A storm destroys your uncle's shed and kills his six-year-old son

"Where I Learned About Mortality"

I had only met Stanley once, when I was in first grade – Christmas of 1991. It was at Aunt Karey’s house in Gravenhurst. We had all came the afternoon of Christmas Day, after having first Christmas with our respective parents – which, let’s be honest, was the main attraction. But this was second Christmas, and sometimes our grandparents got us stuff our parents wouldn't. I always looked forward to second Christmas.

Stanley lived in Port Elliot – I had no idea where that was at the time, of course, but I knew it was far. I just wanted more people to play water guns with. There ended up being all five of us kids there (including Stanley and his brother, Shane, who were the only cousins I hadn’t met before that day), and I remember that being the most fun second Christmas ever. Aunt Karey had a crawl space and we dragged pillows and blankets in it to make a fort, then we brought our toys in. Stanley got a Lite-Brite (the ones with the plastic pegs, back then) and I remember us being so into that, for some reason. Some of the other boys played Game Boy but I was a little sad I never got one so I tried not to get too into that. I remembered we high-fived when we were leaving, and we thought we’d at least get to hang out again next Christmas, because look how much fun it was! But that was the last Christmas he was alive for.
 

The storm was the following summer. I remember that day, because we’d gotten warnings about it. They'd called a school assembly, so we thought it must be serious. In fact, we didn’t end up getting it that bad, down where we were in the city. It rained heavily and thundered for about 12 hours and cleared up by the next morning. Port Elliot, however, got it bad. Perhaps Stanley didn’t attend his school’s assembly. Allegedly what had happened was he climbed out his bedroom window during the night and made it all the way to the lake in the pouring rain, but it was so hot, and I guess he’d gotten so wet at that point that he felt going in the water wouldn’t make a difference. When the lightning hit, all that was untouched was his shoes, which he’d placed neatly on a rock by the shore.

Sometimes people say things like “at least it can’t get any worse” but the truth is it can always get worse, because that night, a large portion of a tree also fell on Uncle Jim’s shed, breaking through the roof and two of the walls. It stayed like that for the next two years.