Some years ago, when our family first moved to this intensely rural area, there were few general stores. Once a week or so, the kids and I or occasionally just Daniel and I would go to a general store for milk or bread if we had no other plans to go into a distant town for something else. These general stores also had a couple of gas pumps.
Not long after we moved to the area, one of the general stores sold to a couple of men who were partners, and who had big plans for the store. They planned to have a small bakery, a delicatessen with quality meats, and to make quality pizza and calzones on certain nights during the week. Once they adapted to country life, which took some time, our kids often didn't wish to accompany me to the store, even if it meant the possibility of getting a Yoo Hoo or a couple of small York peppermint patties. One day Daniel came with me, and the storekeeper was making homemade oatmeal raisin cookies and offered one free of charge to Daniel. The cookie must have been pretty good because after that, Daniel almost always wanted to accompany me, either to try a chocolate chip cookie or just to say hello to the shopkeeper himself, who liked Daniel and often spoke to him while I was there.
As Daniel grew, and then died suddenly at 12 1/2, the storekeeper I mentioned was devastated. He questioned me on what I had seen and what I had missed, and how such a thing could have happened. I explained that the medical examiners had believed Daniel's death to be due to something called sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, and that under present technology of the time, that it likely could not have been anticipated, and therefore prevented. Somehow the poor man got the idea that the almost weekly cookie he had been giving to Daniel had contributed to his death. I did my best to explain that Daniel's coronary arteries on autopsy had been as clean as a whistle. His passing had been surmised to be a failure of or short circuiting of the rhythm system, the electrical system of the heart. Still, the man seemed to carry some guilt about this, and he occasionally mentioned making better food choices to people who shopped in the store, and he also periodically dieted himself.
I wasn't sure how to convey to the man that what had happened had not been his fault by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, I too was struggling from time to time with my own insensible guilt. How good a cardiac nurse could I really have been if I saw absolutely nothing before the day Daniel passed ?
Afterward, my husband and I honored a wish that Daniel had, and we adopted another child. The ultra rural place in which we lived had more new homes built, but after 2010, many changes came. Our shopkeeper friend became disillusioned with the tax structure, and decided to move to another nation where he had relatives. We were sorry to see him go, but we understood he wanted to move to a place with more certain profits before starting his own family. He and his partner sold their business, and no one locally seemed to know anything about them afterward.
This week I learned that our shopkeeper friend indeed moved out of the country. He married and had just had a baby boy before he too died suddenly. I cannot tell you how sad I am about this. Not only did we lose Daniel just after my father in 2008, but we lost our son Matthew in 2022 just after an influenza vaccine.
In the COVID era, I cannot tell you how many friends and acquaintances in our rural area, of all ages, have passed suddenly. A few of them had a pre-existing medical problem they were battling, but many did not. They were physicians, housekeepers, builders, nurses, writers, school teachers, county administrators, teens, children, and they were from all races and walks of life. Many of them were couples. One would pass, and then within a year, so would their spouse.
I am consoled only by the idea that in Heaven Daniel can greet our shopkeeper friend, and Matthew can show him how he learned to make his own dough for calzones, inspired by the shopkeeper. My Dad can laugh as they all swap stories about the rural place with unyielding summer heat that we all have loved so much.
I and the rest of the family still think of you all often, especially on this sweltering Independence Day.