My friend Jeremy almost died on Friday. It is hard to know how close you have to be to death to be able to claim that you ‘almost’ died. But nearly everyone was surprised that he didn’t. The accident involved a 4-point buck deer who did die and Jeremy on his motorcycle who didn’t. He T-boned the deer at 70 MPH on an Oregon highway south of Bend, flew over the handlebars, demonstrating one of those physical laws about an object in motion remaining in motion. In the same direction at the same speed he slid along for an unknown distance, thinking about the things on either side that he did not want to hit. As he slowed, the slide turned to a tumble and came to a stop on the highway where he assessed his faculties. His toes wiggled, his arms moved and all his protective gear was still in place. An ambulance took him to the hospital, which he walked out of several hours later with some band-aids and a few stitches on his knee. His worst injury was perhaps to his pride. After so many friends warning of the dangers of motorcycles, so many jokes about donor-cycles. I personally will never defend the position that motorcycles are as safe as cars, but I have to agree with Jeremy that the motorcycle had nothing to do with this particular accident. If he had hit the same deer at the same time at the same speed in his Accord he would have had an even worse chance of surviving, especially had it come through the windshield. In this case his separation from his bike may have been the best thing.

Two days later Jeremy was at our house, shuffling up our walkway with a cane and a straight leg and asking what he could do to help with the babies. I am sure that if His head had been on fire he would have politely yielded the sink to someone washing their hands. It is completely irrational, but he is genetically disposed to that type of behavior. Irrational selflessness can drive you crazy, even if it is really Christ-like. But one of the great things about Jeremy is that he lives by what he learns. I think he may have learned quite a bit on his solo drive home from Oregon in a rental car. I am looking forward to some sort of explanation of that time. Some help for those of us who haven’t seen asphalt sliding by our eyes. He is a songwriter, so I am hoping for that. He condenses volumes into verses and distills the critical truth from mere information. I can’t help but feeling that the world is at a loss for not hearing more of his songs. That sounds really dramatic, but let me explain. We both move people around in airplanes for a living. It is “important” that we do it safely, but when the flight is over it is immediately forgotten. There is no lasting effect from our effort except that people are in a different place. It is similar to a Job that we also both had years ago, as valet parkers. At the end of the day we had a wad of money in our pocket and a whole bunch of cars were in different places than when we began. I remember very little of it. Yet the songs that Jeremy wrote and recorded are still in circulation, still, in some way relevant to a handful of people who were eager to hear what he had to say. Yet, all his passengers get to hear is something about seatbelts.

So Jeremy came to our house and tried to tell us what he thought about on the trip after his fall. He said that he thought about the things that were important to him, that that is why he stopped by Santa Barbara to see us, and to see Ian and Jeremy. Neither of us is very good at talking. Which is probably why he writes songs and why I keep up this blog 7 months after our boys birth. What he tried to say was that there are reasons that it is better that he did not slide his head into the guardrail on Friday, and that our little family is one of those reasons. I fumbled around and tried to say that that meant a lot, that I was glad that I didn’t receive a different kind of phone call, then fumbled around some more, aware all the while that every time I have to say something really important I struggle to line up the right words to make it sound as important as it is. I usually give up and hope the person senses my frustration and interpolates what I was getting at. This time I decided that it didn’t really matter what I said. I named one of my kids after him after all, maybe that says best what I was trying to say.