Jerry had been drinking on February 18, 1995, the night he died just a few hundred feet from our cabin. He was alone there that weekend; my mom and I were skiing in Tahoe. I was 13, old enough to feel the calamity of his death but too young for anyone to entrust me with the details. At the time, Mom told me Jerry had gotten into a fight and that his body had been found in the doorway of the Otter Bar owners’ private residence. The few times I asked for specifics, Mom’s response was short: “You don’t want to know.”
But I’m 28 now, and I do want to know. Jerry was flawed, but he wasn’t a monster. He raised me from age four to 13, and even though his death gave my family a twisted kind of peace, I still loved him.
By Megan Michelson, Outside Magazine
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