life and death – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Sena and I got to talking about a Twilight Zone show we saw over the holidays. It was a 1964 episode, not the regular program but short film that won a Cannes Film Festival award in the early 1960s, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”

The quick summary is that a Southern plantation owner is being hanged by Union soldiers for trying to set fire to the bridge to prevent the Union Army from attacking Confederate troops. The plantation owner seems to miraculously escape the noose, evades bullets and cannon fire, running all the way back to his plantation in an escape which lasts hours, finally almost rushing into his wife’s arms—but he can’t because at that moment his neck is snapped by the hangman’s rope. All of the action during his escape is a hallucination which happens in the blink of an eye.

It’s based on a short story of the same title by Ambrose Bierce. I vaguely recalled reading it years ago, possibly in a science fiction/fantasy anthology. At that time, I didn’t know the author’s background, which was that he’d been a Union soldier in the Civil War. He fought in a lot of battles and witnessed horrific injuries and death. He disappeared without a trace, and there is no explanation why or how.

As Sena and I talked about it, she wondered more about the details of the Civil War as context, while I thought the main point was about the time compression of a miraculous escape from execution that spoke of the nature and meaning of life and death.

When I searched the web to find out more about the story and the life of Ambrose Bierce, I saw her point.

I read the original story on the Internet Archive. It’s very short. Now, I’m not sure I ever really read it. I’m just a blogger and unworthy to really talk about it other than to acknowledge that it’s a work of genius. How the author’s spare and yet meticulous attention to every terrifying detail of war can be so ugly and yet so mesmerizing is beyond my understanding.

There are now 3 eggs in the robins’ nest. I saw a big turkey vulture soaring close by. I wonder if that’s what got the House Finch chicks. The bird that made a noise with it’s wings that was as loud as a big sheet flapping on a line in the wind, and looked too big to be a crow or even a raven–I wonder.

I wonder if I somehow was partly to blame for the murder of the baby birds, always messing around the tree. Still, I take pictures–and maybe draw death nearer.

And that leads to other strange thoughts. It’s odd that the nearer I get to retirement, the more I think about my life way before I ever even thought about medical school.

I remember the first time I ever heard about death was when I was in kindergarten. My mother woke me up early one morning to tell me that Steven, one of my schoolmates, was killed the evening before. He was playing around the railroad yard just a few blocks from our house. A train ran over him.

I remember my mother talking about it but I didn’t make any sense out of it. I was too young. I only wondered what it meant.

When I was a difficult teenager and made a conscious effort not to smile for pictures, I remember hitchhiking along a lonely highway in a bad rainstorm. I was glad when the man pulled over. I was not glad when he began to rub the back of my neck and asked, “How about a ride for trade?” I was not too young to know what he meant. When I said, “Let me out,” he did. I was too young to know that was miraculous.

I sometimes catch myself wondering if my life has been a grand illusion since then, only to protect my fragile soul from knowing the true horror. Maybe the driver really didn’t let me out. Why should I wonder that?

I remember a man who taught me how to do the work of a land surveyor. I looked up to him. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest over a failed relationship. I couldn’t help wondering why.

Of course, death visited me several times after I became a physician. They sometimes led to decisions I would rather I had not made about the direction of my career. I always wonder.