And then, on occasion, it would ring, causing our hearts to leap. They’d watch fearfully as I’d go to answer it, approaching it like a helpless victim approaches a closed door to check what’s outside, while my kids silently screamed, “Don’t answer it!” afraid of what was going to leap out at us. The news we were all terrified of hearing lived on the other side of that phone line, and we never knew if or when it was going to strike.
This was the state we lived in for some time, lulled at times into thinking everything was safe and good, only to be jolted back into the fear of it all with a new complication or piece of news. But we always had one another for comfort, and hopefully the kids’ injuries, like Susan’s, will continue to heal, theirs without permanent scars.
Another question I’m often asked is, “How has the accident affected you…spiritually speaking?”
This one is a little more complicated. Not that I have an antagonistic relationship or feel hurt or betrayed by God. In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve had a relationship with God. I definitely have had a fear, like if I do something bad or wrong or speak ill about Him/Her, that I might pay a terrible consequence, but does that qualify as a relationship? Feels more like a superstition. And if it is a relationship, it certainly doesn’t sound like the most healthy of ones. All that said, I also have never had the thought, God, what did I, or we, do to deserve this? partly because I know we didn’t say or do anything to bring this upon ourselves, and partly because I don’t believe that God had any hand in causing the accident at all.
What about surviving it, though? After Susan got out of the hospital, a friend called her, one who claims to have psychic abilities. She told Susan that on the day of the accident, she had a very strong vision and from it knew that Susan was ultimately going to survive. She clearly saw the accident and saw Susan’s spirit connected to this earth by what resembled an umbilical cord. The cord hadn’t been severed, which is how the friend knew she was going to live. She also saw that at the scene of the accident there were “many angels” helping her. Susan’s father was helping to pull the car away from under the bus, but it was too heavy and he needed help, from which the psychic said Susan’s brother gave him. She asked if Susan had a brother who had passed and Susan answered, “Well, a brother-in-law.” The friend then said that he must have been the one helping. She also told Susan that her grandmother (who had always complimented Susan on how pretty she was) had protected her face. From the accident, with all the injuries Susan sustained, her face was relatively unharmed, except for a burn on her chin from the air bag.
Was this reported vision an uncanny coincidence or a glimpse into another dimension that most of us don’t have access to? I don’t know. The afterlife is one phenomenon I’d really like to believe in—and there are many others. I’ve worked on television shows centered around UFOs and aliens, and while I’ve heard some pretty compelling stories about their existence, I’ve never actually seen or experienced one, so it’s difficult to believe completely. UFOs, aliens, the afterlife…they all fall into the same category of wanting to believe but needing more proof. Some believe that children are more susceptible to seeing ghosts and other paranormal phenomena because their minds are more open. So I wonder, with the innocence of my own childhood behind me, is it my closed mind preventing me from seeing what is already right in front of me?
Like the existence of God.
When Susan was first in the hospital and able to start processing what had happened to her, I told her a little about her journey thus far. By this time, she knew she had been in a car accident and was at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. And on this particular day, I also told her that when she was in the midst of all her initial surgeries, the head of Cedars’ orthopedic surgery department had been watching over her case. I explained that our anesthesiologist friend at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York had spoken to his boss there, who knew the head of orthopedic surgery at Cedars, and that’s how he became involved. Susan had a tracheostomy at the time that I told her all of this, and she was only able to scratch out a few words. “Really? That’s sweet.”
“Yes, you have a lot of angels watching over you,” I added.
Partly because her case was so unique, but also from the many connections we had either through friends or work, it was true. We did have a lot of angels watching over her.
A week or so later, one of the rabbis from our temple, Michelle, called me. She was at Cedars visiting her uncle, who had been admitted around the same time as Susan and was wondering if she could come and say hello to her. I told her I wasn’t there at the moment, but if Susan were awake, I’m sure she would love to see her. I gave her the building and room number and hung up. An hour or so later my phone rang, and it was Rabbi Michelle again. She said that she had indeed seen Susan and had such an extraordinary visit with her that she had to call and share it with me. She said that she had been talking to Susan about how wonderful it was to see her doing so well, what a blessing it was that she was still here. Susan had smiled, and in the haze that she was in, this is what she told Michelle (by the way, Susan doesn’t remember having this conversation with Michelle at all):
Susan told her that she believed that one of the reasons she had survived was because of the many connections she had in Sinai. Michelle was thrown by this, naturally thinking of the biblical Mount Sinai where God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. “Sinai? Really?” Michelle asked.
When she asked her what she meant by this, Susan responded, “There are a lot of angels watching over me.”
“Where have you seen these angels?” Michelle asked.
“Oh, around…in the operating room, you know.”
“And what did these angels do?”
“They would just lean in and give me hugs,” Susan said.
This is the perfect illustration of my spiritual dilemma, the battle between heart and head. Through Rabbi Michelle’s lens, the heart, this was an extraordinary affirmation of her faith—ancient connections in Sinai, angels watching over us giving us strength and love. Through my lens, the head, it was how information previously given to Susan had been mentally processed—slightly twisted and then repeated.
Belief versus skepticism. The truth is, they both live in me.
Like many, I so want to believe in God without a shadow of doubt, but my rational mind often comes into battle with that pure faith. I look for empirical proof. I’m sure many of you are thinking, My God, how much more proof do you need than what you’ve already been shown?! Admittedly, there is some truth in just that. There’s an old joke about a holy man who is caught in a torrential rain that turns into a flood. As the water is rising and up to his knees, a raft comes by to rescue him. He turns the raft away and says, “Go rescue someone else. God will save me.” A little later, the water is up to his chest, and a boat comes by. He turns the boat away, saying that God will save him. Later, when the water is up to his neck, a helicopter arrives and he turns that away, too, shouting up to it, “God will save me!” It continues to rain and the water continues to rise until it is now over his head, and the man drowns. He finds himself in heaven and approaches God, pretty pissed off. “God, I don’t understand how you could do this to me? I have served you my entire life. I had complete faith in you and yet you turned your back on me when I needed you most.” God says, “What are you talking about? I sent you a raft. I sent you a boat. I even sent you a helicopter. What more did you want?”
Maybe in some afterlife I’ll hear those same words from God about what was right in front of me the entire time. “Your wife survived the un-survivable. Your daughter miraculously walked away uninjured.” All that is true. And words like miracle, which imply some sort of divine intervention, continually come out of my mouth as well. And yet, still…was it, in fact, God and his angels who stepped in?
“Who shall live and who shall die?” During the High Holidays, we hear and speak these words often. In the last two years, I’ve given them more thought than in all the years that p
roceeded. We pray to God to “inscribe and seal us in the book of life.” And we reflect and repent and atone, all in the hope that we’ll make it into that book and live another year—sort of like Santa’s naughty-and-nice list to the extreme, and with some seriously higher stakes. That’s a lot of empowerment. And the dangerous flipside to this is that when there are unanswered prayers, and there often are, it can feel like a deal’s been reneged on, confusion or resentment often following. “I don’t understand. I’ve done everything.” Or worse, when something tragic does happen, we often turn to that same power and ask, “What did I do to deserve this?”
The answer is…absolutely nothing. And as unfair as that can feel, it doesn’t change the fact that these things still happen. We all know and have seen too many bad people prosper and an equally number of good people perish.
The High Holiday prayers ask how we will meet our fates:
Who by fire and who by water
Who by sword…and, in our case, who by bus
Was this accident written and sealed, previously inscribed in that book of life?
Part of what I think has resonated with so many affected by the accident is the absolute randomness of it—that it could have been any one of us. These kinds of events, the random ones, can be the hardest to process. When someone is addicted to drugs and overdoses, we get it. Similarly, when someone who smokes gets lung cancer, it makes more sense. But these arbitrary acts, without a clear cause and effect, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are harder to wrap our heads around. Random, or written and sealed? Alyce suggests that maybe it’s both—like a big game show in the heavens and God’s got kind of a huge wheel of fortune up there, picks a name, and spins it. The first spin might result in “Okay, Joyce is gonna get a baby!” And then on the second spin, “Ohhh, sorry Susan, you’re gonna get crushed by a bus.”
It’s the absolute randomness of such accidents that inspires philosophies like, “Live every day like it’s your last.” While I totally get these concepts of living life to its fullest, having no regrets, being in the moment, recognizing the difference between a tragedy and a pain in the ass, all of that and more, I’m not sure that “live every day like it’s your last” feels right to me. If I think of life as like a vacation, the last day of vacation is hardly the one that holds the most joy for me. I’m usually stressed out, fretting that it’s over, wondering if I did everything I wanted to do, lamenting its end, and anxious about what’s to come. Not the most relaxing state of being for my last day on earth.
Perhaps the sweet spot of vacation is somewhere in the middle, the first half being long enough to let go of the stress but with enough time ahead to enjoy without worrying that it’s coming to an end. Perhaps this vacation/life analogy explains the classic midlife crisis—an awareness that it’s not gonna last forever, so make hay while the sun shines. As far as crises go, a midlife one seems preferable to an end-of-life crisis, for which we’re left wondering, What the hell have I done? I’ve wasted the whole damn thing!
That’s what I try to hang on to. Live each day like I’m right in the middle of life, so I can appreciate just that day without carrying the baggage of what’s come before or worrying about it coming to an end.
Which returns me to the question, “Where was I…spiritually speaking?”
Through all of this, the accident, the time in the hospital, the recovery, I can’t say that I ever really prayed. I can remember at times thinking, Please, let this operation go successfully. Please, let her not be paralyzed. Please, let her fever drop. But all that felt more like making wishes rather than prayer, and those wishes didn’t begin with the words Please God. I’m not sure there’s really any difference between that and praying, but when those wishes came true, I confess that I credited luck and good fortune, but not God.
What I did find was that instead of praying, I wrote—words of self-reflection, of observation, words to share the experience. And when I think of it, had I prayed, what would I have asked God to provide? Strength, comfort, something to help bear the weight, a presence to vent to…support. Well, that’s exactly what I received…but from people like you, some family, some friends, some complete strangers. Countless emails of love and hope, shoulders to cry on, encouragement—all of it life-sustaining nourishment. The words I wrote that I never considered prayer ultimately became the best example of the power of prayer. And while we have often heard the phrase that God is within all of us, I would go further and say that God isn’t within all of us; God is all of us. We all have the power, the heart, the compassion, the resources to provide one another with exactly what many turn to God for. And I say this not based on faith but entirely on observation and experience. As Susan always says, love really is the answer.
And while there are times when Susan has uttered the words, “Why did this have to happen?” she has never once said, “Why did this have to happen to me?” She has refused to be a victim, and it is this attitude that has kept her from wallowing in self-pity. Her zest for life, her spirit, and lack of fatalism are just some of the many characteristics that have helped in her survival and healing. Without these qualities, the ones that live in us all, I’m not sure what her outcome would have been.
She continues to carry the accident with her—in the scars, the numbness from the nerve damage, the aches and pains, the lost time…her bag of rocks to bear. Each of us has been saddled with a bag of rocks. And what I also know to be true is that, together, we can help one another carry them. The inspiration, strength, and hope Susan has provided has helped others carry theirs. And the love she’s received has helped carry hers. The kind words back to me, as well as all the support, have helped me carry mine.
I’m not sure, even given the choice, whether I’d want to live without life’s heavy weights. The greater the pain we allow ourselves to feel, the greater the joy we can experience in return, spiking up and down like the EKG of a heart. Limit the pain and we limit the joy, compressing the lines closer and closer, flatter and flatter. Without the up-and-down spikes of life’s heartaches and elations, like an EKG in flatline, we cease to live.
So here we are today, nearly two years after this journey began. Susan continues to improve, the kids are thriving, and this I do know for sure: Through reaching out with these words, all my prayers have been answered.
I don’t need any more proof than that.
epilogue
That, indeed, was the final update.
It wasn’t that we’d reached the end. Actually, it was quite the contrary. With the passage of time came the realization that the marathon we continued to run was no different from the everyday marathon of life, each day bringing a new challenge, a new setback, while also bringing much forward progress, growth, satisfaction, and happiness. We knew that things would never return to what they had been before the accident, but when does that ever happen in life? With each passing day, we are never quite the same, and through accepting that comes a sense of liberation. We were no longer anticipating a certain result and disappointed when it didn’t arrive. We would, and will, just take it as it comes. This was our lot in life, and all in all, despite its flaws, we were blessed to have it.
Susan’s biggest concern coming out of all of this is that she’s going to become old before her time—achy, arthritic, physically limited. Early on in her rehab, she came home from a water aerobics class she tried at the Y. When I asked her how it went, she said, “Well, let’s just say, it was a far cry from SoulCycle. I was the youngest. The instructor was ninety-three, and for the first exercise, she accompanied her leg lifts by singing, ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do…’
“And on top of that, I had to fight an old Russian lady.”
I paused, because though it’s been a long time since her delusions, this sounded suspiciously reminiscent of her escapades with the octopus. Now she’s fighting an old Russian lady? So she told me what had happened:
When she got into the pool, she moved to the front to be closer to th
e instructor and apparently had inadvertently taken this old Russian woman’s spot.
“You must move over there,” the Russian said in her thick accent, trying to bully Susan.
“Um, no I don’t,” Susan responded.
The woman took a beat, taking Susan in. “You were one hit by bus, yes?” (Yes, famous even at the Y.)
“That’s me,” Susan admitted.
The old Russian considered that for another few seconds, nodded, and then decided to give Susan her space.
And that has been one constant throughout all of this. It’s hard not to respect someone who has gone through something like this and is still out there fighting the fight. Many others would have seen that ninety-three-year-old water aerobics teacher and the elderly class takers and become so depressed that they quit the class. Not Susan. She recognized that that’s where she was at with her recovery for the moment, and returned to the class the following day. She knows that there’s still a ways to go, and that’s going to require continued work. As my doctor says, “It’s a lot easier to stay healthy than it is to get healthy.”
The one thing we did go through, not injury related but difficult for both of us and especially for Susan, was that we ended up having to sell our house. The bills and debt just became too much. We also needed a high school for Alyce, and moving allowed her to go to a great public school on the westside, where we relocated.
Susan, however, took the move very hard. Not only did she love our house—we both did—but I think that for so long it represented the place she was desperate to get back to, physically from the hospital and emotionally as a place she was proud of, where she entertained her friends, where her family was. It was home, and having to leave it was sad, and many tears were shed. I tried to comfort her by saying that it was only a house and that our friends were still our friends and more importantly, our family was still together. We’re amazingly lucky that the only thing we ended up mourning is our house. She intellectually understood all of that, but it still represented a big loss.
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