Happy birthday to my sister in heaven, she would be 50 years old today. It’s been 22 years, and the fact that my only sister is gone, still feels like a bad dream. When you lose both your parents you are an orphan, or if you lose your husband you are a widow. There are no words for what you are called when you lose a sibling or even when you lose a child. 
One thing that is certain to me, my sister would want me to pass along the importance of wearing helmets while snow skiing.
Please take a moment to make sure your loved ones understand the dangers of not wearing a ski helmet.  
Here is her story:

Leslie travelled to Snowshoe West Virginia for a ski trip weekend. She was living in Florida but was an intermediate skier because we skied a lot when we lived in New Hampshire for 5 years.  

The last day of the weekend, they all wanted to ski one more time before they packed up and headed home. There was a small group that agreed to meet at the halfway point and ski together. There were different options to the halfway point and my sister chose to ski the crowded bunny slope, on her way to meet the others. She never arrived at the meeting point.

While she was on the bunny trail, an inexperienced skier may have caused her to fall. An unfortunate part of this story is that the side of this trail didn’t have the orange safety netting to keep beginners from falling into the woods. When my sister fell, she lost control and slid off the edge of the trail. The place where she fell had a severely sharp incline which caused her to catch a ton of speed before she hit a tree, head first. She was declared brain dead and was in a coma for a week until she died.

The head of safety at Snowshoe told me that two things could have saved her

  1.  taking lessons at the start of the weekend, even though she was an intermediate skier, she didn’t ski frequently because we moved south.
  2.  wear a helmet while skiing. 22 years ago you couldn’t buy or rent one at Snowshoe so she didn’t have the option.

After some celebrities died from ski accidents, the ski areas have now added an option for helmets. Hard to believe that 22 years ago my sister and I wouldn’t consider letting our 3 year old kids near a bicycle without a helmet. At the same time it was very rare to find helmets at a ski resort. Today the options are finally available everywhere!