It was a miracle.
Early last spring, sporting jeans, flip-flops and a hack-saw, my husband’s 77 year-old father took it upon himself to climb the 30-foot apple tree in our backyard, to prune it within an inch of its life.
Ned begged him to come down. His Dad waved his saw in the air, ha ha ha. He grew up barefoot in the trees of Constantine, Algeria, plucking nuts and fruit off the branches with his teeth. I watched as his supple, old toes curled around a branch and he hoisted himself higher in the overgrown tree, closer and closer to the sky.
Ned turned white. I grabbed my camera.
It was an accident.
Last October, my oldest friend Naomi’s life-partner Mike got locked in at work on a Saturday. He didn’t want to hassle anyone on the weekend and the only way out was to scale an eight-foot fence. He used to jump fences as a boy.
I didn’t ask what Mike was wearing on his feet when he fell. At 52. On to the concrete, shattering his right knee, left elbow and prescription glasses. In the super-human spectacle that is shock, he made it to his car, blindly, drove the ninety-minutes home, called Naomi and told her to meet him in their driveway. When they got to the hospital, the pain.
As Naomi told me what happened, my brain flashed on Ned’s father and our apple tree, and for the first time it hit me that he could have died. That it was a freaking miracle he didn’t fall and break his neck. One peeping blue jay. One snapping branch. One wrong move-
The phone cried.
Mike is dead.
What??
Mike is dead.
MIKE IS –
Mortal shock. The day after coming home from the hospital after the accident, days after the knee and arm surgery that would have had him lying prone for two months in a haze of gratitude and the womb of their 13-year love, a homicidal blood clot raced up his leg into his lungs and killed him on the spot. It happened as fast as the time it took Naomi to tell me.
The brain scrambles to find words for the heart.
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Click here for Life or Death, Part 2. The last time I saw Mike.
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25 Responses to Life or Death, 1
This story is perfect in its symmetry. When we don’t do what we are supposed to ..when we put ourselves in danger. Sometimes it goes well, it can inspire our minds, making us think we should take more changes in life to be freed from the constraints of gravity. But when it goes wrong, our mind says we should have just played it safe, we are happy to be on familiar solid ground.
My condolences to Mike’s wife. My admiration for your husband’s father.
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Christ, you just never know. Love this, Brenda.
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Wow!
Sent from my iPhone
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Nice post B!
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Beautiful & utterly heart-wrenching…
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omm, so sad.
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My warmest wishes for you and this blog.I look forward to read more about life…and death.Love
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I’m reminded of a story that my father has told. He, at about age 40, held the ladder for his uncle, at about age 70, pruning a treetop; my dad thinking to himself, “What the hell am I doing down here?” But like your father-in-law, and Mike, that was the way my Zio Tony wanted to do it. And like them, that DIY zeal was probably one of the qualities that made him who he was.
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Wow…what a wringer!! The pic and the post both made my heart skip a beat or two. Still wondering…Is your husband’s Dad OK? And heartbroken to read about Naomi’s dear sweet husband. All to show us how fragile and precious we are….!!! Love each other NOW, Thanks for an excellent post, as usual.
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Thanks all for your deeply felt comments. For those who are wondering- my husband’s Dad is fine. Thankfully, he did NOT fall. Wish I could say the same for Mike.
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Humans!!?! So fragile. Good post, Brenda.
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Brenda j’aime lire ton blogue et merci pour ces histoires si humaines et si tristes.
Love to you and Ned.
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Oh man, poor Mike. Sorry to hear about that, my late condolences. Your hubby’s dad certainly likes to play with danger, doesn’t he? Good to know he’s all right. Excellent post!
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Whoa. This is a wake up call. We really never know…..
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This is so heartbreaking, Brenda. The brain scrambles to find words and to understand. This is beyond understanding. How shocking this must have been and for it to have happened so quickly to your friend, Mike.
My father is 76 and I worry about him falling all the time now. It’s hard to live with the worry, but I have to accept this is part of life now. I thought of him as I read about your father-in-law.
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Thank you for your words, Amy. I find that the shock of Mike’s death has made it a little easier for me to accept the chaos and the unknown of life. It is so wildly out of our hands.
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We believe that we are immortal and then such tragedies happen. It can go so fast. A heartbreaking story.
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