Spring/Summer 2000 One Year Later - Learning to Live Again

Spring/Summer 2000 - One Year Later

Learning To Live Again
by Kari McGinnis

The count is two and two. The pitcher checks the runner on first out of the corner of his eye before he sends the ball sailing directly over home plate. Before it can smack the catcher’s glove, Frank King brings the bat around and makes contact. Safe on first, Frank leads off, confident as his son, Jason King, 26, steps up to the plate.

Wade and mother, Mary KingJason brings his bat back and waits for his pitch. He wallops the ball into the outfield and father and son round the bases toward home. A few of their men’s league teammates shout out, but one voice is distinctly missing. The June 10, 1999, pipeline explosion silenced 10-year-old Wade King’s cheer.

The bright-eyed little boy who was a catcher just like his dad and his big brother, loved being around action, especially baseball.

"He was virtually born on a baseball field," Frank says. "His brother was playing for Sehome High School when he was born. I mean he grew up on the field."

When he started playing T-ball, Wade crouched behind the plate with all his gear on. When he went to Jason’s games, the big kids would put the catcher’s gear on him. He was so small that with all that gear on he couldn’t move.

"At [Jason’s] baseball games he was always the bat boy and he’d run around the bases and he’d always be dirtier than Jason was after the game," says Jessica, Jason’s wife. "He’d be this little dust pile – Pigpen from Peanuts. Even in his own games, he wouldn’t have any reason to slide, but he’d slide."

Like little boys everywhere, Wade shadowed his big brother. Even though Wade threw right-handed, he swung the bat left-handed because he learned by mirror-imaging Jason.

"Wade watched Ken Griffey Jr. and he watched Jason … he watched all the greats swing the bat so he had this picture-perfect swing," Jessica says as she holds a photograph of Wade and points out that the ball is about 2 feet away, but the swing is perfect.

She lays the photo back in the pile inside Frank’s briefcase where he keeps them among endless pipeline documents and reports. There aren’t any photos of Wade hanging on walls or adorning shelves in the Kings’ home. Constant reminders such as photos of her son would be too difficult for Mary King to see every day.

Mary’s days were filled with being Wade’s mother for 10 years. After Wade died, Frank says Mary gave up.

"She didn’t want to be here. I kept saying, ‘I want Wade back,’ and she kept saying, ‘I want to be with Wade.’ It was a real difficult time until probably the tail end of last September and then they finally put her on some drugs. But then of course you think, ‘Is this what the rest of our life is? To be on mood-altering drugs so that we can stay out of the depression of losing a child in such a horrific way?’ And it doesn’t matter how it happens … because you’re not supposed to lose a child."

Now Mary wakes up each morning and wonders what to do with her day.

"The biggest obstacle for me is trying to find a purpose," she says. "I’m still searching. I’m still trying to put a picture together of who I am. I’m not sure sometimes. Being a mom, I felt, was the most important thing I could do …" her voice trails off as she stares out the window in silent contemplation.

The smell of rhubarb-strawberry cookies fills the air. The kitchen shelves hold a collection of every type of cookbook imaginable. But for four months Mary didn’t cook or bake anything. She couldn’t do anything that related to being a mother.

"Things that we did before are really hurtful – the reminders," she whispers. "Maybe in time the things that are familiar will be comforting. Like his room. I mean we can’t go in there. We absolutely can’t. It’s horrid. And that has not changed. Last summer I would go in there and just get totally nuts."

Tracy Bell, 28, says sometimes it doesn’t seem like her little brother is really gone.

"It’s just a kind of weird feeling and then you go, ‘Oh yeah, it is real,’" she says. Tracy helped her mom realize that she needed to go through Wade’s clothes and donate them before they went out of style. Wade was always interested in fashion, probably because Mary works at the Gap. Mary smiles as she recalls how Wade would lay out his outfits right down to his dress socks. The memory, like so many others, is sweet, but the feeling of loss it invokes is more than a smile can hide. As the tears spill down her face, Mary says she simply couldn’t get rid of his little socks.

"Some days I just don’t know if I can do this, if I can put one foot in front of the other," Mary says, crying. "It’s like being paralyzed with grief. It’s like having your leg or arm cut off, part of you, and you have to learn to go on without it. You really have to recreate yourself, to change so much."

Mary’s search for a purpose led her to The Nature Conservancy, a private nonprofit organization, where she hopes to find a connection with Wade by volunteering to work with eagles. After Wade died, Genni Morrill, a friend who started doing some housekeeping for Mary when she was pregnant with Wade, brought a rock with an eagle carved on it to his grave and said, "Soar with the eagles, Wade."

Mary, who fondly recalls Wade’s love of mythology, has read that birds are a mythological symbol for the soul.

Ever since Wade died, the family has seen eagles and had experiences with birds that make him seem close by. Mary’s face lights up as she tells how her sister-in-law was on a walk when a bluejay followed her and swooped down near her, chirping.

"And she said she finally turned to it and said, ‘OK Wade, I’ll tell your mom that you’re OK,’" Mary says, her voice cracking. After a long pause, she quietly recalls a weekend the family went to an inn in Langley and they’d just gotten into their room when Tracy saw an eagle swoop right by the window. Mary’s voice is barely audible and her tears flow freely down her cheeks.

"It was like Wade saying I’m with you … and I know that’s what he’s doing because he’d never be left out."

Wade had a way of being part of everything. Jason says his little brother was simply so likable that he often ended up the center of attention. An eagle got Jason’s attention one day when he and a friend were out on his boat fishing. They were filleting the bait and hucking the part they didn’t use when an eagle came soaring down and grabbed the scraps right out of the air.

"Whenever I’m out at the islands and see an eagle, it feels like Wade’s around," Jason says, adding that he and Jessica often take their boat out to the San Juan Islands. "I find more solitude in that right now than I would in church," he says. Jason hasn’t been able to go back to church since Wade’s funeral. "Probably part of it is just not wanting to be around people a whole lot. It’s nice to have people around you that support you, but after awhile you have to kind of wean yourself off of that so you don’t feel so pitiful.

"Never a day goes by that the first thing on your mind isn’t … you know, not necessarily the disaster, but something to do with Wade or his life. More and more it’s becoming positive – little things you did or little things he used to say, little weird habits he had. I don’t think that will ever go away and I hope it doesn’t because you have to be reminded of that sort of stuff. I’m always going to have that hole. For a while it’s like a whole half of you is gone."

Mary is finding little things to help fill the hole in her life. She fills part of her days walking. While she won’t walk through Whatcom Falls Park the way she used to, she found a different path that leads to Skutter Pond. The area is full of red-winged blackbirds and sometimes she sees a large eagle up in a tree.

"I get back there and I hear the sounds and I feel sad, but I feel really connected to Wade. … That’s about as close as you can get, is nature, and it’s so beautiful. On the other hand just looking at the black on those trees makes my stomach churn," Mary says, adding that she and Frank used to drop Wade at the bus stop every morning and then walk through the park. Frank doesn’t go walking anymore.

Now he gets up in the morning and the first thing he does is read the paper to see what’s happened with the oil industry in the last day. He goes to work at Import Motors, which he has owned for nearly five years, but his mind is never fully devoted to his business. Frank has made pipeline reform his business.

He has gone from not knowing anything about pipelines to knowing every detail that could ever be applicable, more than anyone would ever want to know.

"The more I find out about (the pipeline industry), and the more I find out about the Office of Pipeline Safety, the more frightened I become about what’s going on in this country," Frank says. "I mean all you have to do is read these laws and you see that they’re all written so the pipeline industry can get out of them. Imagine that it’s not even a violation to have a spill."

Frank’s office window faces Whatcom Creek where it exploded. The table in the center of the office is cluttered with various pipeline reform bills and other related material. A painting Wade created hangs on the wall next to a shelf filled with photographs of the little boy who was the light of his family’s life.

"The love that I have for my son … I cannot allow Wade to be buried along with the pipeline and for his life not to have meant something," Frank says. "If this was the way he was meant to go … I have nothing to gain by trying to make change, nothing. In fact, I probably have a lot to lose because I take a lot of time away from my business and put pressure on the people who work for me to get the job done without me."

Frank is fighting for critical change beyond what’s included in the reform bills being considered. During his trip to Washington, D.C., in April for the conference on pipeline safety, Frank came up with two laws.

"I call the first one Stephen’s law," he says. "That is that there can be zero tolerance for spills. … The other I call Wade’s law, and it’s simply if you don’t cooperate, you don’t operate."

Frank pulls a book out of his briefcase.

"I’ve been asking this question ever since this accident happened … ‘Why has Olympic Pipe Line been allowed to continue to operate south of Bayview Station when their employees won’t tell anybody what happened?’ It’s unconscionable."

He opens the pipeline regulation book and reads: "‘If the Department of Transportation investigates an accident, the operator involved shall make available to the representative of the department all records and information that in any way pertain to the accident and shall afford all reasonable assistance in the investigation of the accident.’"

Frank shakes his head as he tosses the book back in his overflowing briefcase and looks out the window. The legislation has given him something to focus on, but he realizes that there will probably be moments for the rest of their lives that bring tears and sadness. Wade was involved in so many things that without him, the family’s days seem empty.

Tracy laughs as she remembers how Wade’s energy wore everyone out. Sometimes he stayed with Tracy and her husband, Lynn, at their house on Lake Samish. They spent days out in their boat, pulling Wade on skis or on a skurf board.

"If he fell down he’d get right back up and go, go, go," she says. After a long pause she adds, "I just want my brother back and to forget this happened."

But outside the Kings’ kitchen window, the tree Wade spent hours climbing stands as a constant reminder of what is missing. Mary worried about him falling out of that tree; she never imagined something like the pipeline accident.

Jason says Wade’s death brought the family closer together and made them stronger.

"You have to be strong or you won’t survive," he says. "Time is the only thing that helps you deal with the biggest loss you could ever experience."

Frank and Mary struggle with their loss every day, but time eases the pain.

"Probably until January I cried myself to sleep every night," Frank says. "I don’t do it every night now, but I still have moments because I miss that little guy so much. You know … we shouldn’t have to go by a little league baseball field and see little kids playing baseball and feel sad. Or go by a bus stop and see little kids waiting for their bus and feel sad. … That’s not the way it’s supposed to be."

Spring/Summer 2000 - One Year Later

Learning To Live Again by Kari McGinnis

Learning To Live Again
by Kari McGinnis