Lived To Tell

I used to log every mile I’d run and every scrap of food I put in my mouth. But over the years, I should have also been keeping a running tally of all the times my immediate family members should’ve died but somehow didn’t.

It’s honestly a miracle any of us kids survived childhood. Looking back, I realize our family didn’t just have guardian angels, we had a whole celestial fleet pulling overtime to keep us all alive.

I’ve begun referring to these moments as our survival chronicles because there’s truly no other category for them. They’re the stories we whisper-laugh about at holidays with a mix of awe and mildly painful pits in our stomachs. Stories that, in any other family, would have led to therapy or the making of a Lifetime movie. 

Our near-mishap stories prove that love, luck, and a dash of supernatural intervention can go a long way. So, in honor of whatever band of angels (or exhausted ancestors) has been clocking in on our behalf, I present to you a sampling of our near-demises.

There was, of course, the time Dad nearly fell to his death off a cliff overlooking the Missouri River—a story Julie and I retell with a laugh most people use when they’re relieved but slightly traumatized. If you’ve followed my writing for any amount of time, you know this story. But it’s worth including because it was when my faith in Archangel Michael was fortified. 

Dad, in his infinite optimism, decided to hike with his daughters and shimmy over a wet rock formation wearing the least advisable footwear of all time—his dress shoes. Now, we can’t entirely blame him. My mom forgot to pack his casual shoes when we picked him up from work to go camping for the weekend. These dress shoes were not even sturdy ones, mind you. They were the slick-soled kind made for church aisles and carpeted banquet halls, not rugged hiking terrain.

To make a long story short (since I have a plethora of other near-death moments to unveil), as Dad led us down a damp and rocky trail, he slipped and his body vanished before mine and Julie’s eyes, as if he were Veruca Salt falling down the garbage chute in Willy Wonka. Julie and I froze. And then, by some unexplainable miracle, the heel of Dad’s dress shoe wedged perfectly into a crack in the rock where he suddenly stopped—suspended like a middle-aged Spider-Man over a few hundred more feet of rock ledge.

Though I insist it was Archangel Michael who held him there, it was likely the unnaturally thick rubber soles of his loafers. Either way, we got to keep him, thank God. 

Due to Dad’s near demise, I now envision a burly and brawny Archangel Michael accompanying me in all questionable situations. Because, hell, with the number of near misses in this family, who better to have by my side? 

Another story you’ve heard mentioned more than once is the one about Julie and me finding ourselves on the wrong side of a furious mama cow.

Now, we weren’t just walking across a field, minding our own business, when a mama cow began charging at us. We provoked her by bashing our walking sticks on the dry creek bed that she and the rest of her crew were meandering down. The sheer ricochet of the sound was enough to make any animal insane—this mama cow was no exception

When the cow turned on us, I screamed for Julie to run, and then hightailed it out of the creek bed toward our tent, where Mom and Dad sat unaware of the incoming danger. 

At one point, I was convinced this was it—this was how our story ended. But Dad heroically sprinted and scooped up his little girls and ran us to safety. 

Looking back, this was the first time I realized that angels probably draw straws when our family wakes up in the morning.

Then, of course, there’s the carbon monoxide incident. This is the one that should have been our final chapter.

We were in the bed of Dad’s truck, driving back to Independence from my college graduation, jammed in together like happy sardines because my sister and brother-in-law had left Springfield earlier that morning due to my nephew being sick. We had no choice but to cram into the covered bed of my dad’s old truck, while he and my grandmother drove comfortably in the cab.

At first, Mom, Jerrod, Jason, and I were half-asleep, blissfully unaware that Dad’s truck had decided to turn into a gas chamber. Jerrod felt his legs go numb and thankfully said something about it.

My body was also feeling strange, so I crawled to the cab window and tried knocking on the glass, but my hand felt like it was moving in slow motion, making only a subtle tapping sound that couldn’t be heard over the hum of the truck engine. One of the boys saw me struggling and knew something was terribly wrong. They began banging on the window to get Dad to stop the truck and let us out. Mom had already gone limp. 

Dad rushed to the back to see what all the commotion was. We met him with sobs, gasping for fresh air. Dad pulled Mom from the truck bed and dragged her to the passenger seat that my grandmother had abandoned after hearing my dad cry out in hopeless agony at the sight of Mom unconscious. Dad propped Mom up in the seat and began giving her CPR while I stood in stunned silence, and tears flowed down my face.

Mom came back. Alleluia! I ran into the road to stop an oncoming car so we could get help. 

That day helped me double down on believing in divine intervention. I still shiver at the thought of what could have happened if Jerrod had decided not to say anything about being unable to feel his legs.

And about my dad. Dad alone has survived more medical anomalies than seem reasonable for one man. He approaches near-death situations with the same casual cheer as when someone asks him to pray for them. It’s all just part of God’s plan.

There was the Rickettsia infection—one of those diseases no one gets unless they’ve been bitten by a microscopic ninja tick. Dad went down hard, landed in the hospital, and survived because apparently he’s built like an ox, or is really a cat with nine lives.

Then came the stroke, which should have slowed him down but absolutely did not. On Valentine’s Day last year, he told my mom he was having trouble gripping the remote. In the very next sentence, his speech slurred like he’d suddenly taken up whiskey for breakfast. My mom, being no-nonsense in medical emergencies, immediately declared, “You’re having a stroke, Gene. We need to go.”

Dad disagreed. He insisted on taking a shower first. You know, because if you’re going to flirt with death, you might as well be fresh. 

By the time Mom finally wrangled him into the car and to the ER so they could infuse him with clot-busting meds, he was still having a stroke but smelling like Irish Spring. 

And then there was his poisoning incident—the day he inhaled a toxic spray used to loosen rusted bolts on (yep, you guessed it) a truck bed. Thank God my uncle Bob was with him and noticed something was off with my dad. Dad couldn’t remember why they were there, what they were doing (fixing the truck bed), so Bob called Mom and transported Dad to the hospital. 

Once again, he lived to tell about another bizarre truck bed moment. 

We have since concluded that Dad is simply not killable—thank Sweet Baby Jesus.

My youngest brother, Jason, used to play a game my parents didn’t know about until years later—the kind of game that proves angels absolutely intervene without being asked.

He would lie down in the middle of the road near the top of our hill. Yep. Lie down in the middle of the road.

He and his friend Stephen would wait for a car to crest the hill, and Stephen, acting as the lookout, would scream, “CAR!” when the vehicle approached dangerously close.

Jason would leap up and sprint out of the way. 

This wasn’t a one-time thing. This was a game; a game they repeated—for fun.

And yet, he never got hit. Not once. Angels were probably working in shifts like it was a union job… all to ensure Jason stayed alive.

Then there’s that time I suffered heat stroke during a cross-country meet that resulted in rumors that I was either possessed by a demon or on drugs. 

As I crossed the finish line after a way-too-fast run post an achilles tendonitis injury, everything became a blur. I knew something was severely wrong by how my entire life zoomed backwards in my mind. Even the onlookers later talked about how I enacted the different phases of my life, speaking gibberish as a toddler, to crying a resounding Whaaaaa when my backward life-flashing-before-me moment hit infancy. I knew once I got into the womb, I was done for. 

So I fought. Literally.

Next thing I knew, I was pummeling the face of the female EMT trying to save my life. As I watched myself punch this beautiful brunette woman in the side of the head and in her left eye, I realized I wasn’t in control of my arms. I was punching in an attempt to survive, while the poor ambulance woman desperately tried to arm wrestle my southpaw and restrain me. 

She finally succeeded by lying on top of me. This definitely helped me come back into my body. 

Thinking I might be possessed, I began reciting all the prayers I knew, but fear struck when I couldn’t finish the Lord’s Prayer. I couldn’t remember all the words. I panicked and asked my mom (who was witnessing all this insanity) to please help me pray it. Though she tried, she couldn’t speak through her tears.

As they wheeled me into the ambulance, my feet grew the size of clown shoes, and my body seemed to elongate like an elastic Gumby doll. Terrified by what was happening, I begged the male attendant who was hooking me to an IV to please help me finish the Lord’s prayer. He couldn’t. He was Jewish and didn’t even know the words. 

Thankfully, whatever he put in my IV allowed me to sleep until I woke hours later in the hospital. None of us could speak of this event for years. It freaked us out too much.

My brother, Jerrod, once fell asleep at the wheel in his early twenties, crashed his truck, and then lied to my parents with the confidence of today’s politicians trying to convince us that the Epstein files should remain sealed

“The tire blew.”

No, it did not. The tire was as intact as the day it rolled off the assembly line. But Jerrod conveyed it with conviction and trusted his story would take. It did. And my parents praised God that no one was hurt.

The list goes on.

One of us hung ourselves from a slide after watching a cartoon where Wile E. Coyote attempted to ensnare the Roadrunner. I can't write about this because I've been given a gag order, but let it be known that it was so horrid, our mother wrote the television station and begged them to take violent Looney Tunes cartoons off the air. They didn't.

Another one of us found ourselves wedged between a pile of canoes and a rock bed, the current threatening to crush us, when out of nowhere, someone else launched themselves across the water like a Marvel hero and hauled the other unnamed person to safety. I still don’t know if it was adrenaline or angelic strength, but we like to think heaven tag-teamed that day. I can’t write about this event either, because I’ve been asked not to—so that’s all you get.

When I look at the long list of times when one of us should have died but somehow didn’t, I don’t know if it proves we have angels watching over us or if the universe simply views the Arthur family as an ongoing sitcom too entertaining to cancel. 

Either way, we’re still here. Sometimes it’s due to a dress shoe wedged in a rock, a brother yelling “MY LEGS FEEL WEIRD,” or an angel rolling their eyes while shoving us out of the path of a homicidal cow. 

I don’t think we’ve survived these events because of our own strength or fearlessness; we've survived because something or someone—be it grace, luck, or divine intervention—keeps nudging us along. 

On many an occasion, I envision an angel minding their own business, only to see one of us headed for danger. Massaging their temples, I imagine they groan and warn the others, “Oh gosh, here we go again…it’s an Arthur. Call for backup.”