Keep the Shiny-Side Up

“Pickin’ up those pieces….pickin’ up those pieces…puttin’ them away.
Not wanting to meet my savior….not wanting to meet my savior, ...not this way.
Sweatin’ out my worries….sweatin’ out my worries, ...just another day.”
by Widespread Panic


This is a song Bob and I listen to a lot. A glorious piece of music, mandolins sing notes clear and pure, winding their way up and down and around our hearts as we listen. Bob has researched the mandolin player, Matt Mundy who, at what might have seemed the prime of his career, put the mandolin away and made a different choice. Famous musicians still beg him to play on their albums, and he politely refuses. His reasons are his own. And this fascinates Bob—who has made similar choices at various junctures of his life. We choose the ways in which we live each day, aware that this will be the way we live our lives. Best we choose carefully.

Pickin’ Up Those Pieces…Puttin’ Them Away

We’ve had a standing joke since we first moved to the cabin. I would agree to move to the woods, we would tell people, if Bob would agree to help me actively seek a replacement husband—you know, someone who could be on standby in case something happens to him. A few of our friends are in on this joke. “Hmmm….would we hold auditions of some kind?” we would laugh together, knowing looks passing between us. “ And what might they include?” One day, we were with a group of friends down by the dock, playing with the dogs in the water, enjoying the sun and our time together. While we were all down there, one of my friends from school dropped in, or I should say paddled over, since he arrived by kayak. He had stopped by before, visited with Bob a few times, but none of our friends had ever met him. We introduced him, we all visited for a while, and then he left. “Boy, he really seems to love this place, and he obviously likes you well enough…” a friend said, turning to me, raising one eyebrow. “How are his mechanical skills? You know, he even looks a little like Bob…..”

The joking has helped me accept a hard reality. Living at the cabin, the way that we do, I feel more vulnerable—more dependent on another person-- than I have ever been before in my life. There are many things I just can’t do here, things that need to be done. Bob does them all. They have become his full-time job. Most of the time, I don’t actively worry about this, but it’s one of those thoughts that creeps into my thoughts in the middle of the night, that time when fear sometimes takes over.

Occasionally that fear will bubble up unexpectedly, working its way into the light of day. So I talk about it. And Bob laughs. “Nothing is going to happen to me,” he says. I so want to believe that, but I know it’s a guarantee no human can make. “And besides,” he continues, “You could learn to do any of this. You might not do everything the same way we do now, but you could live here on your own. I’m sure of it.” I picture myself hauling water from the lake, rather than using the pump; living with no electricity at all because who knows how that battery box is put together, skiing the three miles out to the road because I don’t know how to operate the snow plow that he somehow magically attaches to his truck, the list goes on and on. “Maybe I could learn to do some of those things,” I think, and shake my head doubtfully, knowing full well my lack of mechanical ability, “But I wouldn’t.” So, I realize, if something happens to Bob, I would move. By myself. All these pieces of our lives. And a whole new list of worries begins.

Bob just shakes his head. “You can worry from now until forever,” he says, “But what do you want to do?” Do you want to move now—lose the opportunity to live here because of something that might happen?” Sometimes I say, “Yes, let’s leave right away.” That’s when fear has taken over. Most times, however, I look at the lake and the trees, listen to the silence, and realize the gift that this place has been to our lives. Who knows for how long? Who ever knows? It doesn’t even matter. Clearly I need to focu my thoughts on this moment, this day, this year. And I right now, I want to be here. So I pick up those pieces of my thoughts and put them away, at least for now.

Not Wantin’ to Meet My Savior….Not this Way

The late June morning he headed over the mountains on his motorcycle, Bob listened to Matt’s glistening mandolin and these words repeat themselves over and over in his earphones. He had a photography job that would take him away from the cabin for several days. After a bit of debate, we decided it would be best—most efficient and most fun—if he rode his motorcycle. He was crossing Highway Two, known as the Highline, which runs across the entire northern part of the state in pretty much a straight line. It truly is the road less traveled—you may not pass another vehicle for several hundred miles. So, he carefully packed his camera equipment onto his beloved yellow and black BMW, put on his matching leathers, and rode away. I grinned at the thought of this giant bumblebee speeding across the highline.

But he didn’t make it that far. The next time I saw him, early that same afternoon, he was lying in a hospital bed, broken, the torn remnants of his jacket and pants in a bag the closet. I had gotten that call people most dread. “This is Kalispell Regional Hospital,” a voice said. “We have Bob here.” I suck in my breath, waiting. “He’s alive, but he was in a motorcycle accident.”

We might choose the way we live our days, but not many of us choose when or how we die. Like most people, I fear death. Not so much my own death—that doesn’t actually seem too hard. I fear losing the people I love. What this really translates to is selfishness, masquerading as love. I rely on many people to meet my needs—physical, mental, emotional--different people for different things. What if one of those people is suddenly no longer there? How do I deal with the hole this creates in my life? You see? Selfishness. And it’s crazy. The one thing I know about this world is that change is a constant. Like all living things, human beings have life cycles. Death is as much a part of the cycle as living—whether I choose to acknowledge it or not. Everything can change in an instant. Feelings of safety and security are figments of our imagination, created, I think, so we can sleep.

I didn’t sleep much over the next few days. The “what if’s” loomed large in my mind. Losing Bob would leave such a gaping hole in my life, I don’t know how I would ever fill it. In the same moment, a member of my teaching staff was facing this very question. Her husband Joe, also a member of our faculty, had died the same morning Bob was admitted, in the same hospital where Bob now lay. Joe had two young children. The reality of his death caused the “what if’s” to grow even larger in my mind. Yet Bob was here, alive.

Bob doesn’t remember much about the accident, so what we have pieced together comes largely from the woman who was in the car behind him, and a police report. It seems Bob hit a wall of wind, shortly after he crossed the Continental Divide. The woman behind him said it looked like he hit an invisible train. The wind ripped the handlebars out of his hands, and sent Bob sailing off the bike, rolling across the asphalt before coming to a stop in the gravel at the side of the road. The bike, we later learned from he police officer who visited the hospital, had remained upright and kept going—driving itself down the highway, until it just—plunk-- fell over.

Our most interesting, and unexpected, sources of information didn’t arrive until the following week. It turns out one of the passersby, also on a motorcycle, was an amateur photographer who decided to photograph the aftermath of the accident. Who knows why. While Bob was still in the hospital, this man had called to see if he could find out what had happened. The hospital operator transferred his call to Bob’s room, and they had a nice conversation, which Bob remembers little of, in which they exchanged e-mail addresses. Nothing was said about photos during this call. It wasn’t until about a week after Bob had come home, that he got an email from this same guy, asking if he would like to see the photos he had taken.

Bob was more than interested. He had a few fleeting memories of lying on the pavement, yelling with pain each time he tried to take a breath (the result of eleven broken ribs and a broken scapula, we later found out.) He remembered that two ambulances had been called and turned back, and the he had finally been airlifted out, after lying there for over an hour. And he remembered a woman named Hope, an ER nurse just leaving on her vacation, who happened to be the first person coming in the other direction. She had her nurse’s bag in the car, so she checked Bob’s vitals, held his hand and kept him from panicking during the entire hour they waited for help. Anything else that happened during that time was lost to pain.

In typical Bob fashion, he didn’t tell me about the email he had gotten from this guy. One morning, we were sitting in the living room, each on our computers. “Want to’ see something interesting?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said moving over next to him. And there he was, still helmeted and suited up, surrounded by people, lying on the side of the road. I wasn’t quite sure I was ready to see the rest.
Having already looked through all the pictures, Bob said, “No, keep looking. This is amazing.”

As he clicked through the photos, one by one, what we saw was nothing less than human kindness. So many people had stopped to help. People were holding up umbrellas to shade him from the sun. There was Hope, in a number of pictures, her stethoscope around her neck. Others were directing traffic—or craning their necks to watch for the arrival of an ambulance. So many people –so much love.

It wasn’t until the helicopter arrived that someone finally removed his helmet, cut him out of the leather clothing that had saved him. The temperature was well over ninety degrees, and all these people were in the full sun for all this time. All but Bob—they saw to it that he was in the shade. I imagined how sore people’s arms must have gotten—holding up umbrellas and blankets, and the worry they must have felt, wondering what was going to happen to this man.

Tears formed in Bob’s eyes as he continued to look at the photographs. He had had no idea all of these people had helped him. It was because of them that he was sitting there right now, with me, in our living room. Despite my initial reluctance to see these photos, to confront the reality of what had happened and my own guilt over having not been there—to love and comfort Bob myself, I am now so grateful we have these pictures. Where would we be without the kindness of others? Yes, where indeed…

Sweatin’ Out My Worries…Just Another Day

Our whole lives didn’t change that day, close to two years ago now. Almost doesn’t count. Just as we can never really lose a person we love, because they have actually become a part of us, neither do we lose the lessons each life experience delivers —especially when the package arrives so unexpectedly. Both of us were shaken by this experience, of course. My worst nightmare almost came true. Bob faced a change in plans for a very long time to come. Recovery, physical and mental, from such an accident takes a very long time. In some ways, we are both still healing.


Bob recently shared with me that he has come to understand the fear I feel about being so dependent on him for so many aspects of this lifestyle we have chosen. Since the accident, he has not worked an outside job of any kind. As he has recovered, it has taken everything he has just to maintain our lives here. It is a lot of work. He too, has felt this kind of dependence, because I am now the sole wage-earner. We have come to see that what we have here is a partnership—in the truest sense of the word. I have always been a person who loves somewhat cautiously, selfishly clinging to some parts of my independence, trying to maintain some degree of what I thought of as control over my life. Well, you know what? There is no such thing as control. What we have come to think of as safety and security---financial, physical, emotional--is an illusion. We—none of us—know what will happen from one minute to the next. Everything can change in an instant.


Worry really is a waste of time. Worry is based on my expectations about what I think should happen in the future. But I have little control over any of that—no one does. Once I realize that, what becomes important is the way I choose to live this instant, and the next, and the next. How will I treat people? How do I choose to spend my time? How will I love more completely? Each day truly is “just another day”—a day in which we make choices. Best we choose carefully. This particular day? This day is a beauty. This morning, I will gather my husband and my dogs and go out for a walk, where the sun is shining on a still-frozen lake. Who knows? Tomorrow, the ice might begin to thaw…