Total Darkness

Imagine you are sitting at your computer at 2:30 AM in the basement of your house. Suddenly you hear a dreaded sound -- a tree is falling. You freeze but in an instant the crash comes and the lights go out. The computer goes black and there you sit. You take a minute to realize that you are safe, you have not been hit by the tree, but now you must find your way up to light.

Total blackness can totally disorient a person. This all happened to me last Wednesday night or early morning on Thursday. I slowly felt my way toward what I hoped was the stairwell, knocking papers off a table and hitting my foot on something hard.

When my hand touched the printer, I knew I was going in the right direction. Next, the door facing and then nothing. Should I go right or left? I calmed my mind enough to visualize the area in front of the stairs. Inching along, I felt the folding door at the bottom of the stairs and knew I had to get down on my hands and knees to find the stair steps.

I crawled, one step at the time, ignoring a  torn meniscus in my knee and my painful hip. I knew it would be dangerous to try to climb the stairs upright. I did not want to fall.

After four steps I felt the landing and crept along until I came to the next set of stairs. At the top I found the same blackness as below. No outside lights, no inside lights to guide me. Around the coffee table and into an open space. How far to the hallway where I could place my hands on either side and feel secure that I was going to make it to my bedroom? I turned right and hit the railing of the top of the stairs.

I remembered the awful night in the hospital when I closed the door to the bathroom on my father suffering from pneumonia. I was trying to protect his dignity. He said when I closed the door, there was no light, and he was in total blackness. He fell on the cold hard tile. Later that night he died, not from the fall, I was told, but from an overdose of a drug to calm his hallucinations.

Holding to the wall on either side of me, I found my bedroom door, and headed to where I hoped I'd reach my bed. Never have I been so happy to find one of my "devices." Although I boast that I am not attached to a cell phone or IPad, I wished I had one of them downstairs. When my fingers found the IPad, I opened it for the light. With that dim glow, I found my flashlight and my lantern that I'd bought just for this purpose - having light when the power went out.

I called the power company. It was three o'clock in the morning, but I was told someone would be there in a little bit. Relieved, I tried to see where the tree hit the ground, but my flashlight was not strong enough to penetrate the darkness. I wondered if it had hit my stand-alone garage or if it had taken out my fence around the yard where Lexie plays.

The lantern had only two AA batteries taped to the side and I needed three. I searched my battery box but had no AAs, only AAAs. Where could I find another battery for the lantern, I wondered, and then it hit me. My blood pressure monitor rested on the dresser in front of me. I borrowed one from it and my lantern lit up the room.  Shaken and wide awake, I sat in bed with my IPad open. I could not listen to a book on Audible. My WiFi did not work now. The television set at the end of my bed looked like a black hole.

Taking the bright lantern in hand I went back to the front of the house and saw the EMC crew at the foot of my driveway. Their strobe lights swept over my house, my woods and my yard. I could not see what they saw, but I put my trust in them. Those people have never failed me. I went to bed and fell asleep. Lexie followed my lead and did not bark at the crew that worked so hard down below our house. She slept, too.

During the night, the power came back and the lights upstairs and down burned brightly when I got up around 9:00 AM. That was when I could see from my window the huge tree that had fallen at the end of my fenced yard right down my driveway. I was trapped at home. No way to get my car out.

Suffice it to say, I was stressed out, upset and feeling helpless. I called the one person I was sure could help me, but I knew he stayed busy. His name is Cameron Miller and I have seen him take down trees and cut low growth on the empty lot next to me. I'm sure he heard the pleading in my voice when I told him I needed to go to my physical therapy session, but could not get out of my driveway. He said he would be right over.

Within an hour he and his people were chain sawing and dragging limbs to clear my asphalt drive. It took them all day to remove the heavy trunk of the tree which was cut into three long sections, lifted and loaded on a log truck, then hauled away. It will take several more days to completely remove all the debris.

This is what is left of the root ball after cutting some of it away and moving it.
It is over five feet high, but the roots were not deep.

This shows how close to my fence was the tree and now there is a hole.

Some of the debris left after moving away the trunk of the tree. Those big pieces are limbs.

I was lucky the tree fell to the right on my driveway and not to the left on my garage.

I hate to think of the cost, but I am extremely relieved that Cameron came and released me from the trap caused by that humongous tree. I am grateful for the power company and those dedicated men who came out in the dark, cut and removed the limbs from the street, laid a temporary cable so I now have electricity, and who will come back one day and make it all as it was.

So what did I learn from this experience?

• First, keep flashlights and lanterns throughout my house, not just in my bedroom.
• Second, hire someone to prune and cut back limbs from the big trees that hover over my yard. The tree that fell was diseased, we found, and the sodden earth from all the rain here in western NC, would not hold up the weight anymore. The root system was rotten as well as the trunk of the tree.
• The third thing I learned is how fortunate I am to live in this small rural area where kind people will put aside their plans to help someone in need. Cameron said I had an emergency. So he dropped everything and came to my rescue.

I didn't just learn this. For the past nine years, since Barry died, so many good people have stepped up to help me when I needed them.

I have so much for which to be thankful, and I am.