Your Wish Has Been (Taken For) Granted
Dropping my brother off at the airport brought a flurry of mixed emotions for me; perhaps it was because of the random deaths and injuries from the recent shooting in Las Vegas or the death of rocker Tom Petty at the age of 66. Who knows? But my brother and I had shared grand times, laughing at our shared childhood, comparing our rather poverty-like childhood to where we both were now, mingling with others at thrift stores while he searched for beads for his wife, and being treated exceptionally well by a waitress during a final dinner out. We were quite fortunate indeed, and now it was all coming to an end as he picked up his bag, gave a final hug and disappeared into the crowd.
There is always that assumption that you will see someone again. He's only so-and-so age, or he's fit as a tiger or whatever the rationale; it's the same one that we tell ourselves most every day. Unlike the warnings from a devastating hurricane, no one expects the car crash or stray bullet to end your life at that moment, a moment when you're listening to music at a concert or giving your wife a kiss because you're so happy. But it happens. Maybe I was thinking about this randomness a bit more because I was just finishing a series of lectures on life in the emergency room, one presented by Dr. Ray Benaroch. In the lectures, he presented various problems emergency room doctors face, one of the main ones being an inability to quickly gain a sense of trust from those people just entering; time is a factor here and people arrive scared and wanting an answer and a fix. Forget developing a relationship or providing a full history; if you're conscious and facing only pain or a condition you've put off until now, you go to the emergency room for a solution. But people who also enter the emergency room are sometimes exactly that, emergencies. Their life or lives hang in the balance...triage. They take priority to seal the gunshot wound or clear the blocked airway or start the stopped heart. Their lives are about to end, unless or until the emergency room can stabilize them or bring them back to a position of recovery.
The emergency room at one of my local hospitals is quite large, probably 50 rooms or more. When my mother went in some months ago (a possible fracture from a fall), the procedure was quick and thorough...patient in and examined, CT scans and X-rays inititated, blood work taken, pains and problems in the process of being worked out. But for my brother and I. we couldn't help but notice the constant arrival of both helicopters (this particular hospital is located adjacent to a Costco so shoppers come and go about as frequently as the two Life Flight choppers). Here were people arriving with conditions so critical that even an ambulance ride would be too long; keeping them alive or stable was now a task that rested on minutes saved. But in Las Vegas, the injured would just keep coming (in the case of Las Vegas, the closest hospital received 200 patients needing emergency care...stat). Head wound, artery severed, child unconscious, officer down...for the ED doctors, the normally quiet rooms would now fill to capacity and beyond and their own thoughts of their shift ending normally were now gone. Time to triage, prioritize, analyze, make quick decisions and move on, hoping that during all of the is stress that you were correct (as with veterinarians, the suicide rate for ED doctors is quite high according to Dr. Benaroch).
Adding to all of this, my wife was also mourning the death of Tom Petty, shocked at his relatively young age and perhaps reflecting that just a month ago she had seen him in what would turn out to be one of his final performances. It was a flashback thrill for her, a chance to go see a performer she enjoyed listening to but had never seen "live." She bought tickets, bought plane fare and a hotel, and rushed out on the scheduled date only to discover that earlier that morning the concert had been cancelled due to Petty coming down with laryngitis. Bummer. So back she comes, and soon discovers that some weeks later, the concert had been rescheduled...did she want to go try it all again? She did, and she had a great time, albeit with no apologies coming from Petty. He apparently joked that while this was to be his final tour (he would do about four more shows before heading home), his band members of three decades might cajole him into another round of touring at some future date, but it was all in the air. Little did he or anyone know that this would indeed be his final final, no going back and no more encores.
As with the drunk driver plowing into you or the tire blowing on your car and sending you into the railing, the cardiac arrest that hit Tom Petty arrives without warning (or its mild warnings are ignored). Petty's was massive, a giving out and one likely causing his inner body to wonder where was the blood so desperately needed...he, like some 350,000 others, probably only had minutes to get help (cardiac arrest differs from a stroke or a heart attack). His heart had stopped or at least stopped working properly, its regular beating now little more than a loosely fluttering sail and the circulation of his blood pushed to a standstill like a stalled underground train. And unlike a heart attack, cardiac arrest often signifies the point of no return if you are alone. As the linked article states: The word arrest means to stop or bring to a halt. In cardiac arrest, the heart ceases to beat. It’s also known as sudden cardiac death.
So there was my brother, heading back to his home and leaving me with yet more memories of shared times both past and present. And if my time or his time were right now, I wondered how I would feel. Was I ready, was I prepared? Uhh, about 50%...the usual stuff of wills and trusts and instructions, but looking at the big picture there were a lot of gaps. At best, I was leaving an outline with many blank spaces for others to fill in. These possessions, this "stuff" I think is so sentimental or worth something would all be abandoned to someone else's decision making if I were to just unexpectedly succumb. Not that I would care at that point for I would be gone. But now, while I was here and could make it easier (in a sense) for others, shouldn't I be responsible? The recent images coming back from the Hubble spacecraft, itself nearing the end of it own "life" and scheduled to be replaced, showed millions upon millions of galaxies in just one tiny spot of our darkened space. What was out there and how insignificant did that make us? Or perhaps viewed the other way, how significant did that make us and life? Certainly none of these thoughts were on the minds of those concert goers in Las Vegas; the thought of hundreds of rounds of military-style bullets coming from a luxury hotel room window high above was so unimaginable as to not even be a thought. Just as with John Kennedy or Tom Petty. Life comes and goes in an instant, as quickly as watching my brother disappear into the throng of other people waiting to return home or heading to a city to perhaps watch a concert and to have a celebration of life. We should all keep that in mind, that celebration. Life and our moments here --for our time here really is but a moment-- are precious and should be celebrated. In an interview with Tom Petty when an arsonist burned down his home and he escaped with only his family, Terri Gross asked him on her show Fresh Air if he missed anything since everything inside his home was lost; and he replied that all that he really missed were some of his pictures and early videos of his children. To tell you the truth, there wasn't anything else I cared about; he told her. It's funny you know, you accumulate stuff so fast too...I went from quite a big house full of stuff...I went from that to living in a hotel room with nothing...but you learn very quickly that nothing else really mattered much. We are all here now as we both read and write this, our hearts pumping away and bringing us joy and happiness even among tragedy. When it will end we can never know. It might be while we're at a concert or boarding a plane or dropping someone off at the airport or while petting the dog. Life is unexpected in so many ways; but that's what life is...and we should treasure the unexpected.
There is always that assumption that you will see someone again. He's only so-and-so age, or he's fit as a tiger or whatever the rationale; it's the same one that we tell ourselves most every day. Unlike the warnings from a devastating hurricane, no one expects the car crash or stray bullet to end your life at that moment, a moment when you're listening to music at a concert or giving your wife a kiss because you're so happy. But it happens. Maybe I was thinking about this randomness a bit more because I was just finishing a series of lectures on life in the emergency room, one presented by Dr. Ray Benaroch. In the lectures, he presented various problems emergency room doctors face, one of the main ones being an inability to quickly gain a sense of trust from those people just entering; time is a factor here and people arrive scared and wanting an answer and a fix. Forget developing a relationship or providing a full history; if you're conscious and facing only pain or a condition you've put off until now, you go to the emergency room for a solution. But people who also enter the emergency room are sometimes exactly that, emergencies. Their life or lives hang in the balance...triage. They take priority to seal the gunshot wound or clear the blocked airway or start the stopped heart. Their lives are about to end, unless or until the emergency room can stabilize them or bring them back to a position of recovery.
The emergency room at one of my local hospitals is quite large, probably 50 rooms or more. When my mother went in some months ago (a possible fracture from a fall), the procedure was quick and thorough...patient in and examined, CT scans and X-rays inititated, blood work taken, pains and problems in the process of being worked out. But for my brother and I. we couldn't help but notice the constant arrival of both helicopters (this particular hospital is located adjacent to a Costco so shoppers come and go about as frequently as the two Life Flight choppers). Here were people arriving with conditions so critical that even an ambulance ride would be too long; keeping them alive or stable was now a task that rested on minutes saved. But in Las Vegas, the injured would just keep coming (in the case of Las Vegas, the closest hospital received 200 patients needing emergency care...stat). Head wound, artery severed, child unconscious, officer down...for the ED doctors, the normally quiet rooms would now fill to capacity and beyond and their own thoughts of their shift ending normally were now gone. Time to triage, prioritize, analyze, make quick decisions and move on, hoping that during all of the is stress that you were correct (as with veterinarians, the suicide rate for ED doctors is quite high according to Dr. Benaroch).
Adding to all of this, my wife was also mourning the death of Tom Petty, shocked at his relatively young age and perhaps reflecting that just a month ago she had seen him in what would turn out to be one of his final performances. It was a flashback thrill for her, a chance to go see a performer she enjoyed listening to but had never seen "live." She bought tickets, bought plane fare and a hotel, and rushed out on the scheduled date only to discover that earlier that morning the concert had been cancelled due to Petty coming down with laryngitis. Bummer. So back she comes, and soon discovers that some weeks later, the concert had been rescheduled...did she want to go try it all again? She did, and she had a great time, albeit with no apologies coming from Petty. He apparently joked that while this was to be his final tour (he would do about four more shows before heading home), his band members of three decades might cajole him into another round of touring at some future date, but it was all in the air. Little did he or anyone know that this would indeed be his final final, no going back and no more encores.
As with the drunk driver plowing into you or the tire blowing on your car and sending you into the railing, the cardiac arrest that hit Tom Petty arrives without warning (or its mild warnings are ignored). Petty's was massive, a giving out and one likely causing his inner body to wonder where was the blood so desperately needed...he, like some 350,000 others, probably only had minutes to get help (cardiac arrest differs from a stroke or a heart attack). His heart had stopped or at least stopped working properly, its regular beating now little more than a loosely fluttering sail and the circulation of his blood pushed to a standstill like a stalled underground train. And unlike a heart attack, cardiac arrest often signifies the point of no return if you are alone. As the linked article states: The word arrest means to stop or bring to a halt. In cardiac arrest, the heart ceases to beat. It’s also known as sudden cardiac death.
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| Photo of black hole courtesy of NASA |
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