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Music Cues: Death at Xmas
December 25, 1999
This week, a man in a car passing by our building here in Washington DC
had a heart attack. His wife, who was driving, turned into our driveway and asked for help. It was already dark; a December drizzle slicked the streets. They were visitors from rural Virginia, who had taken the train up to New York to see the Christmas lights, and wanted to see the decorations and lights along the Capitol mall before going home. But then, the husband suddenly, but peacefully, slumped down in his seat and, to all appearances and intents, died in an instant, just about a day and a half before this Christmas morning.
The security people in our building came out into the driveway and tried to help the man as they waited for an ambulance. But as they said--there was no light in his eyes; no stirring of breath; not even any symptom of pain. His wife--the family asks us not to use their names--had seen her husband in just about every mood and manner over twenty years, but never so deathly still. She suspected the worst, even as she prayed.
A District of Columbia emergency crew arrived. A man in a blue uniform leaned down and tried to blow life into the husbands lungs, to no result. The crew unbuttoned the man's jacket and shirt and tried to reach in and rouse his heart with their own hands. They took out electric paddles and tried to to sting his heart back to life. Nothing worked. Cars pulled by,
the holiday lights dressing the Capitol glistened in the distance, and in windows above the man, people whose business is reporting the news about famines, conflicts, mass graves and grave crimes, vast social movements and petty politics, looked and hoped that this one man would survive the night.
There is probably no good time to die; the night before Christmas eve must seem like one of the worst. But the man's wife said she was struck by the kindness, concern, and exertions of strangers who used their own hands and breath to try to bring life back to her husband. In a way, of course, all the lights and bells and carols of the season are supposed to be small
signals of the instinct that kept the security guards and emergency crew at work for more than an hour--the feeling that when we reach out into each other's lives, we enrich our own.
We told the man's wife that, in a way, the end of the life of the man who pulled in to our driveway this week was a gift of this season: reminding us not to take the gift of life for granted; to appreciate those who are most precious to us; and to tell and show the people we love that they are important to us: tell them and show them today--even this morning--when we
know we are alive and have the chance.
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