Taylor Tower - Little Niagara

 

So, it's 1995, the beginning of summer. I'm waiting for my dad to pick me up for the end-of-season T-ball trophy dinner. This is a huge deal, okay? Because my parents split up when I was two, and so I only get to see my dad for a handful of days out of the year and I really look forward to it all year long. And usually, I'm just like, “It's going to be so fun. It's going to be so exotic.”

 

For example, I go to visit him, and every time he's in a different apartment. [audience laughter] What? It's like musical chairs. He lives with these people called roommates, so it's like an adult sleepover, I guess. One time, he gave me and my brother Chef Boyardee for dinner in a coffee mug, because the dishes were dirty. That's exotic, guys. And this time, he was coming to me. He was taking me to the end-of-season T-ball trophy dinner. But I could never tell my friends about my dad. I mean, no matter what I said, they would always end it with, "Well, yeah, but why doesn't he live with you all the time?" 

 

And nobody seemed to get it. I mean, every time I met somebody new, a teacher, a neighbor, they'd be like, "Oh, your dad doesn't live with you?" and they'd make this face like they were disappointed in him and really sad for me. It wasn't just new people. I knew my mom didn't like him from how she talked to him on the phone. She would slam the phone down really hard, but she wouldn't let go of the phone after that. She would just slam it down. 

 

And one time, she said something really weird to me. She was building a playhouse in the backyard from scratch, and she was letting my little brother hold nails while she hammered, so he felt like he was useful. And out of nowhere she goes, "So, do you guys miss having a dad?" I didn't get it. I didn't know what to say, because what was she talking about? I do have a dad, and he's about to take me to the end-of-season T-ball trophy dinner where I'm going to get my first trophy ever.

 

I don't even know what it's going to look like. I mean, is it going to be this golden figure frozen mid-swing, with a plaque below it and my name in capital letters? And what is my dad going to do when the coach calls my name? I mean, how is my dad going to compare to the other dads? Is my dad going to jump out of his seat? Is he going to cheer the loudest? Is he going to whistle with two fingers? And what are the other kids going to think? I mean, are they going to think that my dad is the right kind of dad? 

 

And that's when I hear the door open behind me and my mom comes out and she sits down next to me on the front steps, and she says, "He's not coming." And I'm like, "Why?" And she says, "He had an accident." And I'm like, "Well, what kind of accident?" And she says, "He drowned in the Colorado River. He's dead." And I thought, but how can he be dead? What about my trophy? How can he be dead before I even got to know him? I'm nine years old, so I know what death is. I mean, I know it's forever. But we didn't go to the funeral. My mom said that we were too little. And so, nothing about my everyday life changed. So, I thought every time that I had to tell somebody that my dad was dead, maybe that would help me make sense of it. 

 

But before, when people were super disappointed that he didn't live with me. I mean, now when they heard he was dead, their face just fell to the ground. The only thing they were saying over and over to me was, "I'm sorry." And the only thing I could think to say was, "It's okay," but it wasn't okay at all. When I was 14, my aunt and my cousin took my brother and I on a road trip to Moab to visit my dad's grave. I didn't really know my dad's side of the family, so it seemed really weird to be doing something so intimate with them. 

 

We stayed with my grandma. She suffered from emphysema, and she always had this oxygen tank trailing behind her. I remember she didn't really say anything to me when we got to her house, but she hugged me for way too long. And then, she took my bags to the guest room. I turn on the light, and every single wall is plastered with pictures of my dad from every stage of his life. And so, I start looking at the pictures, trying to find something of what I remember about him. But these were taken way before me and my brother came around and I don't recognize the person in these pictures. 

 

I lay in bed that night, and the few memories that I do have of my dad are just crushed under the weight of all these eyes on me in the dark, these eyes of somebody that I don't even understand. And so, the next day, we get in the car and we drive to the cemetery. My brother opens the door. The first thing I see is my dad's tombstone. I thought I'd have a second. I thought we'd have to walk there. But right through the door is my dad's name in capital letters etched on this stone. So, I get out and I stand directly over it and I try to feel something like what I felt with him when I was a kid. 

 

There's about 16 million things written on his tombstone. I don't even know how people fit it all on there, but it's like, producer, photographer, sound designer, father. And father just sounds alien to me. I never called him that. And so, here I am, looking for a piece of myself, and all I can see is everybody else's story of my dad. Although I tried, all I could feel was that I was in the company of strangers standing over my dad's bones. And so, after that, I decided, he's gone. You're never going to know him. Why try? Just move on. That's what grown-ups do. 

 

And so, I got older and I told myself, I have one parent, I have a mom. We're really close. That's enough. I am really close with my mom. We talk like a couple times a week on the phone. And not that long ago, we were talking on the phone and she was telling me about cleaning out her office. I might have tuned out a little bit. And then, she took a pause, like she was thinking. And right before I was about to say, "Mom, are you there?" she said, "And while I was cleaning, I found something." I said, "Well, what did you find?" And she said, "I found the witness reports from your dad's death."

 

My mom had filed a wrongful death suit against the Whitewater Rafting company that my dad was with when he died. And so, because of that, she had all this documentation about the accident. But I was a kid at the time, so obviously I'd never seen any of this stuff. I knew how he died, but she had the words of the people who were with him in front of her. And so, I said, "Well, can you read one of them to me?" And so, I could hear her pulling one out. The paper was rustling over the phone and she goes, "Okay, this one is from a guy named Jerome, and he titled it The Drowning of David Tower at Little Niagara in Cataract Canyon." 

 

I have the first paragraph memorized. Jerome was like, "I was a passenger on the river trip out of Moab on 5/14/95. I met David Tower that day, who several times sang the beginning of the Gilligan's Island theme. [audience chuckle] And then, he quoted a line from the Gilligan's Island theme in the report just to really drive that point home, [audience laughter] because nobody knows what Gilligan's Island is. And then, Jerome goes on to say that David was friends with John Williams, the owner of Navtech Expeditions, according to David. He told me that he asked John if there was anything for him to do, and he was enlisted as the swamper for the support boat. David demonstrated during the trip his fondness for alcohol, tobacco and food. 

 

I told my mom to keep reading. Jerome talks about how right before what he calls the fateful event, perhaps a callback to Gilligan's Island, [audience chuckle] the group scoped out the rapids at the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, some of the biggest whitewater in North America. And apparently during this trip, my dad was supposed to be bailing water, because you're not supposed to have water in your boat. That doesn't help it be a boat. [audience laughter] My dad wasn't really nailing it, according to Jerome. And so, Jerome was considering trading places with my dad and having my dad be the passenger, and Jerome would just take this. But he decided against it, because it might be disrespectful to the guides. So, Jerome stayed in his own boat.

 

He didn't actually see my dad fall out of the raft when it plunged over this 30-foot rapid called Little Niagara. He just heard another passenger say, "People in the water." And the details were so vivid, it was like I was there. I mean, I could put myself in my dad's position. I could feel the water all around me. I could feel the current holding me down. And as my mom was talking, I thought about the time that I visited my dad in California at one of his apartment complexes that had a pool. We were paddling around and I asked him, "Can we play this game where you're the daddy whale, I'm the baby whale, and I ride on your back and you dive to the bottom of the pool?"

 

So, I climbed on his back, and he told me to hold my breath and he counted to three and went under. It was super sunny and the light was just slicing up the water. And I kept my eyes open, because I knew I wanted to remember everything about this. We made it to the bottom of the pool, and my dad tapped the drain and we turned to go back to the surface. I wasn't sure if I could hold my breath any longer, but I did it and we were laughing so hard when we came out. 

 

My mom's still reading. It's the end of the report at this point. And Jerome says that they found my dad in an eddy and they pulled him into the boat, and Jerome gave him a couple breaths and water poured from his nose and mouth. Jerome said my dad's eyes were open, so he took his hand and he closed them and then they went downstream to the ranger station. And then, my mom wanted to discuss this. She wanted to pick it apart. She had some strong feelings about Jerome, and it was all in the tone of someone who had already processed the loss. And so, I said, "I have to go," and I hung up the phone. And I sat there in this silent, weightless satisfaction, because somehow this witness report let me hang out with my dad one more time. I got to hear his voice. I got to hear him singing. I got to see him hanging out. And finally, I didn’t have to decide if he was the wrong dad or the right dad. He was just my dad.