By Gary Topping–
On the night of January 18, 2019, I almost made it to the bottom of the stairs.
I was on my way to bed, and yes, to anticipate your question, there were some adult beverages involved. I missed the very last step and hit the floor as a ghastly pain shot through my right knee. No question about it, it was a 911 moment, and in a few minutes I was in an ambulance on my way to St. Mark’s hospital, where the ER doc X-rayed my knee and determined that I had torn the quadriceps tendon. Surgery would be necessary.
Now, four days after the operation, I’m confined to a recliner in my study, venturing forth very shakily on crutches only to the bathroom and the bedroom. Fortunately, I am under the care of my splendid wife, Marianna Hopkins, the wisest, the most loving, and the most tireless caregiver I could ever have found. While one would never wish to be in such circumstances, once one determines to make the most of it, there are positive aspects.
For one thing, Marianna and I both love wild birds, and our backyard, much of which is visible from my seat in the study, has several bird feeders which we have carefully chosen, with the help of Summer, our wonderful seed vendor at Wild Birds Unlimited, to attract the greatest variety of species. We rarely see anything exotic, though we’ve seen an eastern bluebird several times—an anomaly in this part of the country. But the common species we do attract offer great beauty and diversity, from the red-faced house finches to the upside-down nuthatches to the gigantic red-shafted flickers with their orange flight feathers who nest in our owl box. Life is not boring here in the study!
And I’ve had plenty of visitors and e-mail well-wishers, from family, neighbors, and my associates at the Pastoral Center of the Diocese of Salt Lake City where I serve as Archivist. Many of them have brought food, and my thought is that if I were not in such pain and immobilized, I could get used to such a life! The best visitor arrived Sunday afternoon when, after Mass, Deacon John Keyser brought Holy Communion to us. It was a liturgy unfamiliar to me, for I have never had to have the Eucharist administered in my home. He began by anointing us with Holy Water, then proceeded to read the Gospel, before the Lesson and Epistle. His homily was called “When the Wine Runs Out,” about the wedding at Cana, which was not the Gospel for that day. I decided to enter into the spirit of the occasion and help him out, as I often do without being invited, with his scriptural interpretation. I offered the observation that it was Jesus himself who made necessary the turning of the water into wine by crashing the wedding with his twelve wine-drinking fishing buddies who then lowered the boom on the liquor cabinet. Somehow I doubt that my interpretation will be included in the final version of his homily.
So these days, of necessity, my life experiences are something that come to me, rather than something I go out and seek. It’s to some degree a matter of age, as Msgr. Colin Bircumshaw pointed out to me over the phone the day before I went into surgery. At my callow age of 77, nobody has yet thought to tell me to slow down. I got the same message from another direction as well this past week in the form of an invitation to my 60th high school reunion. “We are not having dancing this time,” the organizer states. “It seems that [last year] folks with hearing aids could not understand what was being said by their friends as the music drowned them out.” It’s a new era for sure. Man, in 1959, we rocked around the clock!
