EVERYDAY DRAMA

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

My father-in-law had a stroke Saturday morning. He’s 83 and had been digging a ditch for a gas line at his home the day before. The stroke happened the next morning when he was vacuuming. Obviously, this is not a man who is used to having things done for him. Among other occupations, he’s been a farmer, a milkman and a fireman. A father of three sons who seemed to always be into something whether it was rough-housing with each other or concocting a way to build a tree fort so they could drop water balloons on unsuspecting visitors, this man’s life has never been a slam dunk, except for the time when he was a high school champion basketball player. He didn’t have an opportunity to go to college, so he didn’t get to become the star athlete he could have been. All in all, my father-in-law hasn’t had an easy life, but he isn’t one to complain about what-might-have-been.

While driving an hour away to the small town where he now lives, I kept thinking about the mysteries in life.Why him? Why a stroke when we might have guessed a heart attack since he has a cholesterol problem? Why had the time when a car backed into him in a crowded parking lot and breaking his leg made the fact of the cholesterol problem known to him in the first place?

He’d been nicknamed “Dude” by his sister. Their mule was named Dude and his older sister said her brother was about as stubborn as their mule. The name stuck. I wondered what would have happened — even if only his nickname — had been a different choice. In “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, the question is asked: What if just one thing in a string of events didn’t happen? Would the outcome had been the same? Is Destiny a thing that is altered or something that alters our lives?

What if Dude hadn’t been 4F during World War II? What if he hadn’t married the hometown girl? What if he’d been the one whose farm made a profit year after year and he hadn’t moved to the nearest bigger city for employment?

He may have been a war hero like his brother-in-law – or like so many, one who didn’t return home alive. If he hadn’t married the hometown girl, surely my husband wouldn’t be who he is – and I wouldn’t have the husband I do today. If Dude had stayed in Oklahoma, those of us gathered in the emergency waiting room would have lived different lives.

One of my favorite lines (in my favorite movie of all time, “It’s a Wonderful Life”) is spoken by Clarence the angel to George Bailey: “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives and when he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

What if Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee weren’t cousins who actually liked each other enough to work together and created Ellery Queen? What if Watson never introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t decide to become a writer? What if dime novels never caught on with the public?

What if James Lincoln Warren didn’t start a web site for short mystery fiction lovers like us? We’ve grown into a family here. Some of us more outlaw than inlaw perhaps, but we have a common bond or two that keeps bringing us back together, hopefully more in good times than bad.

Following Dude’s ambulance transporting him to a larger hospital facility in the city where I live, I thought about the why’s and what if’s of life and how different my life would have been if I’d never taken that first creative writing class at the community college where I later taught one devoted to writing and marketing the short story. I’ve met some great people, some better writers than others, but they all have a story to tell. What if one or two never took that first class? Would they still have written? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps the class interaction was a catalyst for some. I hope it did.

What is the biggest What if? in your life?

I’m thinking we are so blessed to have been taught to read. What if we hadn’t? That would have been a tremendous loss.