It's a Wonderful Life

HS #54 2020.1.9

It’s a Wonderful Life

Racquetball players are notorious for having excuses for their poor performance. Meeting Bob Sterken to play on Tuesday, December 10, I told him I felt really tired. Was a bit embarrassed by the lack of specificity. 

Later that evening, while walking to Central Ave CRC for the Zeeland performance of Handel's Messiah, I felt strange.  Not sick - just weak with a slight burning in my chest.  

I noticed it on and off for the next few days, but continued my routine of teaching, grading finals, wallyball, and lifting weights. On Friday, I sang the Lessons and Carols service with the Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys, visited my aunt in Grandville, and then home to bed.  Later I awoke with the same strange burning feeling in my chest and left arm - just a bit more intense. 

Figuring, "No reason for it to have gotten worse," a Google search confirmed a possible heart problem.  I considered going back to sleep and dealing with it in the morning, but instead drove myself to Holland Hospital where Brian Yurk, my friend and former Hope colleague, joined me.   Within the hour, I went into cardiac arrest – twice, requiring defibrillation both times. When I regained consciousness, I learned the sobering truth that had I remained in bed, I would not have left it. 

At Spectrum’s Heart Center the decision was confirmed that I needed bypass surgery. Discovering that the surgeon was the son and the brother of old friends, I listened in calm confidence as he explained that the two available openings were either the following day (sooner than ideal) or the following week (later than ideal) – increasing the surgical risk as much as tenfold. 

The pre-surgical physician’s assistant, upon learning that I am a former Hope College professor, explained they would be spending the evening with the family of her good Hope College friend, Ryan Weaver. What?! Ryan, my former research student and close friend? He is my medical power of attorney. 

So Ryan and Brian waited with my sister until the surgeon arrived and reported that the outcome of the quadruple bypass was the very best possible. Later, when my aunt and cousin came to visit, my aunt asked if I was satisfied with the outcome given the heighted risk. Groggy, I was searching for the evidence for why I was very satisfied. My cousin, a no-nonsense junior high science teacher found it, “He’s alive, isn’t he?!”

I came home in time to enjoy Christmas with my sister and her corgis. Neighbors and friends from church, Hope College, Davenport University, and various choirs are stopping by, sleeping over, bringing food, and making me feel very loved. 

A risky way to have done it, but how many get a spontaneous “It’s a Wonderful Life” experience – learning, as a near-death experience offers, of the impact they’ve made in others’ lives?  How many, like George Bailey, get to see how one’s network of friends almost magically pulls together?  Just as Bailey’s daughter played Christmas carols in the final scene, the children of the Pearsons and Edgingtons, along with their mothers, provided a Christmas eve concert filling my living room with violin harmonies. 

As his friends gathered to his aid, George’s brother raised his glass in a toast, “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.” I learned the same lesson. Better said, it was confirmed, since I never doubted it: Friendships are the rich stuff of life. Nothing else much matters. 

And perhaps that is why I found myself very much at peace throughout, regardless of the knife’s edge I was walking. Either result was fine. Why? Friendship exists only in the moment. 

I need to be careful here. If I had children and/or grandchildren in my life, I would heed Dylan Thomas’s admonition to his father, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” 

Also, I realize perhaps now more than before that friends (and, of course, family) would miss me. So death is certainly tough on those who remain.  

But from my own vantage point, I had nothing to fear. The best reason for living exists only in the moment. Friendship doesn’t accumulate in the future. It cannot be saved or spent. It lives only in the ever-present “now.” I hadn’t considered that before. 

 But perhaps one of the young violinists did understand and expressed it simply in his bedtime prayer. "We know Tim has to die sometime, but hopefully not quite yet."