by Shania Twain
My father’s injuries, too, were not apparent. According to the coroner’s report, he had suffered massive internal damage because of the steering column crushing his chest. The force from the collision had pushed in the vehicle’s front end on the driver’s side like an accordion, so that the steering wheel was left almost touching the back of the seat. Unlike my mother, though, he was still alive when the ambulance arrived and calling out for help. The medics rushed my father and two other injured passengers, both Native North American employees of my parents’ reforestation company, to the hospital. It has always upset me that they decided to leave my mother behind. I understand their reasoning—she’d been declared dead at the scene, and the ambulance was already at capacity—but the image of her being left there alone in the bush, hunched over the dashboard, bleeding and lifeless, haunted me for a long time.
The details of the accident tortured me over and over again, as if the horror scene were stuck on repeat and I couldn’t find the remote to turn it off. It took quite a while before I finally found the off button, although the graphic images still flash in front of me from time to time, and the scene plays itself out as well.
My father died from internal injuries while on the way to the hospital. Apparently one of the injured workers regained consciousness long enough to ask, “Where’s the boy?” I can just imagine the medics wondering, What boy? “The boy,” he repeated. The fourteen-year-old son in the backseat. The medics promptly turned right around and raced back to the accident site. By now the sun was dipping below the horizon, and it took a while before they came upon Mark lying unconscious, quite a distance from the demolished vehicle. Upon impact, my brother had been thrown through the windshield of my father’s truck, landing out of sight, well off the side of the road. His injuries were not fatal, but if they hadn’t hurried back for him when they did, the bleeding and cold November air would have compromised his chances of survival. We were told that he was lucky.
Whatever peacefulness I felt in my parents’ presence at the funeral home might have been numbness more than anything else—and possibly some lingering denial—but I felt as though they were still with us, though in a different state. The permanence of their separation from us hadn’t sunk in. Not to be morbid, but I can remember thinking to myself very matter-of-factly, Why can’t we just preserve them somehow and take them home? I actually imagined setting up their caskets in the living room so that they could remain with us in this state of permanent sleep. It seems strange to me now, but at the time, I was absolutely serious. It had all happened too fast, and I just was not ready to accept the finality of losing them forever.
Together we kids discussed what to have engraved on our parents’ tombstone. It’s surreal sitting around making a decision like this. How do you encapsulate the lives of two people and what they meant to you in just a few words? Even more challenging: how do you refer to two people who died together but barely lived their lives together without killing each other?
From the time I was little, I’d always worried that my father would someday kill my mother during one of their violent struggles, or that my mother would actually live out her contemplations about killing my father as the only way she felt she could escape their destructive relationship. I never took her seriously, never thought she would ever really kill him, but it was twisted, I thought, that she would go into detail about what method would work best. I warned her that if she ever killed him, it would be considered murder, and she would go to jail for life. I reminded her that we’d lose her forever. I recall genuinely feeling that fear, even though the intention of telling her that was more to calm her down and shake her back to reality. It was all crazy thinking, in my childhood point of view, and I tried to talk her out of thoughts that scared me and that I believed she was saying out of desperation, not sincerity, and that she wasn’t actually capable of it anyway.
So I couldn’t help but be struck by the irony that they had died together in the end as the result of a car accident. It was as if, despite everything, they had been destined to be together for eternity. So “Together Forever” were the words we chose to have engraved on their headstones.
After the funeral, I thought back to something my mother had told me only months before, when she was living near me in Toronto after having left my father yet again.
We were having one of our woman-to-woman talks, which I’d found so heartwarming, because it was as if our relationship was entering a new, richer dimension. We were laughing about something when suddenly my mom turned quiet.
“I have to tell you something,” she said hesitantly. I wasn’t at all prepared for what she was about to reveal.
Apparently, my mother had visited a fortune-teller/palm reader recently. “While reading my palm, the woman said that my husband would die this November, then suddenly told me that she could not finish my reading and closed my hand,” said my mother. Neither she nor I read anything too deep into this at the time, although we both thought it was peculiar and a bit creepy. My mother believed in fortune-tellers enough to go to one in the first place and she was uncomfortable that the woman had so abruptly stopped the reading, as though alarmed. I brushed it off for both our sakes, in an attempt to dampen any worry by saying, “Ah, superstition, that’s all this stuff is about. It’s really nothing to take seriously, Mom.” You can imagine my feelings when I reflected back on this after the accident, as exactly what the palm reader had foreseen had happened. My father did die that November, on the first. What the fortune-teller could not bring herself to say out loud was that my mother was fated to die along with my father. It was incredible to me that this palm reader could be right, that she must have been for real. I was impressed by the reality that the phenomenon of clairvoyance really existed. This lady did see something that freaked her out, causing her to not finish reading my mother’s palm. Today, rather than being impressed with this skill, I’m more wary of its reality, and personally prefer not to know my future, the future of the ones I love, or even of the world I live in or of mankind. That doesn’t mean I am passive regarding the welfare of others or my role as a citizen of the world, but I believe that ultimately our Creator has it all planned out perfectly, whether I agree with the plan or not. Regardless whether I’m aware of what that plan is, it is not for me to alter it in any way, and I would therefore not want to experience unnecessary suffering and anxiety over potentially devastating information I cannot change. Why do that to yourself if you genuinely have faith in God’s ability to manage what He created? is my thinking.
In the weeks after our parents’ burial, I remained in Timmins with my siblings to help with the family responsibilities and my parents’ personal and professional affairs, which were beginning to build up with each passing day.
Kim returned to the house on Indian Grove after the funeral, and as it soon turned out, I would not be joining him anytime soon. One day, feeling overwhelmed by everything I had to deal with, I called Kim seeking a little moral support.
“Why are you calling me?” he asked icily.
Huh?
Then he simply told me never to call him again. The end.
His ruthlessness and, frankly, his timing blindsided me. I was so mired in grief and wrung out emotionally that all I could manage was a meek “Okay.” Under ordinary circumstances, I would have felt humiliated—and probably irate at being treated so shabbily. But now I had heavier burdens to bear than a bruised ego.
Jill was the oldest sibling, but she was engaged to be married and had moved out of town. Being the oldest left in the house, I assumed the role of handling the grim details of my parents’ estate. They had left no will. The most pressing issues facing us were establishing guardianship of Mark and Darryl, the business affairs of Sharont Enterprises (the name of my parents’ company: “Sharon” plus the t for the first letter in “Twain”), and paying personal and corporate taxes. There was also the distressing matter of having to sit and review with attorneys the coroner’s reports and details of the
accident, because, technically, it was my father’s fault. That was a hard reality to process.
My father was driving a Chevy Suburban truck, a forerunner of the sport-utility vehicle. It had front and backseats and a covered storage area as big as that of a pickup truck. In all, a large, heavy vehicle, with room for nine plus gear. He and my mother were transporting two of their men along the Trans-Canada Highway to a town called Wawa, about 170 miles west of Timmins. The men were to meet a helicopter there and bring food supplies to the bush camp.
About two-thirds of the way en route to the helicopter site near the town of Chapleau, my father was driving along a winding gravel road, into the sun, which was low in the sky. As best as the police could determine, the glare most likely blinded him just as he came up over a slight ridge. He saw the oncoming transport, but too late. It’s probable that he overreacted and braked abruptly, which sent the Suburban skidding head-on into the other vehicle. Brake marks in the gravel determined that he did in fact see the transport and reacted, but it’s very difficult to stop abruptly on a gravel surface, which is slippery like ice.
The concept of the cycle of life and death, and the realization of how my parents were a part of it, resonated through me with a deafening ring, like the sound of crashing metal, I imagined, that echoed through the bush when the two vehicles collided. It rattled me to consider that while they were still alive that summer and fall, my parents were replacing the very trees that would soon be loaded and transported by a truck they crashed into only weeks later. Out with the old, in with the new, I thought, was life’s cruel way of cycling and recycling. They planted new life to replace the old trees that would kill them. It was a twisted way of thinking, but my mind was in an unusual state of confusion. I didn’t know whether to be angry or sad, who to blame, if there was, in fact, anyone to blame, and I had no answers to anything other than the police report stating that my father was technically at fault.
I don’t remember how it came about, or even what the gentleman’s name was, but there was a lawyer representing my parents’ case regarding the accident, and the estate and legal matters associated with my parents. I asked the lawyer to explain how the accident could have been my father’s fault. Naturally, I was defensive and wanted to be able to blame it on the transport driver, who survived, as his vehicle was bigger and tons heavier than my father’s, and, considering the sheer size of it, it was no wonder the collision killed my parents. The notion that my father had been responsible, on top of everything else, was just too much to bear. But as the attorney explained, although he didn’t exceed the speed limit, my father would have been expected to be driving at a speed appropriate for the slippery road conditions. Further irony: had he just continued driving and not applied the brake, the two vehicles would have passed each other harmlessly like ships in the night, as there was ample room between them. Braking or not braking is all that determined whether my mom and my dad stayed alive.
For me, being just twenty-two, it was hard to take: sitting in an office, surrounded by total strangers, and having to relive my parents’ final moments, which had been reduced to several paragraphs and black-and-white diagrams. But it was necessary for an immediate family member to know and understand the circumstances as part of the procedure regarding the various insurance issues at hand. I had to sign that I understood what had been explained to me and that I accepted the accident report to be true. I wished I could deny it all, but there it was, right in front of me. I signed my name.
It was explained to me that my father’s being at fault meant that his estate would most likely be sued by the insurance companies representing the two employees and the transport driver. The company that owned the truck would no doubt sue as well for damages. I couldn’t help but think to myself, Who cares about the other vehicle? My parents are dead, and you guys are worried about a few thousand dollars’ damage to your truck? Your driver is alive; what more do you want? Hasn’t the Twain family paid enough, with two lives? I was really torn, because, on the other hand, I freely if painfully acknowledged that my father had been at fault. Which made me angry at him! But how could I be angry with my own father, when his simple error, which anyone could have made just as easily under the same circumstances, had cost him his own life?
To this day, I am still not sure how I found the strength to go through all of this. My mind was overloaded with information I could not compute, leaving me feeling vulnerable, lost, and very sorry for myself. At one point, the lawyer started discussing my parents’ mortgage on the family house, and I actually had to ask him what a mortgage was! I had no clue about banking, loans, credit, debt—any of that. My knowledge of personal finances consisted of depositing cash in the bank and withdrawing cash from the bank. That was it. Now I was having to make decisions about how to liquidate my parents’ business assets, what to do with Sharont’s current contracts with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and so on. I would walk out of these meetings mentally and physically exhausted and ready to run away from it all. In fact, I came seriously close to doing just that, I was feeling so suffocated by all the legal and business affairs and weighed down with too much responsibility and decision making.
My mother’s brother, Uncle Don, told me during the initial period after my parents’ passing that he’d promised my grandmother Eileen on her dying bed to be there for us kids after she was gone. He reminded me that he was there if we needed anything, and I should have taken him up on that after my parents died. I was lost in a world of legal protocol and jargon that I knew nothing about, but I didn’t feel right about burdening anyone else with our problems. I needed help but didn’t know how to accept it. There really wasn’t anyone else I felt I could turn to, as it was my parents whom most of our other relatives depended on. So I got through this legal affairs aftermath alone, but not without being overwhelmed and feeling the urge to flee at certain moments.
I’d heard of student groups going on missions to third-world countries. In my youthful idealism and naïveté, I figured that volunteering to do relief work in a crisis region of the world would not only take me far away from all my pain and suffering, but would put me among people in much deeper despair than I was, so that, by comparison, I’d realize how lucky I was just to be alive.
I visualized a lone child lost, dazed, and sitting by herself in the middle of a fly-pit dust bowl with her entire family dead and no relatives to help her, her fate sealed with no help no matter how hard she cried out for it. No one was coming. This was who I felt I needed to be with to help put things in a different perspective: a child whose suffering was so unimaginable, I’d actually consider myself lucky that I had lost “only” my parents and not my whole family, like this poor girl.
I imagined my only responsibilities on this mission would be carrying supplies, aiding nurses, hauling water, feeding babies, cooking meals, and living in possibly uncomfortable but manageable conditions while fulfilling helpful but functional duties that took no education or expertise. These were all things I could do, things I could manage without pressure. Understanding my parents’ estate, how it functioned, and how it would have to be dealt with over the months to come, handling their taxes, resolving the insurance issues, inheritance details—it was all too much. My role in the “no will” process of settling my parents’ affairs took many stressful and painful months to resolve. Advice to any adults out there with children: write a will so that your children never have to go through this logistical nightmare should you die unexpectedly. You will save your loved ones a lot of anguish.
In this state of mind, I was on the phone one day with a dear family friend by the name of Eveline Kasner. She, too, was a singer, known professionally as Mary Bailey. Mary was my mother’s age, and they’d become friends after having crossed paths backstage from time to time during the various shows we played together. My mom and Mary stayed in touch by phone over the years, sharing music industry stories and discussing how best to nurture my career. Mary could relate because she had b
een there, and my mother was, well, my mother, obsessed and passionate about her dream of her little girl making it. I got to know Mary in a more personal way after my mother died; in some respects, she became like a surrogate mother to me.
I was telling her over the phone, as Mary lived more than an hour’s drive from Timmins, how overwhelming everything felt and that I was considering flying to Africa as part of some humanitarian aid mission. I knew that I could not just abandon my younger siblings at this difficult time, but I was so beaten down that I questioned how much good I could do for them. I mean, I didn’t even know what a freaking mortgage was! Plus, I was no less in need of comfort and support than anyone else.
I remember saying to Mary, “What good can I be to them anyway, when the only professional thing I know how to do is in music? And I’m still at the bottom of the box in the big, bad world of the entertainment industry.” The most pressing concern at the moment was how to provide for me, Carrie, Mark, and Darryl, because no life insurance money had been released to us yet, and it was caught up in a lengthy logistical process, so it wouldn’t be for a while. What was I to do in the meantime? The idea of having to support an instant family was terrifying. My younger sister worked full-time and was very independent with regard to her own personal needs, but what about keeping up the mortgage of the family home we were all living in and covering the daily living needs of two adolescent boys, let alone electricity, heat, and phone bills?
I had no formal education and could not imagine singing in a local bar in Timmins to make my living for the next several years until Mark and Darryl were grown. That was just too depressing a thought. Not only would it derail my hopes of having a career in music, but also it wouldn’t even come close to meeting the bills. The only way I could make a decent living singing would be to travel in a band. Except how could I care for my family with two minors if I was on the road all the time? The remaining options were unacceptable to me: seeing my brothers taken separately by relatives—which was a possibility but by no means a sure thing—or, if no one could or would take them, placing them in foster care.
