Jim Paddock: Essays & Articles

Giving Death a Name.

This is the year of my death. 

It's June, and I'm not gone yet. But I know I will be, sometime in the next six months.

Okay, so I'm only fifty-five. A little young for such a permanent solution to be sure. But it's not like I haven't had time to get used to the idea. I've known it since I was twelve. 

Funny. The person who's dying doesn't seem like the person I am. The doomed guy is that little boy who was told of this death long ago, on a cold, black night in Detroit, sitting on the floor with his brothers, exploring the tantalizing evils of the Ouija Board he retrieved from the attic where his parents had it boxed and hidden away. 

At first, the thing had been sluggish. Recalcitrant. Uncooperative. Then slowly, the pointer began to respond, and the answers started coming. Who would we marry? How many children would we have? Would the Tigers get to the 1959 World Series? Question after question. Answer after answer. Then my turn came around again. I had asked all the questions I could think of. Except one.  

When was I going to die? 

Looking back at how ill-advised that question seems, maybe I should have asked instead what my IQ was. If only I'd thought of it. Well. Anyway. The Ouija Board told me what I wanted to know. Fifty-five. Just like that. Even as a child of twelve, fifty-five didn't seem that old. Oh sure, it was old when you were talking about old farts like my parents or my aunts and uncles. But somehow, when the number related to me, I had a bit of trouble relating to it.  

Since January of this year, I've just sort of been waiting around. Come to think of it, I guess I've  just sort of been waiting around for forty-three years. I may not have much of an IQ, but I can still do math.

Obviously, those passing years have given me time to think.  

And here's what I think: 

Since the beginning of human life on earth, more than 100 billion people have been born and died. How many of them do you remember? How many can you name? A fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction of a fraction of a per cent?

One hundred billion souls, passing through the body of life like paramecia. Each one known only to perhaps a handful of others in their family, their village, their town. The few, the famous, the infamous, may have gotten a bit more attention, but what does that really mean in the context of time and space?  For a period of decades in this country, Howdy Doody was just as top of mind as Adlai Stevenson, and while Paul Revere may be famous to us, how many of the two billion people living in India would know him from, well, Adam? Celebrity probably provides an intense sense of immediate gratification, I wouldn't know. But if celebrity and fame are the most vital measurements of human existence, something's missing. Even with my IQ I can understand that.

Would you really want to be remembered for your legacy if your name was Adolf Hitler? George Washington was so popular, he could have made himself king. But in a recent poll, 43% of tenth-graders answered that the father of our country was Albert Einstein. I hate to admit it, but I'd venture to guess that even someone as outstanding a person as Nat King Cole isn't really unforgettable. And even when individuals do rise above the crowd for extraordinarily positive efforts on behalf of mankind, what does the fact they're remembered really mean down the road? 

Plato gave us a new way of thinking. Darwin gave us new ways to view life. Madame Curie gave us advances in medicine. Hemingway gave us his truth. But for each world-famous individual, there was a world full of people like you and me who collectively gave even those geniuses something they couldn't create themselves. Opportunity.  

They couldn't exist unless we did.  

If there is no one there to read, there would be no writers. If there is no one to learn there would be no teachers. If no one needs curing, there would be no life-saving discoveries. Those of us who aren't in the spotlight aren't just the audience either. We're each a thread in the fabric. An ore in the alloy. An indispensable element in a universe that may barely notice us, but we're integral to the reality we all share. 

I know. You think I'm just rationalizing. With the grim reaper on my doorstep, you think I'm just talking to myself, trying desperately to make sense of the inevitable, ultimate log-off. Well, you may be right. And if all this sounds suspiciously like I'm trying to console myself, I won't argue that. But what I'm really hoping is that death is what you make it. Plato, Darwin, Curie and Hemingway had their opportunities in life and made the most of them. Maybe some of us are just late bloomers. Maybe death is just another opportunity. Especially if you know it's coming. 

One last opportunity to be what you've always wanted to be. A strong, selfless hero in the eyes of those around you. The kind of person who is thinking of "them", even under the circustances, and doing what you can to help lessen their pain.  

Death may be one last chance to do something important. Not on the pages of People Magazine. But in those remaining months and days and moments and seconds. In the roars and the whispers, and the silences in between. 


THE FOLLOWING IS AN ARTICLE I WROTE FOR A FRIEND TO SUBMIT TO THE "MY TURN" SECTION OF NEWSWEEK)

REFLECTIONS IN A REAR VIEW MIRROR.

Lower speed limits for big rigs could have saved my son's life. 

My rearview mirror has turned into a time machine.

Each time I glance into it, for just a moment, I relive Thanksgiving, 2002.

My sons had come home to Atlanta from Washington and Lee University. The weather was crisp, the turkey dinner was perfect, and best of all, our family was together again. 

That weekend was the last time I saw my son Cullum alive. 

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, the boys left to return to school. Cullum, a senior and his brother Pierce, a freshman had a semester to finish before Christmas. The roads were clear. The weather was dry. Still, I reminded them to be careful. For some reason, it also occurred to me to remind them that a schoolmate of theirs and had died in a terrible crash just a couple years before, when an 18-wheeler had rear-ended his car in sluggish traffic. Naturally, they took my warning the way most college kids take their parents advice, with a smile and a smart remark.  

Cullum and Pierce weren't just great brothers they were great friends. They even belonged to the same fraternity. By June, Cullum would have graduated with a degree in business. He had plans to join the Peace Corps. Humble and unassuming, he'd be amazed to think his name would ever end up in Newsweek Magazine. 

About 8:15 that evening, the boys were travelling on Interstate 81 in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Traffic in the northbound lanes had slowed to a crawl. At the top of a hill past the Buffalo Creek Bridge, things came to a standstill.

Behind them, a 70,000-lb. truck was traveling the highway on cruise control, on the busiest traffic day of the year. Thirty-five tons, barreling down at them from behind. 

To stop in emergencies, trucks require as much as two to three times the distance that cars do. A passenger car would have to travel at more than 300 mph to equal the G-force of a fully loaded big rig, traveling at only 60 mph.

In front of him, Cullum saw a sea of taillights. Glancing into his rear view mirror, he saw the headlights of the truck, approaching too fast. Later, Pierce testified that Cullum turned the wheel of his Lexus, attempting to pull onto the median and avoid the truck. Another witness later observed, "I said to myself, it's not going to be able to stop."

The impact spun the car around, both vehicles continued off the road and the car was crushed against a stone embankment in the median. A state trooper reported seeing the debris and watching the truck continue 224 feet past other stopped cars. The brothers were trapped inside the car, both alive when emergency workers arrived. Cullum died before he was freed.

While I have suffered every parent's greatest fear, I bear the driver of that truck no grudge. I have told him that. Although he was convicted of reckless driving, he was behaving the way he was paid to behave. Compensated by the mile, truck drivers today are pushed into driving faster and driving for more hours at a time. The log books they keep, intended to regulate their hours, are commonly referred to as "joke books". And of the ten most dangerous occupations, more truck drivers die on the job in terms of sheer numbers, than any other vocation.

The fatal crash rate for large trucks is more than 50% greater than the rate for all vehicles on the roads. In two-vehicle crashes involving passenger vehicles and large trucks, 98% of the fatalities are occupants of the passenger vehicle.The annual death toll from truck/auto related crashes is the equivalent of 26 major airplane crashes annually. One every two weeks.

There is clear proof that lowering the speed limit for large trucks would begin saving lives immediately. In the United Kingdom, lowering truck speed limits to 56 mph in 1994 reduced car/truck fatalities by almost half. Today, governing devices on all UK trucks limit their speed to 52 mph and the death rate is declining even more.

In America to date, only 11 states have imposed lower speed limits for trucks. Earlier this year, "Cullum's Bill" was introduced in the Georgia state senate, in the hope we can make it twelve.

For the rest of my life, I'll be looking in my rear view mirror. Looking for that Thanksgiving.

Looking for Cullum. Looking for trucks.

But if we also look ahead, we can change things. We can save lives. We can put simple regulations in place that will keep your sons and daughters alive. And keep their names from appearing in a column like this.