For Thursday, August 28 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 710 words

Empathy

I read a heart-wrenching news story on the Internet the other day. I didn't realize how much it meant to me at the time. I was just surfing. I saw the story, read it, and moved on. Several days later I noticed that the story was still rolling around inside my head. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I tried to go back and find it again today, but it was gone. I wanted to share it with you. I still remember the crux of the tragedy, but I've lost the who, where, and when. I'll go with what I have and embellish it a bit to give it flesh.

I was inspired to search out the story again after watching, again, my wife's favorite movie, Don Juan de Marco. Johnny Depp, a delusional romantic, at one point says to Marlon Brando, his psychiatrist, that love is the only thing worth living for and the only thing worth dying for.

A father was hiking with his two sons. It was a warm summer day. They had traveled several miles together up a steep trail along a waterfall. At the top of the mountain the trail followed the river into the highland forest. At a nearby clearing, the trio stopped for a moment to rest and rinse the sweat from their bandanas. The youngest boy, about eight, walked upstream to sit upon a rock. Suddenly, he slipped and fell into the river.

The strong current snatched him up and pulled him out to midstream. He rushed past his father and brother in a panic. The water was deep and cold. He screamed to his father for help, flailing his arms and gasping for breath. The river had him firmly in its grasp.

The father jumped up and ran along the bank, parallel with his son, yelling for him to swim to shore. The boy was too terrified to make the effort. He continued to scream and plead for his father to save him. "Help me, Daddy, help me."

Running with the current, the father looked first at his son and then downstream. Fifty yards away, and coming up fast, was the cliff. The river poured over the rocky edge with a thunderous roar and plummeted into the canyon below. In that instant the father realized that it would be impossible to save his boy. He could never reach him and pull him back to shore in time. "Help me, Daddy, help me."

He must have thought, "My baby! My darling baby boy. I can't abandon him." He must have thought that because he dived into the river and swam to the middle. When he reached his son, he took the boy in his arms and held him close. "I've got you, Son. I've got you. It's O.K."

He held his son tightly against his chest. A moment later, they both slipped over the edge and fell to their deaths together on the jagged rocks below.

The elder son stood on the bank stunned and watched this horrible scene unfold.

That's the end of the article.

The impact of it still weighs heavily on my chest. It's so tragic, so terrible. Yet, and I hope you understand how I mean this, it's so profoundly beautiful and poetic and uplifting and encouraging. I weep with sadness; yet, I rejoice. I am sad for the deaths of these two innocent people; I rejoice for the human spirit. I rejoice for this ultimate gesture of love that was stronger than even the brute force of nature. Human beings are truly capable of performing miracles.

I wonder if I would have had the courage, the conviction, to do the same.

Twelve years ago, when my son, Adam, was 8, we were hiking in upper Yosemite, along the Merced River, above Nevada Falls. He was walking backwards in the snow pulling firewood and fell into the river. He was swept downstream. We were a half-mile from the falls. I ran along the bank, dodging trees and rocks, and dived out to him. I caught him by his shirt just before the river threaded itself through a tangle of submerged tree limbs. We stood dripping on the icy bank.

I feel that same warmth and chill again.