Why are we always so shocked to get an early-morning phone call? Not just any early morning call, mind you. A Phone Call. The kind that makes our heart begin to pound and our mouth go cotton-dry and our hands begin to shake. Where, without even realizing it, we have walked to the kitchen and turned on the light. We begin writing down little fragments, still hoping that we're in a dream - last night at 1 a.m., ambulance, Room 7-232 at St. Mary's Hospital, surgeon consult. Later, we look down at the paper and don't remember even picking up the pen.
Why do we go along, day after day, forgetting that we are not immune from a Phone Call? We stretch ourselves awake in the morning and assume the coming day will be just the way we planned it. Bring such-and-such along to work. Stop at the grocery store. Pick so-and-so up after practice. Sometimes the day seems so incredibly busy that we are absolutely, positively sure that we can not fit one single more thing in. Then comes a Phone Call and, suddenly, the rest of it seems so insignificant.
It is remarkably easy to become complacent. We drive along a major highway, for example, and see skid marks leading into the ditch. As we zoom past at 60 or 70 mph, we might say something like, "Ooh, that looks like it was a bad one" or "Wow, they really bent up that signpost." Most of the time, however, we don't give it another thought. Unless, that is, WE are the ones creating the skid marks as we careen into the ditch. Suddenly, our trip along the highway has become anything but ordinary, and we will never drive this road again without remembering the accident. The skid marks. A life changed - perhaps deeply, perhaps forever.
It's not a matter of if a Phone Call will come to us, it's when, and it doesn't always come overnight. We might find ourselves making notes on an office desk calendar (cancer, aggressive, liver and pancreas, Dr. Malvoy), or on the back of an envelope standing in the grocery store soup aisle (boy, 6 lb, 8 oz, heart defect, guarded prognosis). The information we write down might be pertaining to a parent, a niece, a neighbor or a friend. It might be a correctable problem (mid-tibial fracture, surgery 2 p.m.) or a life-threatening concern (heart attack, ICU, touch-and-go). Either way, when we hang up the phone, the world suddenly looks very different to us.
After a Phone Call, we make arrangements to leave work early, or have someone pick up the kids or let the dog out at suppertime. It seems like so long ago since we were lying in bed thinking about the day's schedule. We drive to the hospital in a fog. Cars go by us, drivers looking so ordinary. Have they not heard the news? We swallow hard as all the "What ifs" bounce around in our heads. What if he doesn't make it through surgery? What if this means she'll need to go into a nursing home? What if the cancer has spread?
We walk into the hospital room and wonder, "Did I pause to appreciate how good it all was before this happened? Was I truly grateful for the relationship I had with this person? Did I support other people who have gone through this kind of thing before?"
My grandmother, who lived to be almost 102 years old, used to say, "Getting old isn't for sissies." I think she would agree that life isn't for sissies, either. When a Phone Call comes - and it will come - we are suddenly required to get behind the wheel and find our way down a road we have never traveled before. The skid marks behind us are a silent testimony to helplessness and heartache; our headlights perhaps only able to penetrate a day, or even hours, ahead. We don't know how this will all turn out. But, still, we drive on, drawing strength from those we love, giving strength to those in need.
So tomorrow, if a ringing phone doesn't shatter your sleep very early in the morning, consider yourself fortunate. Count your blessings. Shore up your strength, for the day will come when we will be called upon to use it.
The goal, of course, is not to live our lives in fear but, rather, to appreciate what we have every single day because - as all of us will find out at one time or another - it only takes one Phone Call to change our lives forever.