Tom, 25: Live Like Tom

Thursday, February 13, 2020 

4:35 p.m. ET/1:35 p.m. PT

I’ve just arrived home from work when I get a cross-country phone call from my daughter-in-law in San Diego, which is unusual. 

Shannah doesn’t usually call. She texts.

“Dad,” she says, frantic. “It’s bad! It’s really bad.”

Her panic is unsettling. She’s always been so calm and composed. 

Shannah explains that Tom—her 25-year-old husband, my only son—was hit by a car while returning from a hunting trip in the mountains of East San Diego County with his friend Dave. She says Dave told her Tom is lying on the side of the road, unconscious, with a broken leg. His breathing seems shallow. 

“It’ll be okay,” I tell Shannah. “Let’s just go with the facts and deal with this as it comes.”  

I thank her for calling and ask her to keep me in the loop. “Let me know what happens next.”

Less than 15 minutes later, my phone rings again. It’s Tom’s number, but it’s not Tom’s voice I hear when I answer.

It’s his friend Dave.  

“Hey, Mr. O’Connor,” he says. “Sorry to meet like this.”

He tells me Tom is still unconscious. Highway patrol cars, fire vehicles and Emergency Medical Services trucks are on the scene. “I’m sorry,” he says, over and over again.

Father and son hug, 2011.

Dave explains that they had pulled over to secure a loose tarp on the back of Tom’s pickup after an empty water jug popped out of the bed and went flying down the highway. After tucking the tarp into place, they turned to get back in the truck when a car from the far left lane swerved across the road, heading right at them. As Dave dove to the ground, he heard Tom yell, “Oh, fuck!” 

The car straightened out at the last moment, avoiding the truck but hitting Tom. The impact hurled him 30 feet high and 60 feet forward. 

Dave, clearly distraught, keeps saying, “I’m sorry.” I tell him he doesn’t need to apologize; it just as easily could have been him that was hit. 

Shannah calls a half-hour later to tell me Tom is being transported by helicopter to Sharpe Memorial Hospital, the county’s largest trauma center. That’s when my heart begins to sink. Tom, I realize, is dealing with more than a broken leg.

I refocus, determined to be the calm in the storm, and break the news to my wife, Mary, when she gets home from work. She calls our daughter, Caitlin, who is three years older than Tom and lives near our home in the Tampa Bay area.

The three of us are huddled on the sofa when I receive more texts from Shannah. Tom is inflight. He’s been sedated. He’s being intubated.

I immediately schedule a flight for the three of us the next morning from Florida to San Diego to be at his side. 

At that moment, I’m thinking that Tom, a U.S. Navy sailor, will now have to grapple with at least a year of extensive rehab.

Tom on a hike in San Diego, 2019.

That fleeting thought turns out to the most optimistic moment of this unfolding nightmare. 

Around 6 p.m., Shannah texts the news that Tom is undergoing CT scans. She also says two of my closest friends from my Navy days in San Diego 30 years ago, are at the hospital. Their support and friendship, the fact that they dropped what they were doing to be at Tom’s bedside, buoys my spirits and reminds me how powerful the human connection can be. 

Another text from Shannah pops up on my screen 20 minutes later. “They’re doing CPR.”

I shudder. Performing CPR on a former Division I and Navy SAR swimmer in the best shape of his life is a last-ditch, futile effort.

That’s when I knew we were losing him.

Five minutes later, the phone rings. It’s Shannah. Answering that phone call sets in motion the most miserable chain of events of my life.  

“He’s dead!” Shannah cries. 

In that surreal moment, looking back, something coated me—good, bad, indifferent. I felt like I was in a bubble. The shock was protecting me from myself. Time stopped. It was as if my consciousness was suspended and another entity within me took over.

I didn’t even have to repeat Shannah’s words. My wife and daughter started screaming, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”  

Almost two years later I can still feel their anguish in my chest like a railroad spike. 

Father and son beer in Florida, 2015.

I exploded. My arms swept everything off the kitchen counters: dishes, appliances, groceries, utensils. I punched holes in the kitchen walls. I felt everything and I felt nothing. I didn’t even bother trying to console my wife or daughter. Anything I could possibly say or do was useless.  

Then something deep down told me to breathe, to stop wrecking the kitchen and making the situation worse.  

A calm descended over me in those moments that has mostly stayed with me. I have sobbed numerous times, uncontrollably. I’ve had moments when the sadness was so heavy I could barely breathe, yet I’ve always heard a little voice within me. “This is life you are experiencing, in all its ups and downs,” it keeps quietly telling me. “Pull yourself together.”    

It’s been two years since that day.  My wife and I, Caitlin and Shannah are still working to cope with an altered reality, a world without Tom’s physical presence. We keep his memory alive by embracing his joyfulness, his delight in trying new things, his love of the ocean. But we especially honor Tom by continuing to learn and grow. He was always reading something new by authors like Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Joseph Campbell and Rudyard Kipling. Now we’re reading those books too.

Shortly before the first anniversary of Tom’s death, my wife and I were approached by the organizers of the Clearwater Beach Patrol Ocean Mile, an annual mile-long swim at Pier 60 on Clearwater Beach that raised money for the local Clearwater Beach Patrol. They told us they’d like to rename the fundraiser in Tom’s honor.

We hesitated. Tom was humble and we were concerned about shifting the focus of the event from helping lifeguards to a memorial for one man. But then we thought about how this was his community and they wanted to honor one of their own. An annual ocean miler seemed like a fitting tribute. We gave our consent.

One of his Navy buddies designed a T-shirt with an outlined image of Tom’s easy, Sam Elliott smile and the motto “Live Like Tom”—the perfect message for a celebration of his joy, humility, empathy and zest for learning. That spirit lives on in his friends and family.

We are forever tasked to “Live Like Tom!”