One morning a week ago I was standing outside my bank waiting
for it to open. Next to me was an older man, perhaps in his late
60s, with a bicycle. After a minute or two of sharing the sidewalk
in silence, I asked if he rode his bike a lot.
Yes, quite a lot, he said. All of last year he’d only driven his
car 38 miles. Then, unbidden, he said this might be his last ride.
He wasn’t sure he’d make it home alive.
One morning a week ago I was standing outside my bank waiting for it to open. Next to me was an older man, perhaps in his late 60s, with a bicycle. After a minute or two of sharing the sidewalk in silence, I asked if he rode his bike a lot.
Yes, quite a lot, he said. All of last year he’d only driven his car 38 miles. Then, unbidden, he said this might be his last ride. He wasn’t sure he’d make it home alive.
At first I was dumbstruck, then curious why a stranger would share this with me. Finally, I asked why.
“Bad heart,” he said, pointing at some kind of contraption under his shirt. He’d had operations, but the fix was wearing out. It could go at any time. His doctors wanted to operate again, but he’d turned them down.
Why? I asked again, more weakly than before.
He looked gray. Life, he said with a disturbing resolve, held no attraction for him any longer. He seemed to want me to know this. I offered him a ride home, but he declined.
I’m a person who is never bored, never at a loss to find things to make life worth living. Finally, I asked him to tell me what mattered to him. There must be something.
After a pause, he explained that he had no wife, no children, no family. His health was poor. He seemed sad, not bitter.
Was there nothing he took joy in? I asked.
He thought about that for a moment. He owned a home in Monterey, he said. He’d lived there for decades, on a couple of acres. He had about 20 fruit trees.
When it came to those trees, he spoke easily. His love for them didn’t show in his tone, which he kept on an even, dull keel. It was revealed in a kind of wistful enthusiasm for plums, peaches and others. He’d had a producing lemon tree, he said, but it had stopped bearing fruit after his neighbor drained his hot tub into the ground nearby. He missed the lemons.
For just a moment, talking about his trees illuminated the darkness that hung over him.
Being inclined to curmudgeonliness, I found his forlorn demeanor almost frightening. I wondered for a moment if I was looking at my own future.
Then the bank opened.
This gentleman’s grim view of life was on my mind last week when tragedy struck Carmel.
On Tuesday five Carmel High School boys were driving home up Highway 1 after a day of surfing at Sand Dollar Beach, a few miles south of Lucia Lodge. It was dusk. Maybe they were goofing around. Maybe the driver, a 16-year-old, got distracted. Police believe he was driving too fast.
Near the lodge the truck missed a curve and swerved toward the mountain. The driver overcorrected, and a moment later plummeted 450 feet over the cliff. Three passengers got out and survived. Two fell to their deaths, the truck so badly damaged that it took 18 hours to retrieve their bodies.
Death, at least overseas, is very much on our minds these days, although Americans as a rule don’t dwell much on mortality. We’re too busy displaying our world-famous optimism and can-do attitudes.
But there are times when life’s fragility can’t be ignored, when we are reminded how easily it can all slip from our fingers.
In those moments we take stock of our lives and the measure of our souls. We look at how the dead are remembered, and wonder if we will deserve the same. Whether we are loved seems to matter more than ever.
If we are lucky, we’ll also remind ourselves what an adventure life can be.
I have this odd feeling that the man at the bank, who claimed to have nothing to live for, made it home fine. Yet two surfers, who had everything to live for, didn’t.
I hope the man at the bank reads about them and sees the outpouring of grief from their families, friends and even perfect strangers. I hope this gives him new resolve not to die alone, to find something to live for. If his lemons will come back, I hope he’ll make lemonade. Above all, I hope it inspires him to find new meaning in life.
I know I did.
