Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Jan. 22, 2003: Near Death

My brother says you know you're getting old when you have a lot of stories about how you almost died. I have a few.

To be honest, I can't say how close I was to death in any of these instances. Obviously, not terribly close or I wouldn't be writing this.

There was the time when I was jogging, at about 16, and was hit by a car. It wasn't exactly a near-death experience, but time definitely slowed down as I was flung across the hood of the car. I remember dissociating from my body, looking at my arms and wondering whose they were. It was pretty groovy.

Of course, anyone who knows me won't be surprised that I refused medical treatment and continued my jog. Stupid, yes, but the fact that I'm here to tell the story means it wasn't, at least, a fatal mistake.

There was one time when I was flying out to Idaho and had a premonition that something bad was going to happen on the return trip. I didn't know what it was, so I wrote some letters that were to go to my family and friends in case of disaster. I sealed them with wax and put them in my safety deposit box.

As it turns out, I was right about something bad happening. My flight out of Tacoma was delayed, and I missed my flight in Minneapolis and had to take a hotel room for the night. Guess I didn't need those letters after all.

The time when I feared I was closest to death was during the Blizzard of '93. I like how old-timey that sounds, Blizzard of '93. I want to be an 88-year-old grandmother telling somebody about the Blizzard of '93. But there are, of course, some obstacles to that: having children (and grandchildren), and living to 88. Which wouldn't be such a fantastic feat if I take after three of my grandparents, who lived into their late 80s, but less likely if I take after my paternal grandfather, who died of a heart attack at 48.

Anyway, the Blizzard of '93 was when the East Coast of the United States was hit with such a terrific onslaught of snow that Pennsylvania declared a snow emergency and fined people for driving.

It was bad enough in Pennsylvania, but I was in West Virginia, and we were, foolishly, on the road headed home. If you've never driven in West Virginia, let me describe the roads to you. Narrow, windy mountain roads. Everywhere in West Virginia is covered with mountains. The mountains have mountains on them. And there are mountains on top.

The driver wasn't particularly concerned about the snow and ice, or the fact that we kept passing abandoned vehicles that had veered off into snow banks. Or that we also passed a jackknifed truck, or an accident that had plunged off the mountain, breaking through the guardrail like it was paper.

The whole trip home, I was convinced we were barreling towards our death. I kept anticipating a screech of tires, a smashing of metal. And all the time, all I could think about was the things I hadn't done. I hadn't published a book, I hadn't paid off my student loans, I hadn't done a million things that, come to think of it, nine years later I still haven't done.

I think I'm a very likely candidate to become a ghost. Don't they often come back, determined to complete some task they didn't get to finish? In my case, I will waft through the hallways, running ideas through my head, trying to complete my master work. If the resident of the house is silly enough to have a computer, I'll take it over from them and write, which will of course, drive them crazy at first until they recognize the quality of the writing and wisely save the work for publication.

They will make the talk show circuit to promote the book, and every headline about it will include a pun on "ghost writer."

So what happened to those letters? I still have them somewhere, though I don't expect to need them any time soon. But it doesn't matter, because what I had to say in those letters is what I tell my family all the time, that I love them.

And that when I'm gone, they get my stuff.

Moral:
It's hard for newspaper editors to resist obvious puns like "ghost writer." Forgive them.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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