The Third Chance

A week ago my father nearly died. In the middle of the night he had a severe diabetic low. By the time the paramedics got here, he had slipped into unconsciousness. He was as close to death as I have ever seen someone.

But the IV glucose infusion given to him by the paramedics did the trick, and ultimately he regained consciousness. Six days in the hospital stabilized his counts and enabled him to return home in as good a condition as one could expect of a man who is 80 and has multiple health issues.

This is his third chance at life (or maybe fourth, as he had a serious fall from a cliff as a child). Almost twelve years ago he had a heart attack and then quadruple bypass surgery. Since then, rigorous monitoring of his health, an exercise program of daily power walks, and a diet of low-fat, low-salt food prepared by my mother have helped him beat the odds.

A week ago in the middle of the night, as I was desperately trying to feel for his pulse and not finding it—although I suppose it must have been there, faintly, as he was still breathing—I thought, “This could well be it. This could be when my father dies.” I began to think of when the funeral might be, how long it would take my siblings and B. to get here. I considered how my mother’s reality would change and whether she could live in this house alone.

But in about half an hour, he had moved far enough back from the line separating life and death to be able to speak. And within a few hours of being in the ER at the nearest hospital, he was able to give me instructions about an e-mail that needed to go to a friend.

He had dodged the bullet. He had a third chance at life.

Why some people get third or fourth or fifth chances and others don’t even get a second, is of course an imponderable. One can say it is simply down to luck: he was fortunate enough to share a bed with my mother, who noticed something was wrong. If he had lived alone, he would be dead now. On the other hand, those who believe that God has a plan for each one of us would say that this was clearly not yet my father’s time.

I don’t know what I think on this score. I recoil from the idea that a loving God would have “planned” that K.B. be taken from us at such a young age and at such a time in her life. And yet it was to God in the dark hours of last Friday that I prayed for my father.

I didn’t know what exactly to pray. To ask for more years of life for him, especially since he had already survived longer than anyone might have expected twelve years ago, seemed almost greedy.

So I merely prayed, “God, help him.”