Our Fragile Mortality

How many close calls have you had? I am defining a close call as a situation that if it had turned out differently could have had grave consequences. Another way of putting it is a near death experience. I have certainly had my share if not more. The most recent, which I have already blogged about, was a couple of months ago when my sodium count was 111 when 135-145 is normal and anything under 125 is considered extremely dangerous. It was the cause of my passing out twice, slamming my head on very hard surfaces. Fortunately, I fell backwards both times hitting the back of my head rather than the front, which if that had happened would probably have resulted in brain damage. And there was the incident in the ER at Holy Cross Hospital when the doctors were ready to discharge me after they had determined I had not suffered “brain bleed.” If Embry had not reminded them to check my sodium level, I surely would not have survived. Several doctor friends to whom I have told my story shake their heads in disbelief. Their reaction: “Joe, it is a miracle you are still alive.”

I think back over my life and can recall several other instances when close calls happened. One was in 1981 when I was riding shotgun in a tiny Toyota, speeding along on a crowded Cross Bronx Expressway en route to LaGuardia Airport in a blinding thunderstorm. Suddenly the car began to hydroplane. We did three complete 360s, crossing six lanes, as cars whizzed past us on both sides at 70 miles an hour, before ending up in a ditch on the far side of the expressway. By some miracle we did not hit another car. I still have a vivid memory of what the driver looked like, a 30-something woman who was a staffer for my client, a nonprofit affordable housing company. As the world twirled around me in a moment of vertigo I remember thinking, “So this is where it all ends.” The driver was so shaken by the experience she immediately turned off the expressway and dumped me and the two passengers in the backseat at the closest subway station to get to the airport on our own.

Then there was the airline experience when the landing gear in a US Airways jet did not come down as the plane approached the San Diego airport. The pilot came on the loudspeaker, announced the predicament, and told us that his plan was to circle the airport until the plane ran out of fuel and then coast in. From that point on, very few passengers said a word as the plane circled the city for about 30 minutes. The lady next to me was a retired realtor who nervously pointed out the roofs of a dozen or so homes she had sold in her long career. When we completed the final circle and were close to using up all the fuel, the pilot came on again. The good news was that the landing gear had finally come down as it was supposed to. The bad news was that the control panel in the cockpit indicated that the landing gear was not locked. He made one more circle flying very low by the control tower hoping they might be able to determine if the wheels were locked. I counted over a dozen ambulances, six or seven fire engines and a bunch of local TV and news vehicles. We coasted in and slammed hard on the runway. The wheels held and the cabin erupted in applause. I recall thinking the same thing I did on the Cross Bronx Expressway in a blinding rain: “So this is how it all ends.”

I have been in cars that came within inches of head on collisions at very fast speeds, once on a fishing trip with my father, who was driving, when a car was headed toward us in our lane after passing another car on the opposite side of the hill. We ended up in a ditch on the side of the road but were able to get out of it and back on the road. We were silent most of the rest of the way home. The other was on a canoe trip with high school friends when I was driving and made a right turn onto what I thought was a deserted highway only to see another car barreling towards us going very fast in our lane. Both cars swerved and averted disaster. It was several minutes before anyone in my car said a word.

I have had more close calls sailing than I can count. When a huge freighter or container ship blows its horn five times, it means it can’t change course. If you do not get out of the way, you will be hit. I can remember three of those incidents, all in the Chesapeake Bay. The closest was in the mid 1980s at three in the morning when I was cruising with our son and best friend enroute to New England when in the fog what I thought was a bridge over the canal leading to the Delaware Bay turned out to be a freighter. We heard the five horn blasts as it glided by only a sailboat length way. Then there was the gale that hit when Embry and I were cruising with friends on a chartered sailboat in the Adriatic. We were racing down huge waves at 14 knots when we encountered a freighter in the dense fog aiming straight for us and missing us by only a few boat lengths. All were close calls that if they had gone the other way, I probably would not be writing this blog post.

And of course there are the medical close calls. Most people have had them. My most serious besides the low sodium incident was curvature of the spine (“scoliosis”) caused by paralyzed stomach muscles as a result of polio when I was ten. I was “saved” in 1954 when I was twelve by a brand new operation called a “spinal fusion.” Had I been born several years earlier I would not have had access to the procedure and would not have survived past my eighteenth birthday because my organs would have been out of whack. Then there are the routine infections that years earlier would have been killers. I have had several melanomas, all caught early enough not to be a killer, but what if they hadn’t? The advances in medicine over my lifetime have kept a lot of my generation alive. Several of my friends have had more serious health incidents than me but most of my friends are still kicking.

So, what are we to make of these close calls? If you have been following my blog, it will come as no surprise when I proclaim that life is both a mystery and a blessing. It is a “miracle” that we Homo sapiens are here in the first place. With Hubble and the other new telescopes, we are looking hard but still have not found advanced life on other planets. Why here and not on other planets? Certainly, there has got to be life–including “advanced life”– in a universe that we now know contains trillions of galaxies, but we won’t know–at least not likely any time soon.

And why are some spared an early exit–as I and most of my friends have been–and others whose lives are tragically cut short? Where does a Divine Deity fit into the picture?

In a couple of weeks, I will turn 84. That is a long life and much longer than my life expectancy when I was born when the average age at death was in the mid 60s. As the saying goes, I have been blessed. For this and for surviving the various close calls, I am profoundly grateful. And, yes, I also believe that there is much we don’t know. Above the paygrade of us Homo sapiens to figure out though that does not keep us from trying. What is “luck” and what is something more?

I love the line in Amore Towles’ book, A Gentleman in Moscow: “A coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

I have nothing more to add.

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