Published: October 04, 2008 07:04 pm            

A tragic waste of life

Reflections on the death of a young man

The first week of October was one of joy mixed with sadness for my little family.

We celebrated younger daughter Lily’s birthday on the last day of September, but somewhat somberly.

Her uncle, her dad’s younger brother, passed away the day before. He was only 42.

I will attempt not to get maudlin or morose, but the circumstances surrounding his death are very sad.

Eric Morgan Pawlowski and I were probably both 16 when we met. I dated his older brother, who was 19 or 20. Eric dated Rhonda, who was in my accounting class and sat right in front of me.

I remember times at Lake Halbert, hanging out and being silly, and having snowball fights in Navarro one time when it snowed. I won’t say the four of us hung out together often, but we did have some good times.

Eric had always been a little sickly when he was growing up. I remember his mother telling me he had asthma, so they got a pair of little white chihuahuas, Jack and Jill, to sleep with him — and it helped.

He wasn’t nearly as tall as his big brother, but when we were young, he was muscular, blonde, blue-eyed and good-looking. How the girls loved him.

And he was sweet. Kind, gentle, a caring soul. There was a particular winter when a stray white dog wandered up to his house in Navarro, and he decided to take the dog and run into town. The icy road conditions caused him to flip and roll the pickup. The only thing that saved him was leaning over to cover the dog — which mysteriously disappeared once the truck came to rest on its roof in the ditch. Eric got out with a few scratches and I think, a broken nose. The dog was never seen again.

Flash forward several years to downtown Memphis, where Eric was working construction on a building downtown. He fell off a ladder, bounced his head on the sidewalk a few times, and fortunately, was close enough to The Med, a major trauma hospital; they got him there in record time.

They did surgery to repair his brain, during which he had a seizure. Forced to give him anti-seizure medication, so they could finish the brain surgery, the drugs kept him in a coma for about 10 days.

His brother and I drove all night through a blizzard (not kidding, the only thing I remember seeing in most of Arkansas that night was snow and taillights) to get to Memphis, because he was so close to death.

The doctors told us when he came out of the coma it was miraculous. His liver was so far gone from years of abusing alcohol, and his brain so scrambled from the fall, he never should have made it after the surgery. But he did.

I bought a book about angels and read it on the way home from one of those trips to Memphis. I truly believe Eric’s life was spared once, when he rolled that truck and the disappearing dog saved his life, and again in downtown Memphis. I believe that his life had a purpose, a meaning. I urged him to seek help for his illness, and find the purpose in his life.

He leaves behind a wife and two children, two grieving parents, and his older brother. He was my brother-in-law for 18 years. Not much quality time was spent with family in recent years, sadly. What Eric had was a disease, and it finally got him. His purpose or potential was never realized.

Such a tragic waste of a life. A life that was precious.

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Deanna Brown is a Daily Sun columnist and editor of “exp ...” She may be contacted via e-mail at deanna@corsicanadailysun.com. Her column appears on Sundays.

        

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