We got “The Call” a little while ago.
When you get to a certain age The Call becomes a more frequent though much dreaded occurrence.
The phone rings:
“Hi… what’s wrong? You sound upset.”
“No! How did it happen?”
“Oh my God! I can’t believe it.”
“Where was she?”
“Oh my God… Oh my God!”
You’ve probably gotten The Call more than once, and you can be sure that you’ll be receiving more of them until someone makes The Call on your behalf at some point.
I remember that time in my life… the first time I had ever received The Call from my grandmother about my uncle.
“Hi Nora, how’s it going? You sound upset… what’s wrong?”
“Leo’s dead! Oh my God! Oh my God!” What happened?
“He tried to save the guy trapped in the truck and another beam fell and killed him? Oh my God! Oh my God!”
My uncle Leo was actually three years younger than me. I was in law school and he was working for a company that serviced construction vehicles. He was at the site of a new highway being built when one of the supporting beams fell and trapped the driver of a gasoline truck. Leo ran to help him and another beam fell killing him and setting the truck on fire. His was a closed casket wake and we only hoped, though there was no way of knowing, that he was dead when the truck erupted in flames.
The Call, a few minutes ago, was from the daughter of a close friend of my wife’s, another school nurse; the two of them had worked together for the public health department, and had retired not that far apart.
Patti and Joe, her husband, had gone to dinner about six months ago with Sheila and myself, and strangely enough Sheila had just been mentioning that we should call them to get together again.
We never made the call to set that up and now, as of about an hour ago, we received The Call and will never ever be able to get together with the two of them.
When you get to that certain age The Call becomes a regular part of your life until someone makes The Call upon your demise.