I knew a guy that was fishing on a calm summer day when a tree branch fell on him and killed him.

Had a friend in high school. His parents were very well known surgeons and doctors. We lived in one state, but he went to high school in a different state at a private school focused on the arts and creative career development. His dad had his pilots license, not sure if he had his own plane or just rented, and he would fly his son to school for the year and back during holidays, breaks, or just when he wanted to come home for a weekend. Well he was back in town for the Christmas break, and had brought his girlfriend and his dorm roommate with him. He realized that he had left some stuff back at his dorm, so his dad was gonna fly him back to pick it up and then come home. (I think the flight there was only a couple hours). Anyway, they attempted to land but it was too windy, so they circled and came back once the wind died down. Unfortunately, as they were coming in for the landing, at only a few dozen feet in the air, a massive gust came in and flipped the plane over, crashing upside down in the airfield. My friend, his dad, and his roommate were all killed on impact. His girlfriend hadn’t gone with them to go back, she had stayed at his house. Super sad and sudden. We had all had lunch together at a Chinese place in town just the day or two before.

A guy that I used to work with spun out on a wet road and went through a split rail fence. A wooden rail went through his window, hit his head, and killed him instantly. The car came gently to a stop in a muddy field and was barely damaged other than the broken window. He would have walked away unharmed if the rail had missed him.

When I was in middle school a kid who went to the same Buddhist temple as my family died in a plane crash on Guam. Pilot error, apparently.

We weren’t BFFs but he was a nice kid and we had been on a few camping trips together just the year before. My younger sister was pretty close to him and got the news from his parents the day after the crash. He was popular so they ended up having something like a memorial for him at the Sunday school. People were pretty broken up about it. His parents ended up separating a few years afterward, though they stayed in touch with each other at least.

It was the first time anyone other than a grandparent or older relative I knew had died, so it kind of messed with my head for a while. I know I definitely haven’t really enjoyed flying ever since, at least.