Settling: Morphine Haze
Where: Hospital
When: All friggin night long!!!!
Who: Every nurse ever born
What: Ah, now that is the question ...
I really did not sleep for two solid days. Constant noise, constant drama, all emanating from my neighbor's area. I barely saw him when I arrived - some 75+ year old guy, do not even know his name, but I sure got to know him across the following days.
Whatever he was in for was a fairly widespread organ failure.
So, quietly I lay. He had three attendants 24 hours a day. And he loved to talk. Of course, with about four shifts, all stories are told and retold. It worked with my morphine, somewhere in there I picked up his story. A story I have thought hard on how to share ....
His stories placed him throughout the western United States, ski bum, womanizer, never met a substance that did not need abused. He had destroyed his body and I found out he was born in 1978 - he is all of 37!
My mind roamed through his stories, dear God, I realized that could have been me laying there! I had the perfect set up. I was a downhill skier, 7'9" skis and all. It was all math to me, I could "see" mathematical routes and percentages of success at speed, I had a natural instinct and was fast enough to please the judges. But, God took me sideways and saved me from the logical outcome of that life. (No, this is all history, no bragging.)
My mind marveled at God's Grace. What made me "special". He went far out of Hi s way to save me. Why not my nameless roommate?
The stories continued. Now on to about his father ...
The stories were all similar to his own, perhaps father partied harder, skied harder, and was what we all termed a worthless ski bum by the end. He married along the way, two sons and a daughter. By his death last year, wife was history but his kids all sat with him as he passed on. And more stories of his father stretching back into high school.
Stories that suddenly overlaid my own! And my mind was snapped to full awareness. Who was this guy? He skied my slopes, my same races, he camped my sites, his father's stories - were MY stories! But, I held my tongue and remembered:
The 1972 tryouts (in 1971), I ran the names, but this guy was Colorado local. There were lots of want-a-bees But none of them went on to Provo that I had heard of EXCEPT for Bob. And Bob was local, went to the neighboring high school, he was a Blue-Booter (to long a tale if I have never told it before). It made sense, all of the stories would have only been possible if it was him.
But, Bob was dead?
Day three, four in the morning, shift change and the new nurse is loud and very noisey - I finally get to at least hear my neighbor's last name: Hartigan.
Yeah, Bob was dead, from a long wasted life of chasing dreams down ski slopes and drowning his pain through addiction and women. He never had a chance, just as I knew I never had a chance. No one was better than the Mahre brothers on US slopes ... It had deviled me back then, it saddens me now that the dream Bob chased had killed him. It was the only possible end to that lifestyle.
And that Grace God showed to me ... was it ever offered to Bob? He was no less worthy, nor I more worthy than him. I do not understand God's ways, much less the why behind the ways of man - much less my own nature. But, then God's wisdom is the foolishness of man. We are not capable of understanding nor seeing clearly.
Now to pass this unfortunate news on to the rest of the Blue Booters, we had been seeking Bob for quite sometime, with a reunion in mind ....
:(
No comments:
Post a Comment