Dad had a business trip scheduled to Pittsburgh, and for some reason it made more sense for him to drive than to fly, I guess. He never completed the business he was going there for. At some point as he neared his destination, he lost control of his VW bug and drove off the road. Only the combination of a guardrail and the rear-engine weight of the bug kept him from careering down a tall, steep cliff-side embankment to his death. I remember very clearly the adults discussing afterward that a normal car would have gone over the side. He almost died anyway. I don't remember anyone saying so, but knowing him I can say that he was certainly not wearing a seat belt, and I'd be stunned to learn that he was totally sober.
Mom went to to the hospital in Pittsburgh to which Dad had been transferred due to his life-threatening condition to tend to him, leaving us in the care of her aunt, who was in her late sixties. She ended up being gone for about a month. This was my first year of junior high, and I was having no difficulty at all adapting to the tougher level of classwork that kicks in around that point. I had considerable problem, though, with one of the junior high teachers, a nun who was either in the wrong profession to begin with or who had stayed in it too long, in my now grown-up opinion. She taught reading, and in my personal disdain for her I didn't do a bit of homework in her class while mom and dad were gone. She sent several notes home to my parents, but they grew increasingly crumpled in the bottom of my bookbag until mom brought dad home, at which point I was in the most trouble I'd ever been in.
[Until the following year, I was always in the more advanced of the two classes in each grade in my Catholic grade school. That would end because of this stubborn personality clash with this particular nun. Our classes split up differently for Math/Science versus for English/Reading, with the music and PE classes being all together (I think). My English teacher was so frustrated with the way things worked out with my "demotion" that he took me somewhat under his wing, and I became the first student from the "lower class" to receive the English award at graduation. One more junior high note: I'll never forget our excellent math teacher, who drilled the commutative and other properties into us by verse: "The ORDer of the ADDends, does NOT afFECT the SUM," is the only one I can recall now.]
Dad lost muscle control of one eye because of this accident. It was a strange introduction to the precision of legalese: he had an accidental death and dismemberment policy that would have compensated him for a loss of sight in either eye, but not for the use of the eye. (Not that that would have made his life any better.) He wore a patch over his glasses' lens for the rest of his life. As it happened, we got at least a few months respite from his alcoholism, as our family doctor told him that his chances for recovery might be better if he didn't stifle his healing through the continued presence of alcohol in his system. He'd eventually see a neurologist who would tell him that the nerve was permanently damaged and would never recover no matter what he did, after which his drinking resumed with a renewed determination over what he viewed as his lost drinking time and his now crippled life.
Two autumns later, during my freshman year of high school shortly after Dad died, I'd develop an unbearable unrequited crush on a classmate who would later become, in college, my closest friend for a while. Three years after that crush, my H.S. senior year, was that Thanksgiving weekend. In another two years, my then closest friend and I would turn back from the precipice of a developing set of feelings for each other, out of respect for a relationship she was already in - which was the right decision for both of us, btw. More recently, my mom (2001) and both of my wife's parents (2008 and 2010) died in the fall.
Whenever I make even the most laudatory of observations about the season of autumn, these types of memories and feelings are never very far from the surface.
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