The Autumnal Equinox. The dying of the light. The day on which Night overtakes Day for supremacy. The darkness grows and dawn takes longer and longer to arrive. The Sun retreats to the horizon and can only seem to shine weakly for what little time it has. As the Equinox approached last September, my family received shock upon shock, we knew it at the time, we were aware that it was a hard, dark, pummeling season but even looking back on it we marvel at how many painful things happened in so short a time.
At the beginning of the month, my brother made a rare trek up from North Carolina because we were becoming aware that my mother was exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's. We were aware that she was forgetting. That's how i had always thought of Alzheimer's: as forgetting. We went out to dinner while my brother was here and mom's credit card was denied. She always handles the finances for her and my stepfather so we assumed that she had forgot to pay the bill. But in looking over the statement, my brother discovered she had been giving away thousands of dollars to scam charities and political action groups for months and when we tried to talk to her about it the rational, reasonable, college educated, intelligent woman we have always known, the rock of our family who raised us became an angry little girl who could not tell reality from delusion. We had thought she was forgetful but we had no idea how the disease had warped her inner dialogue. How it had become full of imagined conversations she had with people she'd never met. In a moment when we thought we were losing our mother, the correction came like an axe in the middle of the table, our mom, the mom we knew was already gone. Two men who had grown up together but never grown together were suddenly closer, maybe clinging a little harder as they felt the loneliness of losing our family. A child is never too old to feel like an orphan when their parents are taken from them. We strategized, made a plan and the reunion turned out to be a sweet time for each of us. A gift of memory and redemption i would have cause to be amazingly thankful for in only a few weeks.
Days after my brother went back home, i got a text at work. It was a picture of my son's truck and the front end was nearly torn off. My eldest runs a lawn mowing business and he and his brother and a friend of theirs were all in the truck on their way to their first yards of the morning when a man ran a stop sign and broadsided them so hard it my sons's brand new, full size, crew cab, F-250 and trailer loaded with two zero-turn mowers, did its own zero turn 180 degrees in the span of an intersection to end up facing the way they came. i cannot fathom the force that takes. A tragedy worthy of Job was mitigated by God's grace and as it happened, the man who hit them got the worst of it, he was unconscious and we never found out what happened, who he was, why he was out running stop signs at seven in the morning, all we learned was that he had no insurance. My sons and their friend were left with bumps, bruises and burns, sore joints that linger even still, the loss of a vehicle but compared to what might have happened had the impact point been the passenger door... i dare not even contemplate.
Days later, literally, we were still in only the second week of September, at Bible study a dear friend and brother in Christ started appearing ill and calmly informed he was going to have a seizure. Now i've heard of those all my life but never actually saw one till then and i'll be very happy to never see another. Here was this man who's life already defines affliction and tragedy losing control of his own body and there's nothing we can do to help but hold his hand and witness and pray. Truly this world is broken, Father, come quickly Lord Jesus! The seizure has its way and does its violence and passes on like a storm with nary a care for the life it tosses in its wake but if it shakes me just to witness it, what must it do to the helpless victim?
Four days later again a morning at work was interrupted by my brother's (yes the same brother, i have but one) wife calling to tell me in the matter-of-fact voice of a person in shock and holding on to the hard facts they know to keep from thinking about the future they no longer have any assurance of, that my brother is being airlifted to a hospital with a trauma unit. He had borrowed a friend's brand new Harley to ride to work and was just getting out onto the two lane and up to highway speed when he ran headlong into a deer, was flung from the cycle, his head, neck, shoulder taking the brunt of the landing. Life went on hold. i finished the day but the next we were in the car heading south. A trauma ward, a coma, again, a body no longer in control of itself. Eyes fixed at nothing. Unable to breathe without machines. Sudden arrhythmia that would shake him and make his vitals drop. We kept watch by my brother's side, holding a hand that had the warmth of life but none of the vitality or motion, not knowing if he would ever wake. And if he did, to what would he wake? What would the damage be? Who would he be?
Equinox in North Carolina. Night overcomes Day.
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