My Memorial

I am sitting on the snow, my brain trying to make sense of where I am and this…alive-ness. Why am I alive? My brain cannot make the pieces fit, a puzzle for a different day. And yet, I am here, blinking, moving my arms and legs, albeit with a shocks of pain.

Without choosing, these thoughts they come. I think back to Oliver’s leaving. I think back to Gordon’s, both people in our community so valued, so missed. Oliver was running until he wasn’t, his heart just stopped, so they say. Gordon was just miles, maybe two minutes from home, driving a road that he has driven hundreds of times. Today, there is fog and semi-truck with a trailer that had no lights - would it have mattered? Frivolous losses. Nothing but a waste of some good living. And I miss them terribly.

I think about their memorials. Again, I am not soliciting these memories, they are just coming to me, as if on parade. Oliver’s is in the World Forestry Center in Portland, sharing parking lots with the zoo. It is a big building, and we fill it, these humans, this community, this family we have built, quite by accident, and yet, here we are.

Pictures of his life are strung up as we enter. There are gifts: his favorite pen and a booklet of wisdom that Oliver kept close. These are treasures. There are many tears. There is much laughter. We sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’ I weep.

Gordon’s is in a local church. The room is big, cold. The service is more formal. Here, too, there are many tears. Again, much laughter. We talk about a life lived. We celebrate helplessly. There is no changing what we hate, this reality of a life without him. The church is filled.

The parade is quiet, no pomp or circumstance, just thoughts flitting through my brain. I do think, I didn’t make a booklet, as if this is requisite for dying. Perhaps it’s best this way. My wisdom feels as if has not quite…arrived. And then my thoughts, How will my kids know that I love them? I wish I had written letters for their reading, just in case they ever wanted to read them. It all feels so silly, all the what-ifs, this onslaught of hypotheticals.

And so I sit, time splitting seconds, trying to decide if I am going to stay or go, thinking I may have a choice. I don’t. All of this seems to be in motion without me.

I imagine my memorial. I try to picture who will come. My brain can’t seem to conjure these details. Perhaps I am too tired or perhaps I don’t know. I imagine people will come and I imagine it will be sad. My heart hurts for my wife. I have never meant to hurt her and this will hurt terribly so. This, too, feels frivolous, me out here enjoying nature. Maybe more than frivolous, it all of a sudden feels selfish. Could such a thing be selfish? I know that I wouldn’t change a thing, but right now, I just want to be home, on the couch, resting.

When the helicopter arrives, rotors thumping on the air, the needle seems to edge towards living, Maybe there will be no memorial for me. I’m ambivalent about this revelation. I’m quite happy I won’t have to sit on this snow any longer. I am ready to be warm.

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There is no making sense of why I am alive, just like there is no making sense of Oliver’s or Gordon’s deaths. These are frivolous losses, the information not adding up to reasonable or acceptable reasons for them to die. But now, on this side, perhaps my living is frivolous, too, a weird collection of variables that allowed me to live. And the why will go unanswered.

At home, it is a new normal. I am wheelchair-bound for ten weeks. My brain tries to make sense of my living. I keep returning to the word ‘frivolous’. This living feels excessive, maybe even unnecessary. It all feels like a contradiction. In this excess of living, I am quite restricted, a living that is bordering on negligible. I am in a timeout, and while it is temporary, it is having its effects.

If I were to be in a wheelchair permanently, I imagine my brain might be experiencing different effects. I’ve explored these thoughts, or effects, out as much as someone uninitiated can see such things to their end. Paralysis or a brain injury don’t feel that far-fetched sitting here knowing this body as I do now and replaying what little of my fall I have at my disposal. My what-ifs loom large. Regardless, if this condition were permanent, I am certain there would be movement forward - a permanent wheelchair, long-term care, how to drive, and other such things.

But I am only in this chair for ten weeks. It feels like limbo. There is nothing to do. There is nowhere to go. There are no plans to make. There is no hurrying these days. My way forward only depends on my ability to sit and wait. My recovery depends on this pause.

And it is in this pause, this negligible living that my moments are punctuated with visitors. I work for a company that has 600-plus employees and I know most of them and most of them know me. I belonged to a church community and maintained friendships there. And now, my mere living is a bit of a curiosity. I am something akin to a novelty. I lived. Even though I had nothing to do with this outcome, I am being celebrated if for no other reason that my heart still beats in my chest and my brain still cognates. But it is also more than this and it is this more that I’m not sure I’ll be able to communicate well.

I’m going to use the word people loosely in the following, to indicate friends and family and even some generous strangers.

People bought us groceries.

People slept at our house just to help.

People gave us money.

People brought us casseroles.

People sent cards.

People text me, a lot.

People mow our lawn.

People bring knickknacks and books and puzzles so I don’t lose my mind.

People bring gifts for when my brain and heart might get low.

People from far away drive here, to see my eyeballs, to verify I am alive, as others have said.

People sit on our couch and tell me they are glad I am alive.

People visit and visit and visit.

Since my accident there has been not one day that one of the above has not happened, and I have been home since May 31st. This is a privilege of my life that I did not see coming. I am home and their is a procession of onlookers and well-wishers, the kindest humans, wanting to celebrate my frivolous existence.

I don’t think one chooses to be here, on the receiving end of everyone’s kindness. I didn’t. And there’s no way I could have known what happens after one narrowly misses death. Having no other experience, this appears to be it. People traveling from distance just to see my face, to hear my little story, and to tell me they are glad I am alive. I’ve even tried to dissuade some from coming, assuring them that I think the worst is over, that I should be alive for a bit longer, the urgency passed.

And yet they come.

It is humbling, so unworthy of this attention.

And yet they come.

I am grateful, tears overflowing my lower lids.

And yet they come.

There is no way around it. This is my living memorial. There is no announcement or invitations. I don’t have any pens to hand out or prepared pages of wisdom that I’ve collected along my way. I only have a story and the minor discomfort at all this attention and generosity, and somehow there is still an abundance of laughter. There is plenty of shaking our heads, no one able to make sense of why or how I am still alive. We’re all been to a memorial. We’ve all been present for another’s absence. And yet this, this frivolous living, is different. But this must be it -  a procession of connection and relationship and looking another in the eyes to make sure they are indeed alive, and then celebrating this very fact.

Being fortuitously alive and on the receiving end of this firehose of generosity, I can’t help but think that we need to show up at each other’s doors more often, for the simple, inordinate delight that the other continues to live. Sure, I dodged some bullets, but I’m now alive like everyone else. My living is special but only so much as everyone else’s living is special. As humans we are rather tricky, developing a tolerance for all the things - like living - that seem to persist day in and day out…until they don’t. It’s such a cliché to see death, another’s or your own, and come away repeating such things like “Life is precious” or “We don’t know what day is our last.” This is all true, but how do we live this out daily, reveling in the delight of this breath and the next? I don’t recommend a near-death experience on a mountainside, but it does seem to be doing the trick in the short-term. Soon, I maybe be showing up at your door, flowers in hand, just to celebrate your alive-ness.