No disaster

A friend of mine recently cut off a couple of his fingers on the table saw. When I saw him a while afterwards, he still had his entire hand wrapped in bulky bandages, and he gingerly held it close to his body. (He has a couple of little kids, who were scrambling around nearby – and everyone knows that little kids have a knack for whacking whatever part of your body is particularly sensitive on any given day.)

Seemed like it might be an awkward conversation. I didn’t want to come right out and say, “What the heck did you do to yourself?” and make him repeat the story for the umpteenth time. But my friend was pretty comfortable talking about it – in spite of, or perhaps because of, the pain medication he was taking at regular intervals.

He said the immediate realization of what had happened – the horror of the wound, and its implications – is terrible to recall, but the adrenaline prevented him from registering any significant amount of pain at the time. Later, he was given drugs that fleetingly made him feel wonderful – and which thereafter made him feel empathetic toward those who succumb to addiction. He actually mentioned this to his doctors, and they assured him he would not be allowed to develop a dependency. This may have been bitter-sweet comfort – particularly on the third night, after they had done a follow-up surgery to reshape the stumps, when he lay sleepless and writhing in agony.

He did not talk too much about the accident itself, though he reminded me always to lower the blade on a table saw. I’m not going to issue a safety bulletin here, because I’m entirely unqualified. (There are lots of YouTube videos on this topic – posted by people who may or may not be qualified.) What struck me was my friend’s philosophical outlook on this life-changing event.

I don’t mean that he is taking a stance of stoicism or machismo. Quite the opposite. He was actually very frank about the fact that this has been, and it remains, an emotional experience as well as a physical one. It is an experience of loss.

My friend is fortunate enough to have a good job that does not depend very much on manual dexterity, but he has wildly eclectic interests. He likes to build stuff and grow stuff, and he is very good at these things, but these activities will be curtailed somewhat. Certain tools will be difficult for him to use. He will no longer be the dude striding across the hay field carrying two bales to the truck. His greatest loss, however, will probably be his diminished ability to play music – which is a source of pleasure and social connection in his life. “No more guitar, no more sax,” he said. (Sadly, the doomed digits were fret fingers.)

And yet, he knows he is, in many respects, a lucky guy. “I can honestly say that this Thanksgiving was the most thankful one I’ve ever had,” he told me. “I’ve got my family. I’m really happy to be alive.”

He said if you spend some time in hospitals and occupational therapy clinics, you’re bound to see people who are up against bigger challenges. “It gives you perspective.”

When things like this happen, he said, we can choose self-pity, or we can choose to get on with life – recognizing that life is now a slightly different kind of enterprise, as a result of the loss. “It’s a plot twist.”

That got me thinking about the poem titled “One Art,” by the American writer Elizabeth Bishop – who was born in Massachusetts in 1911, but spent part of her childhood living with her grandparents on a farm in Great Village, N.S. Bishop had a rough go of life. Her father died when she was an infant, and a few years later her mother was committed to a mental institution, where she would eventually die. Adulthood brought Bishop a series of disappointments. The poem, published in 1976, takes a view of misfortune that is wry and raw at the same time. “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” goes the famous opening line. “So many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”

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Reading Tom Reeves’ obituary is a good way to put your life in perspective. Reeves died Oct. 5 at the age of 61. He and his wife, Debby, ran T&D Nursery in the Forties, just west of New Ross, N.S. Tom grew up in that community, and went off to UNB, working at Scott Paper in the summers. After completing a degree in forest engineering, he came home and joined the family logging and Christmas tree business. “In 1983 he was involved in an automobile accident, while on the job, which left him a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic,” reads the obit. “His plans for his life came to a screaming halt.”

Talk about a plot twist. But the remarkable part of the story was to follow. Tom and Debbie started the nursery in 1987. Since then, the business has grown millions of seedlings for reforestation and for the Christmas tree industry, also branching out into ornamentals and vegetable transplants. (I got my red cabbage seedlings there this spring.)

People who knew Tom say he had a passion for the business, a deep commitment to his community, and a keen intelligence that he applied to a number of other interests. (God bless him, he was a Rush fan!) His wheelchair van was a familiar sight at forestry events and ox pulls across Lunenburg County. To my shame, I never got around to interviewing him. There was that awkwardness on my part – not wanting to pry, or to seem patronizing.

There’s no lesson here – only a glimpse of the human experience. There is a lot at stake in this life – much to be won and lost, gradually or suddenly. We go on, despite the odds. We succeed and we fail. Some of us can do many things, others can do a few things. Each of us, surely, is more than the sum of our respective abilities. DL