Month: September 2011

Going Down? Faces in the Crowd

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

Faces, many faces, unite into a single, generous community of helpers in this debacle. Without these individuals I’m certain that my present might have been considerably less bearable and outcomes considerably less promising. People are often at their best or their worst under duress. And, since I was too busy groaning and deep-sea diving in my battered brain for coherence, it fell to others to help me onto the healing road.

It’s anybody’s guess how long I waited on the church floor before someone found me. The first one to take their place among this kaleidoscope of holy heroes was Clarence, our stoic and humble custodian. My friendship with Clarence is glowing testimony to the unifying power of the gospel, he a Rush Limbaugh fan and me a Rachel Maddow disciple! Clarence is a man of few words but numerous qualities, gracious hospitality and selflessness being chief among them. I cannot readily recall his exact role but can feel quite certain of his strong and compassionate presence in the midst of the chaos. I feel better just knowing he was nearby.

The next on the scene apparently was Lisa, our Children’s Ministries Director. Lisa is a gal of extraordinary energy, passion and determination. Having won a not inconsiderable battle against obesity she stands head and shoulders above many whose exploits, though laudable, pale by comparison. Her love for children is matched by her joyful effervescence – a quality put to the test upon finding me and then calling 911.

Either coming with Lisa or a short time later was our Office Administrator, Denise. She is a girl blessed with that rare combination of razor-sharp administrative skills with an easy-going whimsy that help her avoid the total pain in the ass syndrome most admin types can be (well, to whacked out, right-brained, artsy types like me anyway). Now, since I remember this story only in pieces, much of this first responder type stuff is borrowed as second-hand news from those who were participants in it.

At the hospital, the faces of these colleagues were joined by that of my doting wife of over 23 years. She is a firecracker of a girl, loyal without hesitation, buoyant and unapologetically extroverted. Someone blessed with quick wittedness, deplorably lacking in me I must admit, she was in this instance beside herself with anxiety and uncertainty. This was exacerbated by the fact that a women’s retreat she and her friend Lisa from Nashville had spent weeks organizing had been planned for that very weekend at our place in Ocean Shores. While waiting dutifully beside me (while, as you will recall, that husky fellow is cutting my pants off from stem to stern) she is busily making phone calls to Lisa, already en route from Tennessee.

Shock and delirium do strange things to one’s thought processes as I recall thinking that I could still sort this out and find a way for her to go ahead with her weekend plans. Knowing Rae and Lisa as I do, those plans would involve not an inconsiderable amount of off-color humor, laughter complete with obligatory snorting, and generally unsightly behavior. Together with their other estrogenic cohort, they would create a veritable storm of holy misdeeds that would end in tears of prayerful joy; the kind of parties Jesus not only attended but started. Heck, I would have gone myself if I didn’t hurt so damn much. Oh wait, I have a penis. Maybe next time.

Going Down? part 5

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

The next thing I remember (and wish I couldn’t frankly) was the sound of my head bouncing off the concrete floor. From this point until my arrival in the Emergency at Memorial Hospital, memories are scant at best. I can recall profound pain in my lower back and total blindness in my left eye. Yes indeed, good times.

Once I was actually taken from the ambulance on the transport gurney I became slowly aware of my changing surroundings. Questions. Someone keeps asking me questions. I probe my mental storehouse for something approaching answers. I can find neither words, nor sentences, let alone answers. My less than ideal lucidity denied me access to any coherent response. Or, any response at all.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that things were less rosy than I persisted in believing them to be. This notion was confirmed as someone proceeded to cut my pants off with unnecessarily large scissors. Now, there have been times when having some nice nurse remove one’s trousers could conceivably be a rather welcome experience. In this instance, however, the nurse in question was a rather beefy looking fellow with a biker beard and possessive of none of that delicate finesse one might reasonably expect from someone engaged in dissecting one’s trousers from stem to stern. That is to say nothing of the discomfort of cutting devices of any kind so close to my body’s southern hemisphere.

I glanced to my left long enough to see a most disconcerting sight, one that would only take root in my conscious mind much later. A different nurse, female this time, who enjoyed a healthy and welcome ability for bringing a breezy levity to an otherwise not so chipper circumstance, held in her careful hands what appeared to be an arm. The hand at the end of this arm was pulling the very cool geometric feat of reaching all the way to the forearm with the fingers and was tilted to one side. It was just this physical impossibility to which I was awakened some weeks later upon my return to what would become my new “normal” for some time.

It is at such moments when I realize what a gift shock can be. Hence, in the growing light of my situational gravity I cackled some ridiculous quip or other, pleased with myself that the tough dude on this table still had “it”, even on royally shitty days like this one. They did not need to know that historically, my best defense against the worst circumstances is to dish up an extra helping of cheesy humor.

The nurse lifted the hand-like thing so it was once again parallel with the arm-like thing it was (thankfully) attached to. She proceeded to bandage it and then box it up in some kind of triangular splint that looked more like the packing inside a TV shipping box. She seemed delighted with her work, hinting that she was perhaps a new kid on the medical block. That said, I was elated that my arm was once again a straight prairie road instead of the physical version of a u-turn; no longer a tangent but a vector pointing in the proper direction. Up.

Going Down? part 4

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

I got about a quarter of the way finished the initial tear down by means of lowering heavy pieces of metal tied with rope down an extension ladder I had leaned against the scaffolding for this purpose. A particularly large and unwieldy section got stuck half way down the ladder. In order to unhook it from its place I was forced to step over the top rung of my wobbly cage and find the safest available rung on the ladder.

This, apparently, was not the best idea. In so doing I made a most unwelcome discovery. Sometime in the brief 48 hours that the scaffold had been erected, someone had, for some reason, felt the need to release the braking system I had so assiduously established, obsessively re-checking countless times. I was about to discover the egregious nature of this oversight.

Once both feet found their place on the first available rung, the scaffold, and the ladder with it, began their slow, almost imperceptible movement forward. It took a few seconds of this slowly moving metal monster before it started to become a conscious recognition on my part that I was indeed moving. I was, in fact, falling.

Ask anyone who has suffered the misfortune of having gravity as their dance partner and they will attest to a strange, slow motion quality to the whole affair. Worse still is the fact that this grisly dance that only ever has one winner must suffer the further insult of kinetic energy as its cruel chaperone!

Time slowed to a crawl as my eyes darted this way and that searching for the best available place to land. My mind, busily calculating all the possible geometry for this coming event, filled with thoughts as banal as, “shit, I’m falling!”

One always grasps for the most positive outcomes when faced with tragedy. “It’s not so bad, I’ve fallen before and come out alright” passes lazily through my brain as the ground looms ever closer. Mustering whatever courage I had left over from the shock of initial descent I push away from the scaffold so as to avoid all things metal and bolt-like. The grim illustration provided by my angry redneck cousin’s promise of “ripping me a new one” was, at that moment, most alive. I am coming to the end of lucid memory of that day. The last few recollections are these: I think I hit the ground first with my left foot. Another of those fleeting thoughts crosses my mind, “man, I really put my back out this time!” Only later was I to discover just how “out” my back truly was.