Life is too short to hide the love you would regret hiding at death

By David McElroy · August 22, 2019

If you were dying in just a few minutes, who would you say goodbye to? What would you say?

It was about 7:20 a.m. on May 19, 1902, when an explosion ripped through a coal mine in Fraterville, Tenn. The powerful blast instantly killed most of the 216 miners who had just started their shift.

There were 26 men and boys who survived the blast, but they were trapped underground as their meager air supply ran out.

At least 10 of the miners were still alive seven hours after the explosion, but all of them suffocated before help could reach them. A few of those men wrote notes to tell their loved ones goodbye.

Jake Vowell was one of those men. He was trapped with his dying 14-year-old son, Elbert, who was also a miner. As the air ran out, Jake wrote to his wife, Ellen, adding more thoughts — in increasingly shaky handwriting — about what he was thinking and feeling.

Jake knew that he and Elbert were about to die.

All of the miners seemed to know that they were going to die. Some left brief messages for their loved ones. One man encouraged his sons to never work in a coal mine. Another told the world that he had found salvation in Jesus. You can read excerpts from some of the notes here.

But I can’t quit going over the text of what Jake wrote to Ellen. This was a man who dearly loved his wife and “my little children.” Here’s how he started his letter to Ellen around noon:

We are shut up in the head of the entry with of little air and the bad air is closing in on us fast and it is now about 12 o’clock. Dear Ellen, I have to leave you in bad condition. But dear wife, set your trust in the Lord to help you raise my little children. Ellen take care of my little darling Lily. Ellen, little Elbert said he had trusted in the Lord. Chas. Wood said he was safe if he never lives to see the outside again, he would meet his mother in heaven. If we never live to get out we are not hurt but only perished for air. There is but a few of us here and I don’t know where the other men is. Elbert said for you all to meet him in heaven, All the children meet with us both.

About 90 minutes later, Jake’s tone is more bleak when he adds more.

Ellen, darling Good Bye for us both. Elbert said the lord had saved him. Do the best you can with the children. We are all praying for air to support us but it is getting so bad without any air. Horace, Elbert said for you to wear his shoes and clothing. It is now half past 1.

In his next entry, Jake seems to know it’s time to say last goodbyes. He asks his wife to take care of the children and he makes a request that he and Elbert be buried next to their son, Eddy, who had already died.

Ellen, I want you to live right and come to heaven. Raise the children the best you can. O how I wish to be with you. Good Bye to all of you Good Bye. Burry me and Elbert in the same grave by little Eddy.

Good Bye Ellen
Good bye Lillie
Good bye Jimmie
Good bye Minnie
Good bye Horace

At almost 2:30 in the afternoon, Jake signs the letter — for both himself and Elbert.

We are together. Is 25 minutes after Two. There is a few of us are alive yet
Good bye
JAKE & ELBERT

At some point — in the shakiest of handwriting — Jake adds one final heartbreaking entry.

Oh God for one more breath. Ellen, remember me as long as you live. Good Bye Darling

The deaths of 216 men is a tragic footnote in history, but one man’s grief is personally heartbreaking to me. And I can’t help thinking about the things I would want to say — and who I would want to say those things to — if I knew my death were approaching any minute.

If I knew I were about to die, I would wonder what could have possibly kept me from the love which I needed — the love which I needed to express and the love I needed to receive. I would feel anguish at leaving this life without finding what I had needed most. And I would be crushed by the senselessness of the things which humans allow to keep them apart.

If you were going to die and you knew it, who would you need to say goodbye to? What would you need to express or put right? What love would you need to express — love that you always thought there would be another day to express?

The town of Fraterville lost almost all of its men that day in 1902. Ellen and their children lost Jake and Elbert. But for me, the most powerful part of their deaths more than a hundred years ago isn’t what it said about their lives, but about what it says about my life and your life.

Death is stalking all of us. Love won’t always be there waiting. All of us need to live and love while we still can, because we never know when death will catch up with us.

Note: You’ll find the last page of Jake’s note to Ellen below. The photo above is Jake with his baby daughter, Lilly.

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I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

After Tampa Bay, Fla., musician Colt Clark had all of his gigs canceled last year for months on end, the entire family felt trapped at home as most of the world was on quarantine lockdown. His wife, Aubree, had an idea that would let Colt make music and involve the whole family in making music videos to share with their friends and family on Facebook. Aubree is a photographer and homeschooling mom to a daughter and two sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. After their friends started asking to share the videos, they made the performances public — and a few of them are now on YouTube, where they go by the name of Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids. The younger son, Becket, is on drums. The older boy, Cash, plays keyboards, strings and guitars. Dad supplies lead vocals and plays guitar, while 6-year-old Bellamy mostly dances but sometimes does backup vocals. There’s even a dog who makes an occasional appearance. The Clark family has just raised the bar for what I need to create with my future children. And best of all, they seem to be having a great time together. I hope they make you as happy as they make me.

Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

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