I have long been a fan of Kurt Vonnegut and his writing. I was sad on the day he died. The anniversary of that date is today — with his passing on April 11, 2007.
My attraction to his writing came about strongly in my early 20s. I read the entirety of his books, one right after the other. I couldn’t get enough of Vonnegut. I was bartending back then during the evening hours. I’d leave my daytime job and go right down the hall to my nighttime job. All of this in downtown Dayton.
One of my “regulars” at the bar was also a fan of Vonnegut, and we would spend hours talking about his work and what it meant. It was a great way to spend time as I poured drinks and served sleazy bar food to the masses.
The novel that Kurt Vonnegut is most famous for is the science fiction / anti-war novel “Slaughterhouse-Five,” written in 1969. In his own life, Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden during WWII. It is partly autobiographical in this way.
It wasn’t my favorite. That book may have been “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.” Anyway, I recently revisited his books, reading “Cat’s Cradle” and “Breakfast of Champions.” I was completely surprised. I did not care for his writing nearly as much as I did 35 years ago. Not even close.
He was born the same year as my Dad, in 1922. A mid-westerner, just like me. He came from Indianapolis, Indiana. There are certain things about his life that are extraordinary. Like, he met his wife Jane in kindergarten. They dated for a long time and married when he got back from WWII.
Another thing. His mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day. Talk about making a point of things. Her name was Edith. She suffered from mental illness and became addicted to alcohol and prescription pills. And so it goes.
When he passed, I was sad about the news, but I never heard “how” he died. It is a terribly sad story really. Vonnegut died in New York City on the night of April 11, 2007. The cause was a brain injury that happened several weeks prior. He went out in the evening to walk his little dog Pumpkin. Pumpkin was his constant companion, a little yappy, scrappy dog. At any rate, Vonnegut’s feet got tangled up in the leash, and he fell hard, face first, on the pavement, hitting his head. It sent him into a coma, and he never recovered.
This happens, in general, more commonly than one would think. One out of five falls causes a serious injury, like a broken bone or a head injury. And unfortunately, each year, 3 million older people are treated in emergency departments for fall injuries. Of those? Over 800,000 patients a year are hospitalized because of a fall injury. Be careful of dog leashes and other things, I’ll tell you. I recently had a friend take a nosedive while working out at the YMCA. Exercise. And another fall for the books.
They are all a part of the unexpected.
The unexpected. That little phrase that might sneak up on us in the middle of the night while we sleep, or perhaps in broad daylight on the busiest of street corners.
We never expect that we will trip and fall. We never expect that we will get some news. We never guess that dot A no longer connects to dot B.
If we are lucky, we live, and we learn. Somehow, through our strength, we survive and we become better people. It may not seem like it at the time, but the unexpected often packs a message in its luggage. And if we are ready, we discover the message, whatever it may be.
And that? That is what we know and what we don’t.
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“The unexpected might be the place we were meant to be all along.”
― Nicole A Oliver
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“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take.”
― Angela N. Blount, Once Upon an Ever After
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“But,instead of what our imagination makes us suppose and which we worthless try to discover,life gives us something that we could hardly imagine.”
― Marcel Proust
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The big fall we didn’t see coming might leave a mark
