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It happens to me all the time.
Call it day dreaming if you want…a smell, a photo, or an
object can trigger the memory. Sometimes it is not appropriate for the
situation—for example when a funny story comes to mind during a boring business
meeting and I start to snicker. The person next to me will ask me what is funny
because they too want a reprieve from the monotony…Or when I am thinking to
myself and say out loud something like, “that was dumb...” Lady will enquire
about what seemed to her to be a random comment and I will try to share with
her the memory and then explain how my thoughts had bounced from one topic to
another and to finally arrive at the memory.
Yesterday I had one of those memories. I am not sure what
triggered it, but I thought I could share. (so if it seems kind of random, you
now know what Lady goes through daily! HAHA)
When we were young we were raised to work. Growing up on a
farm there really was no other option. Out unspoken motto was “Work hard. THEN
play hard.” One year, when I was about 11 years old and my younger brother
Trevor would have been 8, he decided that he wanted to do the “All-American
thing” and get a paper route. Of course being as young as he was the paper
route became a family affair. For almost ten years we delivered papers to our
community. At one point we covered 3/4ths of our town.
Sometimes Madre would drive us in the car, especially during
the winter, and we would jump in and out of the back seats with the papers. As
we grew older, Trevor and I decided we wanted to use our go-cart to deliver the
papers. Since it is dark still when we delivered, we fastened two flashlights
onto the front of the go cart with bailing wire and off we went. (If you have
ever heard a go-cart, I am sure that the entire town was dismayed that we were
out at 0600 hours rattling their windows with a muffler-less motor. But nobody
complained—haha, at least to us directly)
One crisp Fall morning Trevor and I were out, about half way
done with our route. I had jumped out with a handful of papers and ran down the
street; Trevor drove down a block and was waiting for me there. As I ran around
the corner, the noise of the go-cart faded and I could hear a screeching sound.
At first I ignored it. There are all kinds of noises in the dark of the early morning.
I heard it again and thought it was a cat. But when I heard it the third time,
more strenuous and fretful, I decided to look.
The sound was coming from an old house across the street.
This old house has not changed for years—even now—it has been surrounded by a store,
a chapel and parking lots for the school football field. Dying ivy wound its
way up the weather beaten walls. In the dark, tall gnarled trees cast menacing shadows
everywhere. I ran across the parking lot towards the house. Adrenaline peaked
as I neared and the noise became more apparent. I slowed in apprehension, and
then stopped completely when something dark was hurled away from the house into
the parking lot.
I stood breathing, short adrenaline infused breaths willing
Trevor to come back. I almost turned back when I heard the sound again, this
time there was no mistaking it, the sound was a piteously hoarse cry, “Help!”
It was a PERSON!
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| I did a Google search and randomly found a photo of the house! It is still there today. |
“Hello?” I carefully said. She gasped and startled, the
noise was a mix of relief and fear. Only one distant light reflected on both
our faces. Now I think about it, she may have thought my floating, glowing head
was a ghost to come take her Home.
“Are you, alright?” I continued to talk and walked closer to
her. She explained that she had fallen and could not get up. She had come out
to change the water in her house. “Ok, we will help you, it will be alright.” I
knew from having a mother as an EMT that the first thing you do is calm and
reassure—then silently assess the situation. I prayed Trevor would notice I had
gone and come find me.
I looked up at the dark, haunting house, “someone lives in
there?” I had no idea. “Scary place to live…” again, not something that I
voiced to her. She was dressed in her night coat, complete with bright retro
flowers. She wanted me to try and help her up. Her leg was twisted in the wrong
direction and I knew moving her may not be a good idea (again an EMT mother) I
tried to make small talk and told her that once Trevor came we would see if she
could stand.
Sure enough a few minutes later I heard the go-cart getting
close. To this day I never asked Trevor how he knew where I was. When he got
there, he silently looked at us and knew better than ask questions. “She wants
to see if she can stand, come help me,” I commanded him.
We both took her by the shoulders and began to lift; she let
out a wild shriek of pain that jarred me to the core. I feared we had mad her
worse. “Let’s put her down,” I said, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.
Trevor, of course, did not need to be told twice…it must have scared him too.
We set a plan: I went into the dark haunted house to call
911 while Trevor bravely cradled the old lady’s head in the dark yard. (What a
cool kid, huh?)
I half ran, half cautiously approached the wide front porch
the creaked angrily under my weight. The door was open and a little dog started
to bark. “Great, a stupid dog to deal with,” the last thing I wanted was to get
bitten. When I entered, the dog must have sensed the urgency and just followed me
like a lost child as I looked around the dark room full of musty furniture for
the phone.
I found it on the wall of the mustard yellow kitchen. I
called 911 and had a call that must have seemed like a prank to the operator
(minus the early hour, who does a prank at SIX A.M.?!). It went something like this:
“911 how may I help you?”
“There is an old Lady that has fallen in her yard, she needs
help.”
“Can I have your name?”
“Dustin”
“OK, Dustin, is the lady where you can see her?”
“No, she is in the yard.” And I am in the house, DUH! Who
hires these people anyway?
“At 0600?”
“Yes,” I answered, probably more curt than I meant it, but I
was getting frustrated that they just did not send an ambulance and let me get
out of the dark claustrophobic house.
“Why was she out there? What is her name?”
“I have no idea why she is out here and what her name is. I
just found her this morning.” This is getting ridiculous.
“OK, where are you?” I can still hear the disbelief in her
voice and I wonder why she has not used the fancy tracking device they show in
the movies to find me already.
“I am across from the football field in the old scary house
behind the church. I have no idea what her name is, or why she was out this
early. I was delivering papers and heard her yelling for help. Can you just
send an ambulance?”
After being reassured help was coming, I hung up and called
Grandma Ginger, who lived a few blocks away to get this Lady’s neighbors to
help.
Trevor and I sat with the Lady as the sunrise showed over
the peaks of the mountains until the EMT’s came. Once it looked like we were no
longer needed, we slipped through the trees and took our go-cart to finish the
paper route. I never drive past that house, or see crab-apples that I don’t
think of that morning.
I often ponder the ‘moral of the story’, for example, what
if there was too much worldly noise (go-cart) and I never heard her cry for
help? What if I had just ignored it? What if I had been too scared to cross my
comfort zone to see who was calling out? How did Trevor know where to find me? What
would have happened to her if we had not taken the go-cart that day? Or worse,
if we had not helped her, how long would she have been there? The list of
questions and life lessons can stream on forever.
I am just thankful that we had heard the cry for help.
Now, as I typed this memory a flood of other memories
started to connect (Lady asked me what I was thinking so hard about). One of
them was when Kell hit a black cow as we were driving at night and moments
after the wreck, while he was making sure everyone was alright, I jumped out of
the car and burst uninvited into one of the nearby farmer’s homes to call 911.
I was lucky that night on two accounts: 1-they leave their doors unlocked. 2-(and
maybe more serious) Is that when he showed up in the kitchen to see what the
noise was in his home, he did not have his gun with him! But that is another
story, for another day.
