Fish Out Of Water -- "I Just Went to Sleep"

Imagine the scenario if you can, if your mind will let you go there:

You are two miles underground in a coal mine. Somewhere between
you and the earth’s surface, a freak explosion ignited a fire that burns
unabated on the flammable walls of the mine shaft. Your emergency
supply of oxygen is running down, forcing you to inhale from the
precious pocket of air around you –which the fire rapidly consumes
and replaces with carbon monoxide. You try to conserve your
oxygen, using only the bare minimum for respiration, hoping the fire
will choke itself out before it chokes you. But each breath gets more
difficult and more poisonous; your eyelids start to sag. Your mind
grows hazy and your body limp, and you are starting to feel in your
heart of hearts that you will not leave the mine alive –that soon you
will go to sleep and never wake up again.

In the midst of this awakening to death, you reach into your pocket and find a blank piece of paper and a pen. You are still
lucid enough to know that you have one last chance to communicate to everyone –your friends, family, loved ones, perhaps
everyone—what you most want them to know as you prepare to breathe your last. With the fading vision of your outer eyes
straining to see –and every memory and thought and dream and soaring idea you’ve ever had passing by your inner one—
you set the pen to the paper and….

….what do you write?

This was the reality facing Martin Toler, Jr., a foreman at the

Sago Coal Mine in Tallmansville, West Virginia, as he and 12

of his comrades were trapped by

the infamous January 2

fire

. Each of the men probably handled his own last

moments of reckoning in a manner no less profound or

significant to the God who was bringing them Home –but it

was Mr. Toler’s note, scribbled on the back of an insurance

form, and later photographed and published worldwide in

newspapers and websites, that touched the world so deeply:

“Tell all I see them on the other side,” said his note. “It

wasn’t bad. I just went to sleep.” And at the bottom of the

note: “I love you.”

When I first saw a picture of the note on front page of

The

Philadelphia Inquirer

, it gave me chills. There is something

about the way Mr. Toler used the past tense to describe a

future event that makes it seem like it was written by his ghost. The Toler family was very gracious to allow the Associated
Press to photograph this extremely personal letter and share it with the world, giving us all a glimpse into the mind and heart
of a dying man, into a life which we all share through our universal Being. Once again the ageless words of John Donne
come to mind:

“....No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be
washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's
or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Miners have always been a hardscrabble bunch, and none more so
than those who dig for our coal. Until technology improved enough
to develop adequate respiratory aids, it was not a question of “if” the
ultrafine dust created by coal mining would clog a miner’s lungs and
kill him at a fairly young age –the question was “how young,” or
whether a calamity like the Sago Mine explosion would get him first.
Safety regulations have also sought to lessen the risks of mining for a
living, but even now, every miner goes into the ground knowing that
he/she may never come back out, that any number of problems,
malfunctions or outright disasters could turn his place of work into a
deathtrap.

It used to mystify me how people could so easily place their lives in grave danger, where the balance between life and death
is so fragile. Eventually, something of the Truth got through my skull, something that told me, “From the perspective of the
ego, your limited sense of self, all life is dangerous and fragile. No one gets out of this mine shaft alive.”

This ultimate existential conundrum –the realization that no human activity is safe, up to and including breathing—can either
drive a person to extreme paranoia and beyond the brink of insanity…or it can make us surrender, throw up the white flag
and give up this clinging to “a vapor that appeaseth and fadeth away.” In doing so, we learn that we never really were that
vapor, that no man ever was an island; in ceasing to identify with the temporal, we unwittingly find the Eternal. The result of
this transformation of the mind is that the conundrum simply ceases to be: there is nothing to fear, and no one to fear it
anyway –only God is.

The cessation of the fear of death, therefore, comes from embracing it, not just when it happens, but NOW. All else is
bound to fall into place. Thus the universal imperative of all major religions that expresses some variation on “While living,
be dead, and be completely dead –then do as you will; all is well.”

I then thought that transcending the fear of death was the sine qua non of the spiritual life, and anything else that religion
brought to the table was superfluous. I was even tempted to write this piece in a way that said “anything that produces this
level of peace and transformation that we see in Mr. Toler’s note is OK.” But this too has been proven wrong to me. Our
earthly activities still matter; the way we treat each other and our world still matters. One cannot fully surrender the self,
and embrace the Life that transcends death, while cursing this Life as it manifests in our neighbor. Suicide bombers do not
fear death, nor do they care what bloodshed their violent end will beget in pursuit of the paradise they have been promised.
Bible-believing Christians can assure themselves of personal salvation and of the literal truth of the prophecy in Revelation,
then pray to their Savior to come down and get on with it already, knowing that this would bring torturous, unmitigated
suffering to all non-Christians and the animal kingdom.

In short: when fear rushes out, God, who is love, must pour in. If love does not enter the equation, this is a clear sign that
the fear has merely been used as legal tender in exchange for an egocentric promise. The most monstrous atrocities
imaginable can be committed by any fearless “religious” person who has traded his/her capacity to feel “involved in
mankind,” for whom the bell tolling for another does not toll for thee.

This is why the final part of Martin Toler’s words seemed to move me the most, and complete for me the sense of a man
getting ready to leave this world: “I love you.” Sometimes the simplest words say the most.

The AP article that included the note quoted his brother as saying Mr. Toler was “a very religious man,” and I have no doubt
that he was well acquainted with “the other side” of which he wrote. Did Martin Toler intend to write just to his family and
friends, maybe the members of his church or his community? Probably. But that is the funny thing about words –once we
speak or write them, they are beyond our control, and we have no idea the myriad ways they will be gathered and spread
from here to who knows where: by the media, by the internet, by legend, etc. Jesus of Nazareth opens his mouth in
Palestine 2000 years ago, and speaks to a hundred million people reading an adaptation of His words on a Sunday morning.
Martin Toler Jr. writes his last will and testament on scrap of paper in his pocket, and touches the heart of a simple truck
driver making his rounds in the Susquehanna Valley.

So never doubt the importance of what your last words
will be –and never forget that any words you say or
write could be your last. One day the bell will toll for
thou. Be ready: know that it already does.

Martin Toler Jr., brother, I will see you on the other
side too…..

copyright 2006 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production

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