All Hands on Deck

My oldest son, Patrick, called me last Thursday to announce he was coming that night to start building my deck in Middletown.

We'd only discussed building the deck in passing, although we both knew I really needed it done. Still, seemingly out of nowhere he'd decided that he was ready to tackle the project immediately. Offers like that need to be welcomed - encouraged even - so I didn't dissuade him despite the fact that I knew we were totally not prepared. Instead I mustered sincere enthusiasm, headed to Home Depot for deck plans, and then packed up my stuff and left my shore cottage, heading home to Middletown where he was waiting. We worked through the weekend in 90-100 degree temperatures. My middle son, Mike, came too, plus Vicky, plus a friend of Patrick's. Home Depot delivered three times. It was coordinated craziness for three solid days. Today is only Monday, but it feels more like a week has passed.

Knowing the kind of weekend I'd just had, my girlfriend emailed me this morning to ask how my back was feeling. I admitted that, though I'd been hurting like heck on Saturday, surprisingly today I am okay. On the other hand, I do not feel "well". I could not describe in words how it actually is that I feel (not even to Dr. Vicky, who was down with my son, Mike, helping this weekend), but it is very scary feeling this way. I just feel very... NOT well; suspiciously not well.

So imagine my further dis-ease, when I learned that in my three-day absence from Tuckerton two - not one, but TWO - of my neighbors had died.

Okay... so the one really was old... we knew she'd go eventually... But Bruce... Bruce is my age. He'd gone fishing with George (another neighbor) and when he came back apparently he was feeling hot and generally yucky so he climbed in the bathtub to try to cool down and he seems to have simply died. I heard the story from Frank, who heard it from George that Bruce's wife, Sue, then had to deal with trying - unsuccessfully - to drag his carcass out of the tub to try to revive him, which of course did not happen... so a neighbor fished him out for her... but it was already too late.

Gone.

Not surprisingly that information is making me even less at ease with feeling vaguely ill this morning.

Not to be overly dramatic... 'cause I do NOT think I am about to die... but on Friday (in the 98 degree heat with air quality warnings ringing, I was wielding a shovel and carrying crap and running up and down stairs, fetching and gophering to the hilt) I was pretty much feeling like death was imminent... and the rest of the weekend through today has simply been an echo of that. Is it stress? Is it the heat? I can't even say: I just feel ill.

Truthfully I wonder if it isn't that I am feeling all of my 54 years. I feel very fragile - in every conceivable way. My back, therefore, seems to be the very least of my concerns.

When I saw another friend's email last night - 15 minutes after she'd written it -somewhere close to 1am - telling me about her cleaned-up workshop (pictures attached), my only response to her was,

"Awesome! Now go to sleep!"

It wasn't creative or even particularly thoughtful... it was a reflection of my own exhaustion, having driven back to my Tuckerton Cottage at 11pm last night after yet-another grueling day of work on the deck... which isn't anywhere close to being done.

I am, BTW, in far better spirits than I sound. Mayhaps I'm just enjoying the craft of writing and conveying an impression of my experience, 'cause this morning I am alive and well and enjoying, God bless me, the cool Tuckerton seashore breeze on a blue sky morning... having witnessed a dozen egrets flying over at dawn... and better still, last night, when I slipped from the 70 degree breezy night air - just after midnight - into my 92 degree pool... I looked up and watched a brilliant shooting star pass between me and the full moon.

My observations of our natural world do not get a whole lot more phenomenal, exceptional or rewarding than that. Seeing these things brings enormous peace to my soul, even if I do feel strangely somehow "not well".

Maybe then I am okay... just shaken... by an awareness of my own mortality, in the face of a world that will spin without me when I am gone, and is still spinning despite the death, yesterday, of Bruce.

How long should I wait before going across the street to covey my condolences? My gosh... poor Sue. He first husband died, like my Joe, of pancreatic cancer, and now this. Geeze. That's going to be pretty rough.

I made some cornbread and wrapped it up nicely, carrying it across the street to express my sympathies. I returned two hours later, filled in on all the frightening details of what it is like to lose, yet another, husband. I think my presence helped. I think I said the right things. I know Sue valued my visit, remarking that I am one of the few people who can understand what she is going through. She said this through clear eyes, composed and thoughtful. It's been less than 24 hours since he passed. She's still in shock, but doesn't know it. She's in a free fall down a dark hole, not aware enough yet of the drop to even begin grasping for something to catch her. But she will... Her awareness will kick in soon enough.

She wants to take his body home, to their primary residence in Pennsylvania. The coroner can't release the body until they rule out foul play. She laughs as she tells me this... The idea that she would have killed a man who was so good to her, so good for her, is absurd. I joke too.

"You'll be the Black Widow of Tuckerton, killing off husbands left and right."

"Yes," she says "It wont make the Philly papers, but this tiny seashore town would gobble up that story."

We laugh. Then we sigh. She is chain smoking, apologizing each time she lights up, as if I'm the least bit judgemental. Not now anyway.

There is no good ending to this blog. It is what it is. But it makes me wonder why I've been alone these last five and a half years. Life is short. Time is slipping by. And I don't feel so well.