I was raised in a coal-mining culture. One uncle died in a mine cave-in, another had his back broken. My father had black lung. If you grow up with the mines as the center of your family's existence, you know that death is always there, waiting to snatch somebody from you before it's his time to go. Of all the things I've read about the West Virginia mine explosion, the saddest and most touching is the revelation that some of the miners left letters for their loved ones:
“Tell all I'll see them on the other side,” read the note found with the body of 51-year-old mine foreman Martin Toler Jr. “It wasn't bad. I just went to sleep. I love you Jr.”
Tom Toler, Martin's older brother who worked 30 years in the mine with him, said Thursday that the note was “written very lightly and very loosely” in block letters on the back of an insurance application form his brother had in his pocket.
How can that not break your heart? It wasn't bad. I just went to sleep. That's one of the most heroic gestures you'll ever read about, a letter from a dying man to loved ones he knew wouldn't be ready for his death, no matter how much they had thought about it. His last thoughts were for their comfort.
We're never ready for it, don't want to believe it, even about ourselves, maybe especially about ourselves, so we need to be reminded from time to time:
I was afraid to face the possibility that my heart was implicated, and the fact that I still had occasional good days made it possible for me to pretend that all I really needed was a couple of good nights' sleep. That's what I told my friends, and myself, too. The difference was that I didn't believe it.
Please read the whole thing, then spend a lot of time listening to your favorite music. Or reading your favorite book, or talking to your favorite person.
One of the reasons my father moved his family from Kentucky to Indiana was to keep his sons out of the coal mines, though it meant leaving everything he'd ever known and entering a strange new world at the age of 40. It was, I believe, a heroic gesture by a great man. We were all around his bed when he took his last breath after years of struggling for the next one. It wasn't bad. He just went to sleep.
