A few years ago, I drove down a small-town street and saw a man walking along the sidewalk. Seeing him made my eyes go misty, made me gasp as if cold water had just been thrown in my face, because this man swung his arms in a unique way as he walked. When I was a child, I remember my grandfather swinging his arms in just the same way: palms open and facing due backward, not in toward his thighs, as is more common. It was a signature walk that never really registered with me as a child, not until I saw it again in that other man years later did it mean anything. And although my grandfather had been dead a good 25 years, nevertheless seeing that one small gesture brought the memory of Grandpa so full in my face that many other memories came along in that same flood, much like a point of breakage that collapses a dam, spewing a sudden rush through long dry channels reserved for memories. And as that mental water line rose, it swelled with the many times I saw grandpa walking. A rare gift was the feeling that came with that flood, a thing richer than just the experience of such "memory-water" when it is contained in the glass bowl of the rational mind, for it is more than just knowing what you remember; it is feeling it again, too.
The same type of liquid rush washed over me last night, but it was more like a rip tide, for it was connected to you, my husband, and you are in a channel still very active and bubbling with life. But circumstances yesterday brought the realization too near: the certainty that one day, the channel of life shared between us could indeed run dry. It happened when I looked over at you on the couch--one of many times I felt compelled to check that you were ok. While I watched, you stretched your arm a certain way that is characteristic of you. Like the swing of my grandpa's arms, it was a gesture that had never really registered with me consciously, but apparently has struck me many times subconsciously, because when you stretched, a knife-thought went through me: "That is so intimately you, and to think, I might have never seen that again." I couldn't help but let myself ponder, "what if...?"
What if instead of all of us sitting here in the living room watching a movie as you lapse in and out of a doze induced by painkillers--what if all of us were here, except you? One second lived differently in the course of your day, one glance in another direction. It really did come down to that. And I've lived through enough deaths of those dear me to know how it feels to run that canal, too. How incredibly fortunate I felt sitting there, hearing you breathe, just breathe, nearby. I must confess, I work very hard not to take anything about you for granted, but I see there is one thing I do take for granted--and that is your very life. I never really think about the day I might have to learn to live without you in my world. I never think about the era of my life when I'll only really "see" flashes of you on rare moments when someone crosses my path who happens to bear some distinctive commonality to you. Or will it be the other way around, as you find you cross paths with some woman who flips her hair or waves her hand in just such a way that you see me in the movement?
I hear you talk about this accident. You tell some people you were lucky. You tell others that you had all but given up thinking God really intervenes in the affairs of men, but that this incident makes you wonder if you should revise this opinion as it certainly seems possible that you were tapped on the shoulder by some guardian spirit. "Look back," says that voice that works like instinct. "React to approaching danger!" And in so doing, you saved not only yourself but maybe the whole family in the car in front of you as you absorbed much of the energy of the crash, and yet had put yourself at such an angle as to receive the least injury to yourself.
You pause and make thoughtful humming sounds as I tell you what Nolan's teacher said about the accident when I picked him up after we finished the long vigil in the ER: she said that your reason for being in this world is obviously not yet finished. Did I tell you that yesterday morning, when the boys and I left for school--about an hour before your accident--a huge rainbow sliced across a brilliant peach and blue sky, although the sidewalks were dry--there had been no rain. And I thought: a rainbow, the Bible tells us they are promise that God will not destroy. And wasn't it just that? Do we not know a God so loving that He'll give a rainbow even without the rain to those who care to get out and see it? He set the sky for me one time when we were on an airplane. I wrote about it. Yesterday, He set the sky for you, my love!
Literally for years now in your dreams you have seen yourself experiencing a shift in position, a change that gives you a new perspective on the larger purpose behind your role in the affairs of mankind. And in every one of these dreams, that new perception led to new activities on your part. So as you've now walked through this--your only encounter with a near-death experience--I wonder if these dreams are beginning to become your reality? I pray that if these are to be days of heightening awareness for you, that you might indeed find that larger perspective, that unfinished reason for being in this world.
And yet again, I am awed to be the woman in your life!
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