About 10 years ago, I wrote a piece of short fiction which began, “I woke today tasting my own death: metallic, like a hammer to the skull if it’s violent. Or, if I die peacefully, it will taste like the lips of Carmela Luna . . . .”

On Sunday, August 26, 2001, I was well down the road to my own death and it didn’t taste like either of those things. It didn’t taste like anything, really. It just felt stupid. What a stupid way to die, I kept thinking.

My 13-year-old son, Carl, and I were cutting down a tree in the back yard that morning. It was a scruffy box elder that had grown on an angle, seeking light, over a white pine we wished to preserve. My plan was to take this tree down in sections, hoping to prevent any damage to the pine below.

I stood on a ladder about nine feet off the ground with our small chain saw, reaching comfortably to my right. But the moment I cut into it, the limb split all the way back to the trunk, more than four feet to my left, and snapped off there. You idiot, I thought. I knew I was in trouble. The split changed the branch’s swing point. The ladder twisted when the limb clipped it. I lost my grip. I felt as if I were hanging in mid-air like a cartoon character that fraction of a second after the bottom falls out and just before the plunge. You idiot! You forgot these are weak trees.

Then, I fell.

Carl saw the whole thing and said I landed on my neck and right shoulder. The chain saw dropped about seven feet away. He told me I sat up once, then plunked back on the ground. It was all a thick haze. “Dad, Dad,” Carl called to me loudly and firmly. “I’ve got the phone. Should I call 911? Should I call 911?” A tough question. My left hand was tingling and going numb. The numbness was moving up my arm. Maybe it’s broken. My head was in a white cloud that would not clear. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to admit I was hurt, that I couldn’t make this cloud go away. “Call 911,” I said finally, weakly.

Carl’s voice was sure and steady on the phone. When he got off, I asked him if this was really happening or if I was dreaming. “No, Dad, this is really happening,” he said. (I wanted so much for it to be just a dream.) Carl’s actions were perfect. He had even picked up a blanket while getting the phone and covered me with it, never moving me. He never panicked. He could have caused great damage by shaking me awake. But he didn’t. Instead, he was a picture of calm, rock-solid there by my side, even through his heart and world had to be tearing apart before his eyes.

My world was changing, too.

The cloud that was in my head began encroaching on my vision, the edges of which were going white. Colors were fading. I wasn’t in shock. I know what shock feels like. There was no cold sweat. I didn’t have that queasy feeling in my stomach. This was different from what I had ever experienced.

I was dying.