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Friends United Meeting |
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April 1999
Another Chance to Get it Right
By Tom Webb
Next week is finals week. Papers and projects to grade, lots to do--lots to do.
Standing in the shower is how my day starts. On this day, I'm finishing the shower, and I feel a numbness in my right calf, then the beginnings of a cramp. It all happens in a matter of minutes. I make it back to the bed, hoping it will pass, but it doesn't. It gets worse.
After an hour of it, Ellen takes charge, and we are off to the emergency room. I have never experienced such pain. Lord, thank you for Ellen.
The diagnosis is a slipped disk, and we are scheduled for an MRI on the following Thursday. We come home with a bottle of pain pills. My leg is turning purple, and the pain overpowers all else.
Two days later, my friend Richard, who is also my doctor at the community clinic, is skeptical of the diagnosis and wants to see for himself. His schedule is packed, and he suggests we come to his home. I can't deal with another car transit, so Richard comes to us. In minutes the plan takes a right turn, and we are headed back for the hospital. Richard has paved the way and I am immediately in the hands of a radiologist and surgeon. The diagnosis is that a failed aneurysm in my knee has shut off circulation to my leg.
Days reduce to disassociated images, half remembered voices. Always, Ellen is there, fending for me, tending to me, sleeping on a cot beside me. In our wedding bands is the inscription "God for me provided thee." Thank you, Lord, thank you.
I float back to sanity. My right leg has been amputated below the knee. Kidney failure was an issue, but I don't remember much of it. My students and my friends come to see me, and I am encouraged that, armed with a fake foot, I'll be back in the saddle again. I believe the worst of it is behind us. Then it's down into the black pit again, they think it might have been a heart attack, but it turns out to be a urinary infection. Back to ICU and the scariest Christmas of my life. I remember praying with Ellen, and an intense conversation with a nurse about fear and dying.
I'm home now, lop-sided but on the mend. I have been given a great gift; never have I been so close to another person as I am with Ellen. I can see my life gradually coming back to me. But I have a sense of grieving that doesn't go away. It's not for the lost leg, but something deeper.
The delusion of immortality is gone; bad things can in fact happen to me. I'm reflecting on the fact that I have not really run my life; it has run me. So many compromises, so many dreams sacrificed to "being practical."
We are admonished in the Bible to center our lives spiritually and set ourselves apart from "worldliness." But the world we live in is seductive, and it isn't easy to stay centered. One day at a time, choices are made; choices between dreams and leadings and practical needs and wants. Too often, the choice is for career, for material things, and the dreams and leadings are pushed off to some other time.
Thirty years ago, I was an avid photographer and abstract expressionist painter. My "day job" as an engineer put groceries on the table. I loved to paint, and got good enough at it to express things not really reachable with words. I touched other people, maybe even planted small seeds. But then I got busy with the demands of starting a business. The good paintings had sold, and the not so good stuff got lost, and the photography turned into a way to make money. Something important died in the process of building a business, and I miss it still. The business made a lot of money for a while, then sank like a stone in the recession of the late sixties.
When I think of my father, I don't think of the man who, armed with an eighth grade education, became an industrial engineer and middle manager of International Harvester Corporation. I think of a tireless man who helped build playgrounds in the North end of Richmond, Indiana, and stood up for his Black friends at a time when it was not acceptable to have Black friends. When I think of Paul, I don't think of him as a tent maker. I'm sure he was a good tent maker, but it was merely his "day job." And, when I think of Jesus, I don't think of him as a carpenter.
I've had an event in my life that has jerked me up straight. In a way, it has been the best Christmas ever; I have learned what love and intimacy can be. I have felt God's hand in my life, and I've been given yet another chance to get it right.
Thank you, Lord.
Tom Webb, a native of Richmond, Indiana, and a life-long Quaker, is a retired information systems manager, and teaches computer science at Pueblo Community College as an adjunct faculty member. Ellen Cooney and Tom were married in the manner of Friends in Atlanta Friends Meeting on March 21, 1998.
Copyright (c) 1999 Friends United Meeting