I almost died ...allow me to explain

Terry

In 1923 I almost died.

Allow me to explain ...

I wouldn't exist for another 24 years ...but

For a few seconds, on top a building, my Grandfather, Jack Hybarger, stood with tears running down his cheeks and a small caliber pistol in his right hand.

...

If he had pulled the trigger, not just one man--one very depressed and hopeless man--would die; he'd take with him the four children his wife would never carry, their children (including me) and so it goes...ripples of death.

My grandfather told me about his "almost" suicide on the day he drove out to the prison where I was to be released on parole.

____

"I was going to shoot myself in the head."

(All I could manage to speak was the one word, "Why?")

..

"My wife - your grandmother- was going to leave me. She had met somebody else. I followed her. I saw. I knew. I climbed a ladder outside a dance hall and watched them. I climbed back down and bought a gun at the pawn shop and returned. I walked in and straight over to the table where they sat."

My grandfather pulled into a barbecue stand where we used to go for lunch way back before prison had crashed into my life and all was 'normal'.

He had gone quiet for a while, lost in his own memories. I recall wondering if he was even aware he had said what he'd said out loud.

I bowed my head for a silent prayer before our meal. When I finally looked up, I could see he was embarrassed. Suddenly, so was I.

We ate in silence and got back in the car. We'd be 'home' in another twenty minutes.

I was often uncomfortable being in his presence.

He carried secrets, never met my gaze, and sometimes gave in to tempestuous fits of anger.

At other times, he was generous, fun-loving and upbeat.

He was a climate unto himself.

I learned early on to keep an eye out for brewing storm fronts.

We rode along the turnpike between Dallas and Ft. Worth with our windows down in his 66 Ford Falcon. I had so many thoughts and emotions on my release day--I couldn't really put two thoughts together about my future.

I stared at the OUTSIDE WORLD which was now MINE. Again.

Except - this old man next to me had blurted out his deep secret and just left it hanging in the air!

____

I waited and he finally continued.

"I pulled the pistol out of my pocket and stood in front of them. Until that moment, I really had no plan--it was all anger and adrenaline. I cocked the weapon and found myself pointing it--not at HIM--but HER. I don't know what I said. I was in a fog. Sad, confused, desperate. I said whatever I said and walked out.

I wandered around the French Quarter for about an hour. We were living in New Orleans at that time. Then, I climbed the fire escape to the top of a men's store called Maison Blanche. I needed to look out at the city and at the world; at life itself a final time.

At the top, I walked to the edge and looked down. That's when I saw it. I bent down and picked up a stray bit paper under my foot.

I read it and decided to live.

It was just an advertisement--a handbill that a breeze somehow had blown on top of a building."

____

We were turning down the final few streets before the driveway of the house where, before prison, I'd spent 20 years of my life. I couldn't wait to see it and rush inside and experience the passionate thrill of security in my own home.

As we turned into the long driveway, I saw my cat sitting alert on the front porch swing. His tail was snaking nervously at the car's approach. Did he know? Is that possible?

We drove past the familiar trees I had climbed as a boy, the pecan tree, pear tree, and I could smell honeysuckle. The four o'clock flowers my grandmother planted all those years ago swept over me and it was a gust of perfumed happiness!

This house, the yard smells, my cat, and the sweet life I'd left behind to serve the fearsome God Jehovah---it was all too much to bear! I began weeping uncontrollably.

___

My grandfather pulled into the overhang of the garage and switched off the motor. He was lost in his own feelings of 'overwhelm' at that moment. Memory can be kind, or cruel, or punishing.

___

He finished his thoughts out loud.

"The handbill was an advertisement for Art School. I discovered in that instant of time a pause between life and death--I wanted to be an artist of some kind!

I climbed back down the fire escape, off the building-- never again thought about what I'd almost done."

Engine off and radiator burbling. The free world rushed into my heart.

And ... I'd just been told a dark secret about - my own existence.

___

I sat stunned.

In the blink of an eye--the only reason I existed at all was that a handbill for Art School caught a suicidal man's eye before he shot himself. He found his dream between heaven and hell.

..

That day was April 15, 1969, and I wouldn't completely understand what my grandfather told me for another 5 years, in June of 1974.

It was to be the day I decided to leave this world--of Fort Worth and Jehovah's Witnesses--and start a new life in California--as an Artist.

...

What strange mystery runs in our blood? I cannot say.

Art is there. Art saved my life.

TWICE.

_____________________________

In 1923 I almost died.

Holy shit.

BluesBrother

Wow! I don't know what to say.

It is true that our existence is tne result of a whole series of improbable coincidences, what if my father had gone somewhere else tne night he met my mother? Etc....

Sometimes we forget the long term unintended consequences of our actions and choices . You make your grandfather's seem warm and human . It is a good job he never pulled the trigger ....

under the radar

Yet another fine illustration that life turns on a dime. Even seemingly trivial events can ripple outward to dramatically affect the distant future. For example, what would our country look like now if that British sniper had shot George Washington in the back after all?

On a personal note, my dad was a GI on Okinawa in the summer of 1945 (before the atomic bombs were dropped) and later was in one of the first units to enter Japan to begin the Occupation. I wasn't born until several years later. Things could easily have gone quite differently for me. Not that history would notice one way or the other, but still...

Anyway, thanks for this thought provoking post. A delight to read, as usual.

Terry

Thanks!
I remember reading about a Russian guy in a nuclear bunker who had "saved the world" by NOT following orders to launch against the U.S. His gut told him it was a glitch in the system - and he was right.
My foot slipped on my accelerator pedal when the light turned green during a heavy morning fog in darkness and at that instant a huge truck roared passed running the light!
The foot slipped meant the difference between a sure fatality and the rest of my life.

We're always a hair's breadth away from extinction it seems!

____
(edited) I found it!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831

titch

Mr. Terry: That was a very-well written essay. Very good. Perhaps you should have titled it: "I was almost NOT in existence." You know. that could be said for millions of people. Existence has depended upon a very thin line of events that happened...or DID NOT happen. Best Regards to you.

Titch

silentbuddha

Is this the same grandfather that was in the Klu Klux Klan or the other grandfather

Iown Mylife

When i was in my late 30s I learned that my father was a pedophile. He was arrested in McAllen, TX, for preying on young teen Mexican boys.

Over the next few years of gathering information I realized that the only reason I exist is because he needed to have kids so that he could get accepted by people who had children. Sons, in particular.

Terry

Iown Mylife, that's a brutal realization! Whew. Hard to handle.
I'm 73 and when I look way back at the sorts of men I grew up around (through today's standards as a filter) I see wretched guys straddling social taboos while trying to at least appear to be upright.
Lots of dirty secrets abounded and few clean hands. But there is never ever ever any possible excuse for harming children.
Even if it turns out people are "just born that way" I can't grasp a liberal sentiment of acceptance.
When I found a KKK robe my grandfather kept locked in a cabinet, I asked him about it much later and the answer I got was more or less self-exculpatory (as you might expect.) I feel shame on his behalf but in his own eyes I doubt his calculus saw beyond "birds of a feather flock together", in his own words.
I deplore my father's alcoholism, my grandfather's KKK background, and I suppose I should be very grateful I had so little parenting from the males in my family. Of course this made me susceptible to Jehovah's Witnesses and the offer of a Heavenly Father as replacement. But - that's water under an old collapsed bridge.
We must move forward in life. Ever forward while finding a shelf inside our heart where dark memories are stored as cautionary tales of how easily we can head over the next cliff.

Clarkey

As its known religion is a good place to hide egregious harmful things, be it the KKK or the JWS.

In the secular knowledge domain harmful things come forward into public awareness.

The general public has the propensity to improve the social interactions we have to are selves and others, righting wrongs so that those wrong harmful things hopefully dont occur again.

Religions have been known to hide way harmful things in an endeavor to create a supposed image of righteousness and purity, unfortunately someone inevitability will get hurt and the problem just repletes itself.

Vanderhoven7

And it's not only religion and religious leaders, but also boy scout leaders, hockey coaches, looters, the man on the street, the entertainment industry, governments of every persuasion etc. etc. Something is very wrong with mankind; it's as if we have been infected with sin or something.

I almost died ...allow me to explain

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