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barton cole :: veni, vedi, vero scripsi
 Sunday, October 04, 2009
Mortality's been the theme this last week.
On my island, one of my tree-work colleagues was just killed by an alder.
Bobby Stewart was one of those guys who do the work that's too big for me - I'm a horticulturist, a pruning specialist, I work in fruit trees of all sizes, among other things; there's nothing like the skill and finesse and vigilance it takes to be a tree man, and I don't have it. These guys are the top guys, the arborists, the loggers.
As I understand it, he was "wrecking it," which is a logging term for taking a tree down by cutting it from the top, little by little, in situations where there's no room to drop the whole tree. Part of the tree broke off, I am told, and landed on him.
They all call those falling branches widowmakers - my Finnish grandfather, Leo, was killed by one, logging near Coos Bay; I named my chainsaw after him to keep me mindful.
There's very little that's safe about an alder - the only tree I ever fell from, when the only branch that was supporting me gave way, as I climbed high to impress girls - who were not impressed, not even when I fell twenty feet and was arrested by forked branches -- and yet, those of us who really know alders love them all the same, even though they die young and throw branches along the way (I'll write about them next time) - only the idiots call them trash trees, and Bobby, although one landed on him, would tell you it was ready to go.
The next day, one of our sweet friends was experiencing some headache symptoms. I had heard she'd driven herself to the hospital here on the island (she went in an ambulance, I learned; a friend suggested the detail was critical, as perhaps there was an EMT who was heroic, and about whom we don't know, but who would obviously be an agent in the story).
They promptly airlifted her to Harborview, the regional trauma center down Puget Sound, in Seattle.
Turns out she had an aneurysm, and nearly didn't make it.
Later that day, the prognosis I heard was that they were hoping for signs of higher brain function - so it would seem we were about to lose her.
To deal with the pressure of the blood clot, they could either go into her brain via an artery in her leg, or enter her skull the conventional way - which they opted to do. The next day, they operated.
A portion of her skull was removed, and kept in the freezer for later re-attachment; the surgeon said the area "looked angry," and they want it to subside before they seal her all the way up.
She made it through the surgery like a champ, and was even demonstrating recognition of her situation the next day, a day before they intended to bring her out of her post-operative, induced comatose state.
The report I got that day was that she was going to be without this bit of skull for some time, and would be wearing a helmet.
"I think she's going to be just fine," I said.
I remember this from before.
When I was eleven years old, I lived in a little town on the saltwater, much like the town I live in now, but not as bohemian by a long shot.
There weren't that many employment prospects, as we were rather remote - you could either cut grass, or maybe babysit (tried that - the allegedly sleeping infant was actually a profoundly-sociopathic Houdini for two solid hours; I can still see that paltry 37¢ in the mother's fat palm -- "won't be long!") - but if you were lucky, you had one of the few, precious paper routes, delivering the Tacoma News Tribune, published in the city on the other side of the bay.
That was a good income for a kid in the early 70's - hard work, and getting up early on the weekends to deliver Sunday edition, which I would weigh when I finished my route - to determine that, yes indeed, that young guy was walking around with one of those classic, canvas newspaper-delivery bags, carrying upwards of a hundred pounds of newspapers at a time.
You loaded the papers in the bag for a long, looping first leg; the bag was so heavy you had to pull it over the edge of the box the truck dropped the bundles in - and in which you slept if you got there in the morning before the truck had arrived with your bundles. Then you kind of stood up into it and heaved away from the box like a tug from a pier.
You didn't bend over until you were down a dozen or more papers, as the weight of the papers would pull you down, and you wouldn't be able to get up - seriously - it happened more than once. It sounds funny to imagine a kid immobilized by a newspaper bag, legs feebly kicking like a capsized beetle, but it's not. That bag could strangle you, come to think of it.
I had no idea I barely escaped childhood with my life - no, actually, knew it all along, but this isn't that kind of story, so we won't go into it. The history of my scars and scrapes can wait.
I didn't have a paper route at the time, but was hoping to get one - there were only four, one of which was actually prestigious, having the most customers in the shortest distance, and good tippers, to boot (not as compact as a high school friend's route - he delivered papers in an apartment building, and would deposit the requisite amount of papers on every other floor going up in the elevator, then deliver them on the way down, using the stairs - over in half an hour).
My brother, Dan, had the prime route (my other brother had another). He was always an ass-buster, and had rapidly been switched to that one by the manager, and pulled in upwards of a hundred dollars a month, which was a lot for a kid in those days, for an hour's work a day (every day, no days off).
One day in June, I was with a friend, who had one of the subordinate routes. He was going on a trip with his family, so I was learning his route as a substitute, to fill in while he was away.
In the center of my town was a large park, with some great little woods, tennis courts, and a wide-open sports field with a baseball diamond on one side, and goal posts for soccer on the other.
A softball game was going on that day, but nothing organized; not a league, or anything. Just a bunch of grownups playing softball and drinking beer (which was easy to get away with - our town was unincorporated, so only the county sheriff had jurisdiction; we were way off near the county line, and you never saw those guys).
My pal's route went past the field, and then around the corner, looping past the fire station and the doctor's office.
As we approached the doctor's, a van squealed into the parking lot. A fellow got out of the van, ran into the office, came dashing back out, and sped off, around the corner.
"Shit," my pal said, "I'm going to see what's going on - you deliver those next few papers…?" as he ran off. I knew the route already, and was just affirming it for him that day.
He took off around the corner, and was back in a minute -
"Bart! It's your brother!"
I went around the corner to the next street, and could see a cluster of people gathered half a block down on the other side, standing looking at Dan on the ground.
I took the bag off, set it on the grass, and walked across the street to the group of people. I took my time; I was afraid.
I slowly walked up and looked down -
But that's the part I don't remember. I remember looking at him, but I don't remember what I saw.
I was the kid, shuffling that afternoon with his blood-flecked bag and papers, finishing his route.
Didn't know what else to do.
The fellow in the van, one of the drunk softball players, had hit him while he sped down the road - doing fifty in a twenty-five zone. His mirror, we learned later, had clipped my brother in the head, knocking him off his bike and to the ground (ironically, had he been wearing a helmet - they weren't around then - his head would have made it, but his neck would have been broken and he'd be dead).
He lay there, a bloody mess; his newspaper bag was next to him, his bicycle lay there, the front wheel bent. I walked away and sat on the grass.
An ambulance arrived soon after, and he was taken to the hospital in the city, where they hustled him into surgery.
He made it through surgery just fine, but - they took out part of his skull in the process - the part right above the hairline in front. Later, they would insert a plastic plate, but that had to wait until he recovered.
We were able to visit him in the hospital in a couple of days - I was a bit jealous by the attention he was getting, and of all the cool toys with which well-wishers were filling his room.
Dan was fine - I had feared I'd have a vegetable for a brother, but he was fine. Alert, coherent, just the same, but with a big hole in his head.
He came home from the hospital, and life went along just about the same - except that now my brother had this spot on his head with the skin just stretched across it, about as big as a dollar. Right there in front; you couldn't miss it.
He usually wore a stocking cap - a beanie, as the cool set has adopted them now - which made me just a bit less uncomfortable.
And he went about his normal business - he delivered his newspapers, and went to school, and continued his passionate basketball playing.
We had a hoop on the back patio, installed on a huge steel column made by one of the welders at the shipyard where my dad was a naval architect, and Dan would hang out back there, shooting baskets for hours.
He had an odd style of shooting, too - we were soccer players (Little League baseball, although present in our community, didn't have the appeal and cachet of soccer, which was the popular sport - many of my friends went on to have pro careers on the field), and Dan would shoot baskets as if throwing a soccer ball in from the sideline, in which the ball starts behind your head, and with both hands, you toss it as far and accurately as you can.
Dan would nail all the shots, too, uncannily - and had, as a result, an advantage over defenders taller than him, as shooting the ball that way gave him about a foot of extra height, compared to the conventional way of shooting a basketball.
He'd be out there for hours - and you wasted your time if you ever undertook a game of HORSE with him; he'd kick your ass every time.
Once, during Dan's convalescence, the ball rolled under the deck.
"I'll get it!" I said, wanting to protect my gentle, damaged brother. But he was closer, and got the ball, and banged his head when he came back out.
I nearly wet my pants, I nearly fainted, I certainly hyperventilated, afraid that he had damaged himself and was now about to die.
He was rather cavalier about it, though, to the point that he thought my concern and fuss were silly - and I think I'm still getting over that incident, as well.
Two months later, they operated on him again, and sewed this thick, plastic plate in his skull, in place of the missing bone. "Stronger than bone," the surgeon said.
Two operations in two months - a scar beginning above his eye and continuing over the top of his head to the back, from the first surgery, and another going from one ear to the other, the polar route, from the second.
When his hair grew back, rather than being light and rather wispy as mine was (and is still, although much grayer), it was dark and coarse. No one mistook us for twins after that.
And Dan went back to his normal activities, too, playing soccer that autumn, wearing a hockey helmet. I remember parents of the opponents making a stink about it, and my father bitching them out.
Just a few years ago, Dan had a series of small strokes in an afternoon - TIAs, they call them, or "Transitory Ischemic Attacks." He was incoherent, and a girl he was with called an ambulance. He was promptly airlifted across Puget Sound to Harborview, and took up residence for a few days in the same Neuro Intensive Care Unit where my friend is today.
It's a nice place - and a crack trauma center; the finest in the Pacific Northwest (including Alaska and Montana). Our friend will be in nice hands.
But when they told me that she was going to be missing part of her skull for a time, and wearing a helmet, it all came back. "No sweat," I said. She'll be fine - a tough road, but she's a tough dame, and medical technology has advanced in the last thirty years, right?
The medicine of my youth seems ancient and barbaric to me, now - although the administration of it to my numerous lacerations, contusions, sprains, strains and aches (no breaks, I don't think - and I'm knocking wood) is still fresh in my mind.
Perhaps you don't remember pain, but you remember everything else.
Almost.
Perhaps that's best.
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