[MD] Fear of Death

[John Carl]

Dan comments indeed:

"We're, each and every one of us, dying men and women, and we're all
afraid of that dark. We can't help it. We talk to God; it doesn't
help; He never answers. Not that we can hear. We build monuments and
they crumble. We write words and libraries burn."


We erect towers of knowledge, label them Babel, and then get confused.

The Greek form of the name is from the native Akkadian *Bāb-ilim*, which
means "Gate of the god"

The Hebrew version of the name of the city and the tower, *Babel*, is
attributed in Gen. 11:9 to the verb *balal*, which means *to confuse or
confound* in Hebrew.

An interesting progression, doncha think?  From gateway to confusion.

dmb once asked me why I choose to believe in God.  I gave him the short
answer, "because He makes me laugh."  Herewith is the longer answer, as to
why He makes me laugh.

In my freshman year of high school, I experienced a very weird phenomena -
popularity.

It was just a brief interlude in my life, and hasn't been repeated since,
but there it was.  For a while, I was popular.  I was popular with my
teachers, I was popular with girls and I was popular with my friends.  I
wasn't too popular with sophmore, junior and senior boys, because I was,
after all, only a freshman.  But for me it was an astounding occurence.  And
it all seemed to come about through factors outside of my control.  As if
some force was guiding me, helping me and making me into something
different.

The thing about boarding school, is timing.  Right when you're entering
puberty, you leave your home and community and established pattens and have
the opportunity to re-create your self; to become a different person
socially, at the same time your body is changing biologically.  I think its
a fascinating process and ought to be studied by psychologists.

For instance, every time I went home for a home leave or a vacation, when
I'd come back to school I'd get a fluttery feeling in the pit of my
stomache.  An excitement, a dread and a longing, all in one.  It was strange
and I didn't understand it at the time.

Years later I read a book on stage fright and ego-loss and it became more
explicable to me, and when my teenage girls reported the same feelings, I
had a ready explanation which fascinated them, and me.  That when they went
to school, they took on new roles and personality and their deeper self knew
in returning to school, the child-role had to die so that the
self-sufficient student self could take over again.  Just like a really good
actor gets stage fright before the curtain goes up on stage, and a really
good teacher would get upsettedness to the point of vomiting before losing
himself in his devotion to his students and a community building leader
would be scared in facing another two-day seminar wherein the individuality
of the self is subsumed into a wider and unknown social role.


And yet tho we fear such little deaths, they are the birth of something much
greater.

But I had no idea of any of this my freshman year of academy.  I just
discovered that out from under the pressures and expectations of my family
dynamic, I was blossoming and blooming in ways I didn't expect.

The first main happenstance that was prodding me, and a cause of much to
come, was a close friendship with one of the leading couples at the school.
John and Marge Eggers.  Marge was the school registrar and John was in
charge of the work program and job placement.  Since that meant that I had
allies in the two main aspects of the place - school and work, I had my
bases covered.  John also taught construction and ran the construction crew,
and Marge taught business english and typing.  Since to this day I've mainly
gotten by on typing skills and building skills, you can see how important
they were to my life.  Heck, even my brief foray into computer programming
in my midlife had a lot to do with being a good typer.

Also, my dad was named John and my mom was named Marge, so it was easy to
project a familal feeling.  To top it off, their son was also named John.
Tho he always went by "Johnny" and I, as I've mentioned before, always went
by the nickname "Cary"

I met Johny Eggers my 8th grade year at the parochial school in Santa Cruz,
near where I lived, and where all the faculty sent their kids. Johnny was
like me in that he was real smart, but unlike me in that he was very good,
very moral and very studious.

In fact, I was embarrassed once by our 8th grade teacher who announced that
there were two students in class, who had identical near-genius IQ's, and
one got straight A's and the other D's.

He didn't have to be coy about it, everybody knew who he was talking about.
Altho that was the first I'd ever heard that I had an IQ worthy of mention,
so that was kinda weird.  But Johnny and I looked at each other with
interest and we became good friends.

If I had to pin down one big difference in our outlook, I'd pin it to our
mother's attitudes.  His was the school registrar and mine was a hard
partying ex-tomboy who loved horses, wine and going to the beach.  In fact,
she'd stop by the school on the way and get me out of class saying "It's too
nice of a day to go to school.  Keep me company at the beach."

Which sort of explains how come I'm an unemployed framer, and Johnny is an
OB/GYN in Washington State with a nice practice and a sailboat.

Not that I'm complaining, mind.  I like my life and there were  times going
through Med school when Johnny would contemplate all the work and sacrifice
and wish he'd stuck to following his dad's contractor footsteps.  There's no
good selfish reason for all that sacrifice.

And my grandpa was an OB doctor, and let me tell you there's probably not a
more intrusive and family-robbing profession in the world.  Babies don't
care if its Christmas or Thanksgiving.  They come when the come.

My freshman year, I got put on the lowly groundskeeping crew with all the
other freshman,  until an opportunity to get a chance at helping paint some
buildings came about and I volunteered, having some experience at painting.
I did pretty good, and the guy, a parent. sang my praises to Mr. Eggers and
that was enough to get me a recommendation for one of the most coveted jobs
on campus - an assistant to the P.E Teacher which meant sweeping the gym
floor a hundred times a day, and shooting a LOT of baskets.  This led to
some skill level at basketball, which got me some attention and acceptance
in a way only a sports-mad cloistered world can bestow.

The other factor, was that I had my horse at the school, which was
relatively rare.  A few girls did, but I was the first horse-crazy boy in
living memory.

Horses was another gift of my mom's.  She'd always been a horse fiend, from
growing up on a palomino ranch in Colorado, till today.  I'd started with a
pony, Short Ribs, and then a few years before high school, my dad bought me
a purebred quarter horse mare, just greenbroke, named Sherry - short for for
Dan's Cheri Sherry.  This compact and powerful Dan's Barr mare and I formed
a bond that stems from two social animals, thrust into an alien environment
with mainly each other for company. A very special relationship.

Sherry had her stubborn quirks.  She'd had a bad experience with a wheel
barrow, my little brother tied her to one and she spooked and freaked out
and banged up her legs, and she didn't like being trapped or trailered and
went through a lot of ropes and halters.  She was so strong, once she
learned she could pretty much snap any rope made, it was hard to get her to
stay tied against her will.

Her other stubborness. was water on the trail.  Like a lot of young and
inexperienced horses, for some reason, any water on the trail would make her
snort and prance and instead of calmly stepping over the rivulet, like all
the horses ahead of her, she had to make a big production and then jump in a
mighty leap, all a-trembling and sweating.  Time after time.  I didn't think
she'd ever get over it.

Well, at Monterey Bay Academy, she finally got over it.

Did I mention yet that this school was on the ocean?  That I could ride my
horse, every day, on the beach?

The first time she saw the Pacific, heard the waves, smelled the salt, she
was as nervous and prancing as a boy returning to boarding school after
summer vacation.  I was surprised I could even get her close to it, but then
a wave came up and swished around her feet and she sorta had to deal with
it.  And after a while, she came to love it.

As did I.  We'd ride every day, from the hard-pack sand near the water to
the shifting loose sands of the dunes.  There's nothing like riding on the
sand to condition a horse and her leg tendons  became like iron.  There is
no faster horse than a racing quarter horse, and when they are going flat
out, there's as little resemblance to galloping as there is to trotting.
There's no more up and down movement, it's all just flat, smooth and fast.
Top speed is about 45 miles an hour and if you're headed into the wind, it
makes the eyes sting.  We got to where I'd come to the stables, open the
gate, grab onto her halter and take off.  No bridle.  No saddle and no
worries.  The freedom and exhiliaration, especially compared to Seventh Day
Adventist boarding school, cannot be described, only experienced.

My experience came to a head, one home leave where I had to stay at school
and help with the annual re-paint of the gym floor.  Everything had been
going so great, all of life seemed so affirmative and wonderful that
something in my young heart swelled to the point of the worshipful bursting
point.  I remember so clearly the day.   I stood on the bluffs, watching the
sun set over the pacific, the light streaming in an indescribable glory, and
gave my heart completely to this concept known as "God".  I was so full, I
just had to worship something, either God or myself, and I was idealistic
enough then, anyway, to go the "right" direction on this equation.

So there I did.  I poured out my soul.  I dedicated my life to God in this
moment and then wheeled away, back to the stable, feeling wonderful,
powerful, alive and pure.

As we pounded past the laundry, I tried to steer Sherry away from this rusty
old guy wire holding a chimney stack and she fought me.  She wanted to duck
under it and take a shortcut.  We argued. I'd say she "fought the bit", but
remember, she didn't have one.  So it was me jerking on her head and her
going her own way.  Fast.

Finally I decided that I'd better let her have her head because comprimise
was likely to end in disaster, so I jerked her back in the way she wanted to
go, just at the exact instance that she decided to follow my lead and head
around it, and thus just as in a comedic case of bad timing, she zigged
while I zagged and disaster became inevitable.  I threw myself backwards at
the last half-second to avoid the rusty cable and WHAM.  Everything went
dark.

The wire caught me right under my chin, and tore open my throat.  A girl I
didn't know, saw us, and ran to get help.  The first thing I remembered was
Mr. Eggers, bending over me and saying "Oh my God, it's Cary"

That shook me, because to have a respected and pious man like Mr. Eggers
take the Lord's name in vain, meant this must be really serious.  And the
way his voice cracked when he said it, this tough and macho Texan, I knew
then that I was in trouble.

He sat me up, and blood gushed over my t-shirt, soaking it completely and
instantly.  The school nurse pulled up in a station wagon, and a few kids
helped load me up and rush me to the emergency room in Watsonville.
Everybody was so dead serious, and whispering, it was plain that they
thought I was gonna die.  I thought so too.  But I realized that I wasn't
worried about it.  Sometimes people describe such moments as, "making one's
peace with God" but I'd just done that and so had the opportunity to reflect
on the humor of the situation.  Here I'd just given my life to God, and here
He was taking it.

It made me laugh.

Not out loud, but inside.  I felt light-hearted and unafraid.  One of the
kids riding with me, I'll never forget, Mike Mashmeyer, a dreaded sophmore,
was holding tight to my throat and I was having trouble breathing and I
said, "you're choking me" and he replied, "well that's better than letting
you bleed to death." and we laughed, and the mood in the car lightened, and
I got to the hospital where the dr. said my carotid artery was fully exposed
and thus I'd come within a hairbreadth of dying.

Sherry didn't get off so easy neither.  Her ear had gotten knocked off and
was hanging by some skin.  The vet sewed it back on and soon it was fine, as
was I.  But for the rest of my life, I never thought much about death, or
feared it at all.  It's all part of the joke, you see.