Imminent Death

By Patrick J. Flanagan

Once born, we must all face the time of inevitable death.  It is inescapable and given as a preordained certainty.  As I grow older and closer to that time in my life, I am amazed at the vagaries and verisimilitudes of the event itself.  We really have no choice in this, yet it can be different for us all.  Death will happen but how it happens is just so varied and imaginative, but the final outcome is the same.  We no longer exist in the world as we know it.  That is the constant.

Just the very phrase, “He was close to death”, raises interesting possibilities as to outcome.  “He had a close brush with death,” is yet another.  Just so many stories in our lives but the final moment of death is always the same for all of us.  It is how we get there that is so varied and often out of our control.  Sometimes we can cause this, sometimes it is caused by other events.

Thinking back, the first time I came close to death was at an early age of eight.  We were visiting friends with a swimming pool and I couldn’t swim yet.  I was playing in the pool with a rubber inner-tube and it flipped accidentally.  All of a sudden, I was trapped under water and in danger of drowning.  My mother immediately noticed but she didn’t know how to swim either.  I started to drown and became very scared as I struggled to get to the surface.  I began to take in water, when, all of a sudden, the rubber tube righted itself and I could breathe once again.  A lot of coughing up water as my lungs cleared and I acquired an inordinate fear of water from that day on.  After a very long battle with swim instructors, I was finally able to swim without fear or close to it.  I have always carried a deep respect for water since that day.

It was years later that I began surfing on the beaches of Santa Cruz.  A number of times, I would be caught in a rip-tide and repeat once again that fear of drowning.  I am sure that I could have drowned under the right conditions, but I didn’t and continued to take this risk as nothing feels quite so good as when one is “riding” a wave.  Still, I continued with my fears.  For years, I had a difficult time with snorkeling or swimming underwater with an air tank.  I just got claustrophobic and fearful of being underwater for extended periods of time.  It wasn’t until years later that I worked hard with a trainer that I was finally able to stay under water for long periods of time.  Still, my fear remained and my respect for the vagaries of swimming became an integral part of my very being.

I would have to say that the next major confrontation with death was my involvement in the Viet Nam War.  Unlike other events of confronting the “moment” of death, this experience lasted for days, months, even a year.  It was to be expected to such a degree that one counted the days of just living.  Death was ever-present and always a part of one’s day.  Sometimes unexpected, and yet on other days it was ever-present and immediately threatening.  Death surrounded us each day as we witnessed others die or come close to death while we lived.  The daily question, “Why them and not me,” haunted us more often than not.

This was a period of my life when death was ever-present, but three events are etched into my very being after so many years have passed.  In war, death is ever-present and a given, but some days are engraved deeply into our very being.  One was when a fellow soldier accidentally shot his M-79 and the high-explosive round hit me in my shoulder but didn’t go off.  Just a stroke of luck, but we were alive with just a sore shoulder.  We should have all died right then and there.   

Another was in the jungle with three others and the enemy came within a few hundred yards of us.  We were clearly outnumbered and our only hope was to call in heavy artillery upon our position, hopefully killing them but letting us survive.  Whether I survived now came down to my knowledge of geometry and prayers that the first round flew above us and not on top of us.  I can still hear that artillery round buzzing above our heads as it hit the target and then the dozens of rounds which followed.  We were all still alive.  But it was close.

The third time was toward the end of the battle to keep Fire Support Base 29 in the hands of our unit and out of the hands of the North Vietnamese Army.  Again, we were outnumbered and this event was one of daily death and trying to just stay alive.  It started with just sniper fire and daily intensified to rocket and artillery attacks from mortars and enemy fire.  Our casualties were growing each day and we finally were coming to the realization that we were losing.  We fought hard as our brothers fell, wounded and some dead.  Two helicopters crashed into our base as we struggled to get them medical aid, but we just asked for more air support and artillery from the friendly bases around us.  The moment of death and life was often only seconds away from each other toward the end of the battle when we realized that we had to retreat and escape.  We had to all go down a cliff in order to leave the base, as the enemy started to overwhelm our bunkers and trenches.  It was then, an incoming mortar round buzzing above me, that I knew I was near death.  Luckily, I jumped into a dugout as the round hit, but my dog which was with me was gone.  He was dead and gone.  And then the struggle to go down the cliff with full battle gear in order to get to safety and away from the enemy.  There were moments that day that I did not think I was going to make it.  Yet I did and the memories are just as vivid again about how close I came.  There were many events of death during that time in my life but I survived.  Yet these three events are still so vivid in my mind to this day.

Then it was years later, driving home from Virginia City, that I hit a patch of black ice and lost control of my automobile.  In seconds, I hit the mountain and totally flipped the car 360 degrees, totally destroying it.  It all happened so fast yet all I had was a few scrapes and cuts.  I had only been going about 35 m.p.h. but realized that it was again a very close call between life and death.

Now 68 years have passed.  I’m sure that there were many other events in my life where it came close to being ended, but some moments just are so clear and so etched into our very being.  One cannot forget.  All I can do is wonder why I survived, why I’m still alive to live on, to go on with life.  In this process, my friends are all dying.  We are all getting older and time seems to be running out.  It can be so sudden, or it can take time, but the moment of death is still just that, a moment when we are gone.  As we age, it becomes imminent.  The process is what seems to be continuing as that inevitable moment gets closer.  Recently, my cousin died unexpectedly.  He was healthy and younger, but, with no warning, he died.  I could never have imagined this.  Then I still have some friends in their 90’s, still alive and alert, but I’d be a fool to not expect that call to come about their demise, if I’m still alive.  Death is just so imminent as we age, but how many times we escape it is not.  So we continue on, and on, until that brief moment which must come and the journey is over.  Enjoy it while one can and don’t complain as you continue to live and escape the inevitable a bit longer.