I got home and my wife told me X "went for a stroll and dropped dead."
I think she mentioned he was walking along the Danube. This would have been Sunday or Monday. We agreed he was about our age. Far too young to go dropping dead.
Heart attack. It turned out he was 56, not our age. Also: pacemaker. He looked good for someone 56 years old with a pacemaker. Now I have this image of his final moments: watching a swan, perhaps. Or a sunset. Some kid rolls past on a skateboard, yakking into his cellphone, "zzzt."
He was a nice man. He worked in education. The news saddened us. It also made me think, "that was close." It could have been me. That feeling was mitigated when I found out he was 12 years older than me. When I heard, "pacemaker," death moved another step away, I told myself. I sat in the library with a glass of Bushmills and listened to the day's overtones circle in my daughter's harp. Then it got late and I had things to do.
Posted at January 13, 2004 07:26 AMA pacemaker keeps your heart beating. He didn't clunk over because of his pacemaker; he clunked over in spite of it. Start worrying again.
Posted by: Suzette at January 13, 2004 12:01 PMThanks. Now I was thinking about that (dead man by the river, pacemaker still going zz...zz...zz) until I got home and heard the pacemaker had just been a rumor, and he had actually had a bypass. Poor guy.
Posted by: mig at January 13, 2004 07:41 PMsometimes you can't help it, though, which REALLY sucks.
we're waiting for the results of a scan for a heart murmur on my significant other. not much fun.
Posted by: j-a at January 14, 2004 05:23 AMgood luck, j-a.
Posted by: mig at January 14, 2004 09:01 AM