Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

The Day I Should Have Died

November 22, 2024

In informing me of the result of my latest thoracic echocardiogram my doctor said that I had been dodging a bullet for years, and I may continue doing so, but the odds were no longer in my favour. Her prognosis reminded me of the day I should have died.

I should have died almost 60 years ago as I laid on my back in a drainage ditch adjacent a country road looking up at the sky with a gentle rain caressing my face telling me not to worry.

“Correct conduct,” according to Mencius [372–289 BC], “arises, not through external forces, but as a result of virtues developed internally through observation of laudable models of behaviour.” A laudable model of behaviour for me was a priest. I was particularly fond of the man for whom I was an altar boy, a Cub Scout and scout leader. My fondness for Father Tremblay was a mix of admiration and gratitude. The priest had saved my life.

I was twelve or thirteen when, with my brothers and a few friends, we hitched a large flatbed trailer used to haul heavy equipment such as bulldozers to logging or construction sites to a farm tractor and all, except for the driver, jumped onto the trailer and headed for a lake about seven miles down a solitary country road.

A short distance from Lake Pivabiska, it started to rain. We had brought a tent. To shield ourselves from the rain, we partially unfolded it and raised it above our heads. I was closest to one of the two large wheels between which the trailer bed was balanced like seesaw.

For only a fraction of a second, I saw the wheel closest to me spinning in my direction before I felt myself floating in the air, landing on my back somewhere by the side of the road looking up at the sky. The wheel had caught a corner of the partially unfolded tent and dragged it and me with it, crushing a few vertebrae and less valuable bones and organs.

Eventually, a car came by and the driver was sent into town to fetch an ambulance. The town’s only ambulance was out on another call. Rather than wait for it to return, Father Tremblay, hearing that his altar boy was in trouble, jumped into his black station wagon and rushed to the site of the mishap.

They had laid me flat on my stomach on the trailer and everyone waited in the pouring rain for the ambulance. When the priest got there, he decided there was no time to waste. They wrapped me in some blankets and slid me into the back of his station wagon, then I was rushed to the hospital.

I thought we got there in plenty of time. I was still aware of my surroundings as the hospital's nursing staff (nuns, mostly) started taking off my clothing; I could hear them complain about boys playing with tractors before I finally passed out. I was later told that, if they had waited for the ambulance, I would have died of internal bleeding from a punctured spleen. Father Tremblay was the difference between life and death.

Father Tremblay always tried to do the right thing, even when it was not convenient—especially when it was not convenient—for that was the test; it was a test I would always try not to fail.

I often remember that day, and just as often wish for a different outcome and avoiding the life of someone who seldom fitted in and caused unnecessary hardship to a woman who deserved better.

The priest who was the difference between life and death said it was God saving me for the priesthood. If there is a god, I must be quite the disappointment.