Doing the work that I have done for the last 42 years it has been my duty, task, opportunity, privilege...I'm not sure what to call it, but I have had the occasion to be with many people when they died. I'll tell you about a few of them. Many of whom I don't even know their names.
* He was elderly, I judge about mid 80's. I was a rookie EMT in my mid to late 20's. My driver, who is now the Probate Judge for Chilton County and I were handling the midnight ambulance shift. The call was for shortness of breath. The location was a considerable distance from the hospital where we were based. We were a long way from "real" medical help.
He looked frail as I walked into the room. He was definitely struggling for breath. I introduced myself and asked him about his problem. "Young man", he said firmly, "You had better do something or I'm going to die".
"You just take it easy now. I"m going to take care of you". I always acted like I knew what I was doing even when on the inside I felt like things were completely out of control.
We got him in the ambulance and transported him to the hospital. As we assisted the doctor and nurses in the ER I watched him fight for every breath and in just a few moments of his arrival there, he simply stopped breathing. He died as I stood beside him.
** I was jerked from a sound sleep by the fire pager. It was 3-4 am. There was a wreck on the interstate highway just a few miles from my home. Lights and siren and a bit of too fast driving put me on the scene before the fire crew arrived. A small pick-up truck had rear-ended a slow moving truck and trailer hauling scrap metal. The young driver, about mid 20's, was pinned between the steering wheel of the smaller truck and the back of the seat. He was conscious and in lots of pain.
I climbed up into the bed of the little pick-up and opened the sliding back window. From this position I could reach in and examine the young man's upper body. His lower body was compressed by the steering wheel and dash board and I could not even get my hands below the wheel to check on him.
Naturally he was frightened and begged, "Get me out'a here".
I could do nothing until help arrived with the "Jaws of Life" to try and extricate him. As soon as the crew arrived they immediately begin spreading the "jaws" and trying to make a hole so we could get him out of his predicament. There was a lot of noise and movement of the truck. The young man was even more frightened.
I leaned in through the back window and held his head next to mine. "It's ok", I told him, "It's just a lot of noise. We have to do this to get you out". He seemed to calm down a bit.
The condition he was suffering from is called "tamponade" and the prognosis is usually fatal. This case was no exception. As soon as the pressure was released from his body the young man died.
***She was a motor bike rider. Along with her husband she was riding and enjoying the hot summer day. Enjoying it that is until a car pulled in front of her and she crashed into it sending her body into the handle bars and onto the asphalt. He right leg was badly broken. She had cuts, scrapes and bruises. But she was conscious when I arrived. I worked feverishly to stabilize her but she fought me all the way. The asphalt was burning her back, she wanted to get up. She was not comfortable at all.
I looked her in the eyes and called her name. "You are badly injured, I'm trying to help you but you must be still and cooperate. Now lie down and let me do my job".
She lay back on the hot roadway and in just a few minutes died. Her spleen and liver had been lacerated by the handle bars.
**** My Mom was dieing and she knew it. She had told me so earlier in the week and told my wife that very morning. She had been very agitated and nervous for about two weeks.
I stopped work early that Saturday evening and decided to just spend some time with her. We rode around town, we rode down to the river. She commented on how pretty things were. She listened to the gospel music on the radio and patted her little wrinkled hand on her knee as we rode along.
"Sing" she said as a song came on she knew. I sang along as we rode together.
She ate supper and went to bed. In an hour or so I lay down on the coach across from her bed because she didn't want to sleep alone that night. In a few minutes as I lay there across from her, she took her last breath on this earth and stepped into eternity.
Four incidents among many over the years. Four times when I walked right up to the door of eternity with someone. They went through the door and I stayed on this side. "If I would only have known that moment was their last one on earth, I would have acted differently, said something more meaningful. If I would only have know how close eternity actually was...."
But we DO KNOW. James tells us that our life is but a vapor that appears for just a short time and then vanishes. In Job we are told that "...they die in an instant, in the middle of the night; the people are shaken and
they pass away".
We know that fact but refuse to even contemplate that the people we walk and talk with each day are just seconds from eternity. Oh, how differently we would act, how much more we would say. If we would recognize the nearness of eternity.
No comments:
Post a Comment