Irony

I have been hesitant to write about this, because there are some things that deserve privacy. The things that are only between a husband and wife. I have been debating whether this is one of those things. Would he mind me telling you what I am about to tell you about him? I am not 100% sure. I’m pretty sure, though, that he would tell me to do whatever seems to help, so I’ve decided to go ahead. Hopefully he would understand that me revealing this part of him doesn't make him any less of a great person, any less of a man - it just makes him HUMAN.

In a marriage as long and ultimately successful as ours, you figure out how compromise an awful lot, and agree to disagree about the things that don’t really matter. We had done that about everything except for one thing. It was the only thing remaining in our marriage that could still cause occasional friction, the sole thing we had not yet come to full compromise on. What was it? Whether or not we needed to always know where the other one was, so we knew whether or not to worry. He said yes, I said no.

To even begin to understand how big of a deal this was to him, you have to know about some things that happened over twenty years ago. I don’t remember the exact sequence of these things, but they all happened within a short period of time. One was a very bad car accident in which a friend of his, Joe, ended up in high grass in a deep ditch off the Thruway, below the eye level of other drivers. It was a one vehicle event that no one witnessed. Joe lived alone, and so no family member knew he was missing. He was very badly hurt, and could not get out of the car. He stayed trapped in the car without help for over 24 hours until a trucker who was up high enough to see the car called the police. He barely survived, and was in the hospital for months. Kirk visited him almost every day – long after everyone else except Joe’s family had moved on with their lives. He saw the slow and painful recovery Joe went through, and understood more clearly than most how narrowly he had escaped death. The second event was the death of another friend, Eric, from cancer. Eric had suffered from a very upset stomach for quite a long time. He worked for Kirk at the time, and Kirk pressured him pretty hard to go to a doctor. Finally, he did, and was diagnosed with stomach cancer, with not very good odds of survival. He was given only a few months to live. The only hope was a treatment regime that included surgery, which was performed very soon after the diagnosis – I think a week or two later. There were unexpected complications from the surgery, and Eric died within a day or so afterward. Kirk was extremely distraught – he blamed himself for Eric’s death. He felt that even though the cancer would have led to his death eventually, by persuading Eric to go to the doctor, he set in motion a chain of events that cost Eric the last several months of his life. The third event was the sudden death of another friend, Pat, who died in a car accident. His wife barely survived the accident. It happened after they fell asleep at another friend’s house, then woke up and decided to go home because they had a new puppy and didn’t want to leave it home alone all night. They had not been drinking, and felt they were fine to drive. Like Joe, they too were not found for some time. Pat’s wife watched him die while they were trapped in the car. Kirk’s sadness and distress over the deaths of Eric and Pat lasted for many months.

These three events so close together had a profound impact on Kirk. First, they significantly compounded his fear of death itself. He had always been uncomfortable with the topic of death – he never wanted to talk about it or plan for it. He was actually superstitious about it. These events made his fear of death much worse. If there is perhaps any “blessing” in the manner in which he died, it is that he had no reason to anticipate it. If he had died from a long illness or something that gave him time to contemplate the end, I know it would have been a very fearful time for him.

Second, and most significantly, these three events caused him to develop a hyper-awareness of the randomness of life. All three of these friends suffered something terrible that happened suddenly and without warning. Even Joe, who survived, was saved only by the fact that the trucker looked over at just the right moment. Had he not seen the car when he did, it is virtually certain that Joe would not have survived much longer.

The impact from these experiences was that for the rest of his life, Kirk thought about accidents and death a great deal more than the average person. He knew from personal experience that things change on a dime, that life is fragile and can be snatched away suddenly.

For quite a while after these events, the fear almost paralyzed him – he worried constantly. Not that something would happen to him. His fear was always that something terrible would happen to me or the kids. Over the next few years, the fear eased somewhat, but it never fully went away. Within our relationship, it manifested itself by him needing me to keep him informed about where I was and when I would be home. Having a sense of this reassured him that he need not worry. If I failed to call when he expected, he would call me. If he couldn’t reach me, he would worry.

Over time, this evolved to a rhythm that for the most part we could both live with. The communication routine pretty much constituted calls in certain situations. On workdays, a call late in the day with an estimate of when I would be leaving work. If I didn’t call him by about 5:30, he would call me. I would call him again if that original estimate was going to change by more than about 30 minutes. And then a call when I got in the car to come home. On non-work days, if I was out running errands or at the movies or something, I would estimate before leaving the house when I would be home. If I was gone for the bulk of the day, I would usually call and check in somewhere around halfway through. Then a call to him when I was on the way home. He always communicated the same way to me. There were many times when I remember him calling to tell me where he was or when he would be home and I thought to myself that although I was happy to talk to him, the “report” was completely unnecessary. But I learned for the most part to set aside my frustration at the need to check in with him, and came to see it as just one of the things you do for the person you love, even though you think it’s unnecessary, and (to be very honest) somewhat of a burden to have to think about.

Once in a while though, maybe twice a year, it would flare up between us. It was always precipitated by me slipping in my commitment to call him. Usually it was that I hadn’t called toward the end of the day with a time estimate, and then didn’t answer when he called me (usually because I had stepped away from my phone, or had forgotten it was in silent mode). Or when I had given him an estimated time I would be home, and then ran way later and didn’t call to tell him. If this happened a few times he didn’t get upset. But once or twice a year, I would get lax and not call several times in a period of a few weeks. Inevitably, I would come home eventually to find him upset with me. I can still hear him. He would always say that he asked very little of me (true), and that he was okay with whatever time I came home (also true) as long as I just called him. He would say it’s not too much to ask (true again). He hated that he needed me to do this, but the fact was he did. I never argued back, because I knew he was right. He never yelled – he would just say over and over “Just CALL me. That’s all I ask.” I would be frustrated that he still needed this, but I would agree to be better. And I would be – for another six months or so. Still, it seemed so irrational to me.

Turns out he was right. Life is random. Things do change in an instant. We all know that right? I certainly knew it. So why am I so shocked that it actually happened? Because this time, it was us. Until now, the terrible randomness of life had touched people we cared about, and we mourned for them. But we remained untouched, in our little cocoon of safety and love and normal life. He knew all along, though, that we weren’t completely safe – that it could happen to us. If one of us can’t find the other for four hours, terrible things actually may have happened. The fear that the person who hasn’t called and doesn’t answer the phone is in the hospital – or worse – is not completely irrational at all.

I don’t believe that it was destiny, or that he had any foresight. I think it’s just ironic. Ironic that the very thing he worried most about happening is how he died, despite the fact that we all would have reassured him that his fears were ungrounded. Ironic that although he was right, he was also wrong – he wasn’t the one who needed to worry. He was the one who wouldn’t come home, not me or the kids. And ironic that his fear of something terrible happening is exactly why I knew something had. Given his diligence at communicating, I knew very early in those four hours that for sure something was very wrong. When the neighbors all thought he was just hung up somewhere, this is how I knew they were wrong. There was NO WAY he wouldn’t have called. His respect for the fragility and randomness of life was too powerful, too much a part who he became as a result of those earlier tragedies.

If it had been me in the accident, for four hours he would not have known if something had happened to me, or if it was just me being insensitive to his requests again. That four hours makes me understand in a whole new way what he went through when I failed to call, or pick up the phone when he called, every six months or so. His goal for all these years was that he wanted to know whether or not to worry if he couldn't find me. In the end, what he accomplished was ensuring I knew that I should worry when I couldn't find him.