I was shocked today to learn that a neighbor of mine had died yesterday morning. This was not a close neighbor, I can actually say that I personally did not know him, but I did know of him. He was a big part of our community. Had his own business, was active in the community and his wife is the elementary school principal. From all standards he was an upstanding man who lived a full life. But this was not why his death upset me so much. It was the way he died. Pure accident and totally unexpected. The kind of death that makes you take stock of your own life and think about what if...
Mr. Gee owned and operated his own business, Newman's Knees, an artistic home furniture kind of thing that involved the curve in certain kinds of trees to make archways, end tables, arm chairs, etc. His work was absolutely gorgeous and detailed. To make his pieces he had to cut down the trees and haul them to his workshop. Well as he was cutting down a tree, from my understanding, the tree unexpectedly fell in the wrong direction and hit him in the head and he died. That's it. How many millions of times must this man have fallen a tree without so much as a scrape? What went wrong this time? No one will ever know.
Can you even imagine being his wife? Going about her routine, maybe getting supper ready, setting the table, waiting for her husband to come back in? Then a few hours go by and he isn't back yet? Where is he? What's going on? What is he doing? Then you go out to see where he is and find him lying in a pool of blood? Bam! Now you're no longer just a wife making supper, now you're a widow. In a blink of an eye. Incomprehensible, what the hell do you do now?
What shook me to my core was the suddenness of it all. I didn't know this man or his wife in any real way but their lives affected mine. How easily could that have been me or any other woman? My husband travels a hundred miles to and from work each day. He drives in snowstorms, when the roads are slick, when there is black ice, when he's exhausted. What if I was to get the phone call that my husband was dead? Just dead. Here I am sitting on my sofa, watching the tube, maybe munching on some rice cakes waiting for Hubs to get home and then after one single phone call, it's all changed. Now, I'm a widow raising a six year old boy who's going to ask, "When is Daddy coming home?"
The mere thought of this made me say a prayer to the Lord for keeping my husband safe each night to come home to us.
Made me realize what my husband does for us each and every day and to thank him and tell him how much I love him for what he does. I know this all sounds pretty corny, but these are the kinds of things that we take for granted and need to be reminded of exactly what we have. I hate that it takes a tragedy for someone else for me to see what I've been blessed with, but I'm thankful for my own eyes being opened.
Deb
