympathy for their family, for their friends. A moment's reflection on what fragile, precious objects people really are. To a reporter, it's a couple of phone interviews. Death is something newspaper reporters deal with routinely.
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