The Angel of Non-Death

If I, like the cat,  have nine live, then I've already used up five of them, as will be documented below. And these actual events do not include all the might-have-beens: had I left the house a minute earlier, or taken a left instead of a right when I was lost at midnight in a strange city. 

Five times that I can remember, the grim reaper stood at the entrance where I will go out one day. But another angel, the angel of non-death, the nice reaper, stays the the grim one's scythe. "His mother's at it again, sending up her prayers of protection. So go away. It's not your time." And the grim one retreats, biding his time, of which he has a lot.

I believe in the efficacy of prayer, especially that of a mother for her children. My mother especially liked Jesus' mother. They shared a name. We might say Mary's prayers did not help her own son, but we don't know that for sure. Reasonable people say there's no proof that prayer works and they are right, but out beyond the Big Bang, there's a wild and wooly world of possibility.

That world of possibility is the playground of lunatics, but we reasonable people are allowed to speculate. Some things must be taken on faith. Ennaways, back to my near-death incidents. When I was fifteen some friends and I built a raft with a little house on top. One night we launched the thing and the tide took us down the river till we ran aground, The next day, with great effort, we got the raft back to where we started and it was permanently moored.

The raft broke up in the autumn storms, but till then we used it as a swimming raft. It was fun to dive off the top of the house. One afternoon I was there by myself. The water was always murky in our tidal river and there was a crunching sound as my head met gravel. There were stars too. I got one wicked stiff neck out of that dive. I did not tell my mother.

A year or so later I went out sailing on an extremely windy day. My little boat capsized. Stay with the boat, they say. But my rudder had come unhinged and was drifting away. I was about to go after it. This was in October and I had a leather coat on. No one wore lifejackets in those days. I still can't believe my luck, but a Coast Guard cutter was passing by at that moment. He changed course, picked up my rudder and towed me back to shore. There was no safety lecture, so I'm thinking my rescuers were from the celestial coast guard.

A few years later I was in the Philippines. The small naval base I lived at was on the south China Sea. There was a swimming beach with a lifeguard. Then a typhoon hit and buried the life guard stand. A few days after the storm, some friends and I walked to a little village a mile south of the base. There was a huge surf running and I decided to do a little body surfing. When I got out beyond the breakers I felt a current carrying me out to sea. Not good, I thought. To my credit, I didn't panic, but slowly kicked towards the small figures pacing the beach. Eventually I caught a wave. I knew how the almost drowned rat feels.

I stayed away from the water after that. In fact I moved close to the geographical center of North America. Minnesota may call itself the land of lakes, but that doesn't mean I have to go in any of them. One summer I was driving to Boston in our Honda hatchback. I had Ned and Joey along and we planned to camp along the way. When I saw a sign that said "Welcome to Missouri." I knew I had made a mistake. I got off the freeway and headed east on a narrow winding road. It was dark and the kids were asleep in the back. "I'll just pull over in the next town and we can sleep in the car," I thought before dozing off. The sound of the right front tire on gravel woke me as we headed for the ditch. I was able to correct our course, but momentum carried us toward the opposite ditch. When we finally came to a stop, we were still on the road but the car was pointing the way we had just come. Every loose object in the car was on the floor. "What happened?" said Ned. "Dad hit a puddle," said Joey, God love 'im.

For my final brush, I returned to the sea. Ned was now working in the Virgin Islands. We decided to fly down for a brief visit, though Teresa and I are not beach or tropics people. Ned procured flippers, goggles and snorkels, and I enjoyed paddling in the shallows observing the shells and small fish. Ned said there was a better spot around a rocky outcrop and took off swimming. In retrospect I realized it's a good idea to stay in shape in case you ever decide to swim around a rocky outcrop. As I got into deep water, I felt like a hand was pushing my facemask down, letting it fill with water. "This is ridiculous'" I thought, and turned back for shore. Now my flippers, which should have been helping, felt like lead weights. I could see Teresa anxiously pacing the beach. Finally I felt a flipper touch the bottom which gave me a burst of energy. 

By the time of this last incident, my parents were deceased. My siblings and I joke about how they help us find good parking spots, but they're also good at pushing down facemasks. At least that's my take on it. 

Life jacket graveyard, Island of Lesbos, Greece