A few weeks ago my husband, Jeff, called me at work to tell me he’d been hit — well, bumped — by a car.
He was running across the street to catch the bus — as is his wont — when he saw an SUV speeding toward him. The driver slammed on her brakes and squealed into the intersection.
Jeff had started to take a giant step back, and with leg poised karate-chop style, the SUV hit it hard enough to leave a red mark.
On the phone, my first thought was to shake him by the shoulders (like they do in old movies when someone is saying: “Get a hold of yourself!”) and give a “Don’t you ever, ever, ever again!…” exhortation.
We have a long-standing disagreement about the safety of crossing busy intersections against the light. He thinks that he can figure the timing out, he’s from the East Coast, Seattleites are such wimps!
But after my anger subsided, I was filled with an uncomfortable level of gratitude that he was OK.
This was followed by fatalism, the thought that well, if it’s not your time to go, it’s just not time.
It’s never a good time to go, but when bad fortune falls, anniversaries and other events suddenly take on portentous meaning.
Had it been fatal, it would be…about four years after we became a couple, a few weeks before Christmas, a day before his parents flew out for a visit…
(Handily enough, they would have been right there for the funeral.)
I’ve gone through the same calculations with my own close calls. A few years ago I was waiting to cross at a stop light in downtown Seattle. I was on my way to catch a bus to the airport and was panicked and running late.
The crosswalk hand turned green and I barged into the intersection when an SUV running a red light whizzed by me less than a foot away. I don’t know if this really happened, but I have a mental image of my hair and clothes being blown back slightly by the closeness of the brush.
As I paused there afterwards, suitcase in tow, people asked me if I was OK.
I spent the ride to the airport doing the calculations: instead of arriving for a happy reunion, I’d be in the hospital or dead. Instead of…
I don’t know if everyone goes through that process when they have a close call.
In the end, of the many thoughts you run through after a brush with death, I think the wisest is this: If it’s not your time to go, it’s just not time. And someday it will be.
Sarah Koening is the education reporter for the Enterprise.
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