Athletic Julia, age 91, over Christmas, 2013
Who has not had a tooth come out and wanted to keep it forever? I can still recall the loss of my first pet, a goldfish. Also of my first rabbit, when I was only age two or three, a cute little furry black creature with red eyes, so I had named it Cherry. And then of my first dog, Cookie, a nondescript mongrel who loved me so passionately that, heedless of danger, she had, unknown to me till too late, run out into traffic on a busy highway to follow where I had gone.
Any moment may be our last. There is no guarantee of even the next breath. Over the vast expanse of human existence, most children would not survive to adulthood. So perhaps it is a remarkable thing that anyone would reach maturity and have a personal history of any length at all. Our current extension of the average lifespan is itself against the odds. As a species we have till lately enjoyed a kind of Goldilocks age, when the temperatures on Earth have been mostly neither too hot nor too cold, and so civilization has been encouraged, and with it the luxuries of higher learning, multiple variations on communication, the arts, commerce, mathematics, technology, production, transportation, and science, plus an immense diversity of cultures and mores. Things are changing rapidly. Where for thousands of years Antarctica was dry and cold, so penguins could adapt to the cycles of light and dark, of relative abundance and scarcity of food from the sea, and of reasonably tolerable chill vs. some of the more extreme and frigid gale-like winds on the planet, now conditions are warmer and wetter, so nestlings are drowning and the times of plentiful fish are unreliable. In a thousand and one ways, some of greater and others of lesser note, such shifts are occurring around the globe. Our own kind's happy time may be nearing its conclusion.
Against a backdrop of the sphere's altered setting, individual biographies are playing out. Countless millions have been forced from their homes. More than a quarter-billion children are now refugees, malnourished, being human trafficked, made to labor under harsh conditions, living in disease-ridden areas, forced to fight, homeless, or orphaned. Amid the suffering, of what worth are the lives and deaths of a few?
And yet for any one of us, there are those whose presence has been most meaningful, whose absence is keenly felt. Our pain may not matter a fig in the larger scheme of things, yet there are no accurate scales for measuring one person's grief. Existence itself is suffering, so say the Buddhists. It would then seem hardly surprising that at times we know that which has been lost is irreplaceable, never to be restored. A moment before, these breathing, laughing companions shared their zest and wonder with us. Now they are inert, and no life may ever be breathed back into them.
When I was three, my dad (Leon), a military officer, was transferred to a new duty station, and he was driving the three us in his Ford sedan, he, my mom (Julia), and me, to the place that would be our new home. Hours before, we had shared Christmas gift openings with his folks, Papa Frank and Mama Pearl, then in San Antonio. Mom, as she later told me, had received a beautiful red coat, one of the nicest garments she had ever owned. Now it was late at night and raining. We were in a rural part of the southeastern United States, and Dad was driving maybe a little too fast for conditions. I was still awake, looking ahead, and sitting in the back seat. We came around a bend in the road, and suddenly there in the headlights was a man walking toward us. In the rain, he must not have heard the approach of our car. Fields and steep embankments were down either side of the two-lane road, only a narrow shoulder to left or right of the thoroughfare. An Army convoy was going by from the other direction. Dad had a split-second decision, to hurl us off the pavement to the right, not knowing if we would survive the fall, or hit the man. He did not scream. He said nothing at all. In my memory, which may have played tricks, his body tumbled over the hood and then the roof of the car, hitting with at least a dozen thumps in those few seconds.
Athletic Julia, age 91, over Christmas, 2013 |
There were no airbags or seatbelts then. All three of us got out to see what had happened. In the taillights, we could only see that the man was lying on his back behind the car. Dad found a flashlight, and in its beam we could see that it was a Black man, obviously dead. A rivulet of his blood flowed into the rainwater on the pavement. The Army convoy drove on heedlessly and out of sight, leaving us alone. Dad put out little kerosene-fueled lanterns, their small wick flames wavering, to warn other traffic we were stopped on the road. Without hesitating, Mom had taken off her red coat and used it to cover the man's face and upper body. I remember seeing a few dampening pages of a book down the steep embankment to the right or flying off in the wind across the field on that side. Later we would learn the man was a lay preacher heading home from a Bible study group that met at a church down the road away.
It seemed like hours before another car and driver came upon our little scene. Mom had been quietly sobbing in the front passenger seat. Dad asked the driver to summon help. Eventually the police arrived and people in an ambulance. Not before or for many years later did I see my father as upset. Perhaps he was in shock. It was obvious there was nothing now that could be done, yet he kept asking the emergency folks how he could help. After the body was taken away, the authorities took Dad into town, leaving Mom and me waiting with the car. A long time later the same night, the police brought Dad back. The Ford was damaged but not enough to prevent its operation. Dad drove us all into town.
We had to stay around awhile. I do not remember the name of the place. The man's widow sued Dad, but settled for $500. We had to go on. Dad was supposed to report soon for his next military job. I heard no more about this incident or the man's wife, but later made notes on what I remembered. Dad and Mom, when I asked, said I had it about right.
Mom told me not to share this, but I figured that meant while she was alive. After having rallied so many times from a variety of earlier crises that I could hardly believe she would not be well again from yet one more, she died last month.
Yesterday, my wife and I talked about our publications. I began family newsletters, then called "BULL," in April of 1996. In 1998, Valerie helped immensely by learning how to put its successor, "Larvalbug Bytes," out online. Our February, 2019, issue will represent 275 consecutive months of one or another of these family newsletters. Most folks now use versions of social media for communications and updates. Our newsletter efforts have been rewarding for us, yet it may be time to retire them. What comes next? We shall see.
Meanwhile, though, I know what Julia would say of this piece: "Hey, Larry, this is way too dreary! Lighten up. Tell 'em a good joke, preferably one a little raunchy!" After all, it was she who, as I sought to distract her from great distress the last time we were together at the ER and so asked if she had heard any good jokes lately, immediately forgot her pain enough to launch into a hilarious bit of ribald humor, too risqué to be repeated here.
I may not imitate Mom's talent for amusing storytelling, yet here are a few parting nods in her ghostly direction:
"Death is nature's way of saying 'Your table is ready,' " quipped the late Robin Williams.
"Is that thing safe?" asked William Palmer, about to be hanged and standing next to the gallows' trapdoor.
"First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me." Steve Martin.
“Life is warped. I'm just in sync.” Margaret Atwood in MaddAddam.
"I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens." Woody Allen.