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If there are fifty ways to leave your lover, there are a million ways to meet your Maker. Some are common, some rare.

Many years ago I cut an article out of the newspaper reporting a freak accident in Page, Arizona. James and Adalene Beckwith were placidly motoring along, parallel to the shore of Lake Powell in their 21-foot cabin cruiser. Just as they passed beneath an overhanging cliff, “a huge chunk of sandstone” broke loose and smashed into the boat. What were the chances of that? Adalene was taken to Page Hospital with critical injuries, while James sunk to the bottom of the lake. At the time of the article’s publication his body had not yet been recovered.

A distant relative of mine, also a gastroenterologist, was in good health when he experienced an episode of viral gastroenteritis. While sitting on his sofa reading, he suddenly vomited, aspirated, and died.

Although it remains uncertain, a single person in recorded history is thought to have been killed after being struck by a meteorite. The victim was a 40-year-old bus driver named Kamaraj, who was standing on the grounds of a college in Tamil Nadu, at the southern tip of India. The fateful meteorite apparently had Kamaraj in its sights when it formed somewhere in space millions of years ago: at that point it began its extended trip through the universe that ended by destroying the bus driver’s life on February 6th, 2016. This was of course an extraordinarily unlikely event, but the unfortunate Kamaraj was just as dead as if he had crashed his bus (odds of death in a motor vehicle accident are about 1 in 106).

It is estimated that several thousand people die of lightning strikes each year. This translates to a lifetime risk of death by lightening of about 1 in 180,000. So I guess it’s more likely that you’ll be taken by lightning than win the lottery, but don’t count on either happening. For perspective, the chances of your life ending by a fall are 1 in 111.

Sadly, freak occurrences sometimes affect not just one, but many. I went to Haiti with a medical team a few months after the 2010 earthquake that killed an incomprehensible 230,000 people. During our outdoor clinics I heard horrific stories of people who, through a long chain of circumstances, found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sister of a friend of a Haitian physician I worked with needed a single credit to complete her nursing degree. She chose a course that met in a particularly poorly constructed building. Even though she had been assigned a seat right next to the door, the first shock wave was so strong that it instantly brought the structure down. Her brother found her body half in and half out of the doorway, buried in debris. So sad!

On a somewhat more optimistic note, chance events can also lead to one being spared death by a whisker. The cousin of the same physician was supposed to begin college on the day the earthquake struck. The first class met in a building in Port-au-Prince. But much to his chagrin, he’d been distracted, and missed the registration deadline. Thus, he wasn’t permitted to attend any courses. This lapse saved his life—the building where the college classes took place was completely destroyed. All eight floors were smashed together in a terrible pancake stacked crazily on the ground, killing every student.

Freak boating accidents can be deadly, as was the case in Lake Powell, butcan also unexpectedly spare lives. Twenty-five years ago some friends of ours were becalmed in their 35-foot sailboat, far out at sea. A crew member pointed out a power boat way in the distance. No one thought much about it, even as it got progressively closer—everyone was sure it would alter course. But it kept coming, at full speed. Those aboard the sailboat began to get concerned. Several waved their arms, increasingly frantically, to get the attention of the pilot. Disconcertingly, the boat didn’t alter its speed or its course, but seemed to have a bead on our friends. Finally, it rammed into the sail boat at about 30 mph, ripping a four-foot hole in its side. The Bayliner’s bow went up onto the sailboat’s deck with such force that the mast broke, and the steel rigging snapped. Two crew were thrown into the water, and several others were knocked down on the foredeck, where they could see the bottom of the Bayliner looming above them. One crew member narrowly escaped decapitation by a whipping shroud. Miraculously, despite some extensive bruises, no one was seriously hurt. How could this horrible collision have happened? It turned out that the inexperienced skipper of the Bayliner had locked the wheel and gone below deck “for a few minutes.”

So, extremely unlikely events can cause fatalities and, thankfully, be occasionally associated with miraculous escapes. This leads to contemplation of the multitude of near-misses each of us inevitably experiences in the course of our lives without even being aware of them: the truck driver who suddenly jerks awake just before his rig drifts over into oncoming traffic; the little colony of staphylococcus growing on the aortic valve that are fortuitously destroyed by white blood cells just in time to prevent the development of fatal endocarditis; the shooter with a trunkful of guns heading for the movie theater whose car wouldn’t start.

In my first year of medical school, during a lecture on the menstrual cycle, the Ob-Gyn professor marveled at the incredible complexity of the hormonal symphony necessary to trigger ovulation each month. “What’s amazing,” he said, “is not all the things that can go wrong to interfere with ovulation. It’s that women ever manage to get pregnant at all.” I take his point a step further and express my amazement that any person is ever able to survive past childhood. There are a million ways to meet your maker–our lives are hanging by a thread. Please be careful, everybody!

About 5 hours into the flight from London to Boston a voice came over the speakers: “If there’s a doctor or other medical personnel on board, please make yourself known to a flight attendant.” Unlike many doctors who seem to dread such an announcement, I always welcomed one. Not only did providing medical care make the time pass, but more importantly it gave me the opportunity to help someone.

I quickly pushed the call button, and a flight attendant walked down the hushed aisle to my seat. She asked to see identification proving that I was a physician. After she was satisfied that I really was a doc, she told me the story: There was a 32-year-old woman in row 46 who was 26 weeks pregnant. Her water had broken, and she was going through a pad every five minutes. Would I talk to her? I briskly walked down to row 46 and saw an anxious-looking woman leaning on the shoulder of a man I took to be her husband. I quickly learned that her water had actually broken in the terminal at Heathrow, but for some reason she and her husband still elected to board the plane. They both seemed a bit bemused and disconnected from the reality of the woman’s situation. I learned that this was her first pregnancy. And that she had a master’s degree in something or other—she was not a dummy. It amazed me that neither she nor her husband realized that having ruptured membranes meant it wasn’t a good idea to board a transatlantic flight.

By this time several other “medical personnel” had found their way to row 46—there was an ER doc and two nurses–a surgical nurse and, fortuitously, a labor and delivery nurse. We quietly conferred in the aisle, mutually rolling our eyes that our patient chose to board the plane. All were in agreement that she needed to be examined. So we had the flight attendants set up an examining room in one of the galleys—they spread blankets on the floor, brought in several containers of medical supplies, including a baby delivery kit complete with forceps. Our patient was led to the galley, helped to the floor, and the curtains were closed to afford her a semblance of privacy. Since I had been first on the scene, I appointed myself to do the examination, even though by training I was a gastroenterologist who had last delivered a baby during medical school, perhaps 20 years previously. In the heat of the moment I didn’t think to defer to the OB nurse, who was clearly more experienced in this realm than was I. While the others watched, I put on exam gloves, got down on my knees, and felt for the cervix. My fingers encountered the baby’s crown, and a cervix that was probably dilated to 4 or 5 cm.

Though our patient wasn’t having definite contractions, our little team agreed that she could deliver quite soon. I communicated this to one of the flight attendants. Soon the captain emerged from the cockpit and met me just outside the exam room. I told him our concern, pointing out that a 26-week-old neonate would be just on the cusp of viability, and asked him how much further it was to Boston. He said it would take about three hours. Was there an airport any closer? Yes, he said, Gander. It was about an hour away. I had no idea where Gander was, but later learned that it was in Newfoundland, the most eastern bit of North America. During the first transatlantic flights it was the usual taking off point for planes heading east—they landed in Ireland, the westernmost part of Europe.

I asked the captain if there was a neonatal intensive care unit at the hospital in Gander (if there even was a hospital in Gander). “Oh, yes there is,” he said without hesitation. So I advised him to redirect the plane to Gander. He should call ahead and have emergency help ready to take our patient to the hospital. Though it seemed like the right thing to recommend, I went back to the galley and talked to my newfound colleagues, who supported my decision.

The captain returned to the cockpit and soberly announced that due to a medical emergency the plane would be diverted to Gander. The OB nurse stayed with the patient, and the others and I returned to our seats.

Soon we landed on a long, dark runway. This was unlike any airport I’d ever encountered–I didn’t see any other aircraft. The blinking lights on our plane’s wings revealed snow plowed up to about 15 feet on either side. The pilot officially announced our arrival, and informed us that the outside temperature was 20 below. We were advised to stay in our seats while the emergency was dealt with.

Looking out my window to the tarmac far below, I saw an ambulance approach the plane. Clearly, the terminal—if there indeed was a terminal—wasn’t equipped with a jetway big enough for a 747. Instead, a portable lift topped by a big square platform was waiting nearby. Two medics extracted a gurney from the ambulance and placed it on the platform, then hopped on. It scissored up to one of the exit doors, which was opened by a flight attendant. The very bundled up and cold- looking EMTs wheeled the gurney onto the plane and were directed down the aisle to the examining room. Soon our patient, swathed in blankets and strapped firmly to the gurney, was wheeled back down the aisle with her husband in tow. I got up and followed the entourage to talk to the EMTs. I told them key details of the situation and answered a few questions. Then I said to the lead EMT, “Wow, this place seems so remote. I can’t believe there’s a neonatal ICU near here!” “There isn’t.” he replied. “The nearest one is in Halifax. That’s a two-hour flight.”

My stomach flipped, and I was speechless. I fished out a business card from my wallet and gave it to the husband, who I hoped hadn’t heard what the EMT guy said. “Best of luck,” I said, “and please let me know how things go.”
I returned to my seat and watched our swaddled patient get loaded into the ambulance, which drove away in the darkness to who knows where. I never heard back from the husband.

Over the years I’ve thought about this woman many times. Where was she taken by the ambulance crew? Where and when did she deliver? And, of course, did the baby survive? Although at the time I felt quite confident that I’d handled the situation well, in all my retrospective musings I’ve never had good feelings about it. Neither the woman nor her husband were very communicative, but I have an uneasy sense that I didn’t do as much as I should have to try to draw them out about why they chose to get on the plane. Maybe they were desperate to get back to Boston for some important reason—a dying relative? A vital Christmas commitment? I don’t recall giving them any say in whether we continued on to Boston or diverted to Gander. But even if I in fact asked for and received their endorsement for the diversion, was that the right thing to suggest? Even if there really were an NICU in Gander, she may not have delivered for many hours, and Boston would have certainly been a better place to be for the care of a very premature baby. I also think I was foolish to have trusted the captain’s glib assurance that the Gander hospital had an NICU. Did he even understand what I was asking him? On reflection, why would he know anything about the facilities of a hospital near an airport where he never flew a plane? Clearly, I should have asked to communicate directly with the hospital, and probably to an obstetrician, who could have provided expert advice on the best course of action.
This experience highlights the responsibility we take on when we make decisions for others. Though perhaps most obvious in the case of physicians, police, judges, and of course parents, at times we all make choices–some trivial, some momentous–that affect other people. And no doubt, just about everyone has regrets about a decision they made that had unfortunate consequences. That’s life—none of us is perfect. But because of their potential effect, I believe that we have an obligation to carefully consider all our decisions, especially those that may affect others. Which, I guess, is pretty much all of them. For my part, I aspire to be as thoughtful as I can in making a recommendation, suggesting a course of action, or otherwise deciding something that may impact others.

(photo by Annie Klein)

When we lived in Chapel Hill, an obstetrician named Vern Katz delivered our daughter. Subsequently we became friends with Vern and his wife, Debbie, who was also an obstetrician. One day when they were at our house for dinner, Debbie told us that after they delivered a baby, grateful parents would occasionally give them a gift. Vern said that one time he was given a bottle of champagne. He and Debbie drank a glass each, then tossed the rest down the kitchen sink. Afterwards, on a whim Debbie looked it up and found that the champagne sold for well over $100. Oh no, she’d said ruefully to Vern, what have we done?

I thought of this story when I recently opened a bottle of 1996 Saint-Julien (Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou, in case you wondered). I bought it more than 25 years ago to be stored, according to wine maven Robert Parker, until it peaked between 2018 and 2035. So it patiently rested on a wine rack under the stairs for the requisite passage of time and the right occasion. Which turned out to be my birthday. Before I uncorked it, I looked up how much it was going for these days. To my surprise, many high end wine shops still had it in stock. The price varied over an astonishingly wide range, from a low of a mere $235, to a top price of $998.99, plus $50 for shipping.

I opened the bottle with great anticipation. The cork crumbled slightly, but I managed to extract it with only a few crumbs falling into the bottle. Then I lovingly poured the wine into a decanter, which was given to me years ago by the same daughter that Vern had delivered. Next, like a knowledgeable consumer, I let the wine sit in the decanter for several hours to “open up.” Then I poured some wine into my class, carefully swirled it, and took a sip.

So how was it? I think I’d rate it as pretty good. Whaaat? you say: A thousand buck bottle of wine was just “pretty good”? Well, it did have a somewhat complex nose, and the taste was multilayered. But ruefully, I have to report that as much as I wanted to love it, it didn’t really knock my socks off. And the rest of the family with whom I shared the bottle (including the Vern-delivered daughter) agreed. Maybe it wasn’t kept at the optimal temperature for the quarter century I’d stored it. Or maybe (in fact, probably) my taste isn’t all that discerning. But whatever the reason, to be perfectly honest I have to say I’ve enjoyed some less than 10-dollar bottles of wine more (like the one on the right in the photo). But knowing the price of this precious Saint-Julien, we drank every last drop. And savored it as much as we could. I admit that if it were an eight-buck bottle of wine I could even imagine that I might have emulated Vern and Debbie by pouring the last bit down the drain.

But when you think about it, didn’t Vern and Debbie actually do a sensible thing? If they’d had enough to drink and weren’t particularly enamored of the taste, why should the price tag matter? Maybe they were sensible not to be influenced by the cost, and just do what felt right.

When we lived in France, we fell in love with a Chagall lithograph displayed in an art gallery in our village. Feeling extravagant, we bought it, and were supplied with fancy documentation proving that this was a very limited-edition lithograph, and indeed by Chagall. But it occurs to me, what if the lithograph was a forgery and the documentation faked? If we knew it was a counterfeit Chagall, would we like it less? Theoretically no, since it would remain the exact same piece we bought and loved. Why should its provenance matter? A bit more subtly, would we perhaps have been less drawn to it in the first place if it were by some unknown artist rather than Chagall? I must admit, probably so.

Which brings up the issue of intrinsic versus extrinsic value. I believe that our subjective response to something is informed to a greater extent than we’d like to think by our awareness of its value. For example, knowing the rock on the ring is a diamond rather than a rhinestone surely enhances its perceived beauty. And it seems quite likely that we would be less reluctant to admit that we didn’t particularly like that thousand-dollar bottle of wine or the painting by Picasso or that book by Philip Roth than if we didn’t know the cost or the artist or the author.

So maybe wine should be tasted without knowing the price, paintings be displayed without the artist being identified, and novels read without disclosure of the author. Doing so would allow us to evaluate these things without prejudice. This is the same principle as in clinical trials of experimental drugs–something that I’ve spent much of my life designing. Because knowing the treatment assignment has a powerful effect, the trial must be “double blind,” meaning that the drug and the placebo pills look identical and are coded. This prevents the response of the subject or the evaluation of the physician from being influenced by knowing what treatment the subject was randomized to.

Perhaps the same principle should apply to the way we regard people we’re meeting for the first time. Arguably, our impression shouldn’t be influenced by their degrees or their accomplishments or their net worth. But simply by the way they act and what they have to say. I don’t know how one can “blind” details of someone’s background on the first meeting, especially when we already know about them, or they’re introduced by an admiring friend. But I suggest we should consciously try to minimize the influence of their resumes on how we feel about them. Maybe this can be done to some extent by an act of will—we should focus on what they are saying and how they are behaving, and try to keep at bay the knowledge of their credentials. With this approach, someone whose pedigree is equivalent to a 1996 Saint-Julian may turn out to be less interesting than a person whose background resembles a humble ten-buck red blend.

I’ve nearly drowned three times. The first time was when I was about ten. My mother took me to one of her childhood haunts, Jones Beach, on Long Island. She used to swim there in the summers when she was growing up in Brooklyn. It was warm and sunny the day I nearly drowned. As usual the beach was shoulder-to-shoulder. I shed my clothes down to my swimsuit, charged into the water, and dove heedlessly into the first wave I encountered, which turned out to be much bigger than I’d bargained for. It unceremoniously picked me up and flipped me over. I swam hard to get to the surface. Just as it seemed my breath had totally run out, my head rammed into the sandy ocean bottom–I was so disoriented I swam south instead of north. Having lost all sense of direction, I thoroughly panicked, semi-blacked out, and was miraculously delivered to shallow water by another wave. From there I was able to crawl up on the sand and catch my breath. I don’t think I swam any more that day.


Many years later I was living in Thailand with my then-wife, Phyllis. For a little break from work, we drove to Phang-nga Bay, in the southern part of the country. The scenery, which was later featured in the James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun, was spectacular. From there we drove across the peninsula to a beach on the east coast, facing the Gulf of Siam. It was straight out of a travel poster: the ocean was glistening blue with regular foamy waves, and the wide, pristine beach was fringed with billowing palm trees. And it was totally deserted. The water was deliciously tepid, and the offshore breeze held all sorts of enticing tropical smells. Ecstatic about being in this touristic idyll without the tourists, we plunged into the sea. Just a little way from shore we began to feel a current coursing around our legs. It tugged us into deeper water, gently and teasingly at first, and then with overwhelming insistence. Soon, like leaves in a rushing stream, we were carried out to sea. We tried to fight against the current, but its force was overwhelming.

After being pulled helplessly away from the land for what seemed like forever, the undertow finally released its grip. We were tiny specks of humanity, bobbing on the surface of the vast, indifferent sea. We’ve got to swim back, I said stupidly. But Phyllis, who was a poor swimmer, was already tiring and starting to panic. We drifted yet further out to sea, and I mildly thought, oh, so this is how my life will end. Then my survival instincts kicked in. I wrapped my arm across Phyllis’ chest in mechanical memory of the “water rescue” maneuver I learned for my swimming merit badge. Hefting Phyllis, I swam diagonally toward the distant shore. It took forever. I have no recollection of what, if anything, I was thinking or feeling during this desperate rescue. But finally, I felt sand beneath my feet, and we staggered out of the clutching water and collapsed on the warm, welcoming sand.


Less than a year later we were back in the water. This time we it was in western Nepal. While visiting Pokhara we decided to rent a dugout canoe and paddle around Lake Phewa. The green hills surrounding the lake stair-stepped higher and higher, transitioning first to terraced rice paddies, then more serious mountains, and ultimately, in the distance, to the snow-covered Himalayas. It was as idyllic as the Thai beach, though in a quite different way.

In the middle of the vast lake we bobbed in the sun-sparkled water. Stowing the paddles on the rough bottom of the boat, we snapped endless photographs. Then, after taking a grand Himalayan panorama, I put my camera down next to the paddles, laid back against the stern, and closed my eyes. In the bow, Phyllis did likewise. I might have dozed a bit, but was tugged back to consciousness by an insistent breeze that hadn’t been there before. When I opened my eyes, I saw dark clouds assembling above the mountains. “Look, Phyllis,” I said, casually, pointing to the horizon, “I wonder if it’s going to rain.” She said it might be prudent to head back. I agreed. We began to paddle toward the dock, which was barely visible in the distance. The massive canoe didn’t move very fast.

The breeze became even more assertive, and the sky notably darkened. Then the air began to cool. As we paddled faster, the first drops of rain tickled my face. We were still a long way from shore. A black sheet formed overhead, and soon it was raining hard. Then extremely hard. I grabbed my camera and tried to shield it on my lap, but my jeans were soon soaked. Anyway, with my increasingly frantic paddling the camera ended up back in the bottom of the boat. The wind and rain were now heading directly toward us, indignantly slapping us in the face. Progress toward the distant dock slowed further.

I noticed that rain was beginning to gather in the bottom of the boat, sloshing back and forth against my camera. I tried to grab it, but soon concluded that getting to shore had a higher priority than keeping the camera dry, which anyway seemed an impossible task. The accumulation of water in the canoe made it sit lower in the lake, so I had to adjust my paddling stroke. Then the wind really picked up, and idyllic Lake Phewa began to look ominously like the ocean—there were actually waves, even some with whitecaps. As those waves slapped against the side of the boat. some sloshed over the gunwales. Now my camera began floating forward and backward along the floor of the canoe, as if it were doing laps in a pool, and the canoe sank lower and lower in the water. I don’t remember all the things reeling through my mind in my panic, but no doubt Jones Beach, and certainly the undertow in the Gulf of Siam, figured prominently.

By now we were thoroughly soaked, and the chilly rain had expunged all traces of the warmth endowed to us by the now non-existent Nepalese sun. Peering out through my rain-soaked glasses, I noticed that when I could catch a glimpse of the dock it seemed slightly closer than before, which gave me a ray of hope, if not of sun. But with each crashing wave the inertial heft of the huge hollowed-out log became more and more apparent.

I desperately scanned the sky, looking for even a hint of the return of the sun, and even more hopefully, for a rainbow like the one that God had produced for Noah, promising no further mass drownings. But I saw neither. The water in the canoe was now almost up to our knees, blurring the distinction between the inside and the outside of our vessel.

However, just as I started to wonder about how our families would get the news of our watery demise, the sky brightened a little. And more importantly, the distant dock was getting notably closer. We continued to paddle, not just ourselves and the canoe, but also a bathtub’s worth of water.

As the alert reader will have surmised, we eventually made it back to the dock. The guy who owned the canoe concession was standing patiently under a sagging rain-filled awning. He shook his head as we approached, and vaguely smiled. He helped us, our drenched rucksacks, and my underwater camera out of the depths of the canoe and tied it up to the dock. It must have taken him an hour to bail it out.

So how do I process these frighteningly close calls? For instance, why was I spared when I could have so easily perished on each occasion? Well, for starters I could thank any angels I may have acquired over the years for keeping me afloat time after time. Some people who have recovered from serious illness or a bad accident believe that they were saved “for a reason.” If this were true in my case, I have no idea what that reason was; some would say I had best find out. No matter the mechanism or reason for my salvation, I should certainly take these occurrences as a sign that I ought to be more mindful of lurking dangers, particularly around water. But I wonder how many times my life has similarly hung by a thread, when I was completely oblivious of immanent catastrophe–a boulder perched on the edge of a cliff that I was hiking beneath that kept its balance, a drunk driver who managed to jerkily pull over to the side of the road just before I drove by, a mentally ill person with a knife sizing me up in a crowd before being distracted by a crying baby.

In any case, I am certainly thankful that for whatever reason, be it luck or providence, or perhaps no reason at all, I was spared each time. And I really strive to be mindful of all the riches and joys of my post-near drownings life that I’ve been so privileged to experience.

On our customary walk around the neighborhood, Ari, my grandson, picked up a stick in the road. Our little troop consisted of me, Ari, my wife Annie, and Ayla the dog. Ari walked along for a few paces, then with a mighty swing heaved the stick deep into the woods. Ayla wasn’t interested in pursuing it.

At the time Ari was wearing my father’s gold watch, which I hadn’t seen in years. He had recently discovered it during one of his periodic rifles through my filing cabinet. As I recall, it was a traditional retirement present for my dad’s long-time government service. I can’t remember whether it was inscribed, or if it was real gold. Ari had asked to wear it, and of course I said, why not. I liked the idea that he was connecting with his great-grandfather.

As might be anticipated, even on the smallest setting the metal band didn’t fit very snugly on his wrist. So when Ari flung the stick, the watch was flung too, closely following the stick on its sylvan trajectory. He was immediately filled with remorse, and apologized profusely. But I considered it a freak accident, not even a careless one, and reassured him that he hadn’t done anything wrong. The three of us began an intensive search, but mirroring her lack of interest in the stick, Ayla wasn’t inclined to help with the recovery operation. We spent about 20 minutes bushwacking, kicking up leaves, and looking for golden glints in the undergrowth. But the watch didn’t manifest. Over the next week we continued searching, but to no avail.

Briefly I thought, should I organize a search party? Set up a series of grids to systematically scour the woods? Rent a metal detector? But I realized I didn’t have enough motivation to do any of these things. The watch had been languishing in a cardboard box in a filing cabinet for many years; the only reason it surfaced was because of Ari’s marauding. It’s not like I took it out every year or two to remember my father. And to be honest, I found it rather ugly. Moreover, I dislike metal watchbands; I was never interested in wearing it. Still, it didn’t occur to me to have it appraised to see if it was really gold; I certainly wouldn’t have pawned a family heirloom to make a few bucks!

Apart from its potential monetary value, did dad’s watch have “sentimental value”? Theoretically, perhaps. But judging by how often I took it out of its box it probably didn’t have much, at least for me. So why was I keeping it at all? Are you kidding? How could I get rid of something that was awarded to my father, and that he wore, possibly for years? (Or did he actually ever wear it? I can’t remember.) Was I saving it for our kids or grandchildren? Well frankly, I’d be surprised if the kids would have wanted to be saddled with an ugly watch of uncertain intrinsic value. And I’d also be surprised if they felt much sentimental attachment to the watch that had been attached to their grandfather. And doubly so for the great grandchildren, one of whom was way too young to remember him, and the other wasn’t yet born when he died.

In fact, were it to be miraculously recovered I can see how the watch would have been a burden to my progeny and their progeny. They too would probably be reluctant to offload such a thing. It would likely have ended up in another cardboard box, mashed together with other such inherited millstones, until while in the possession of some level of grands or greats the whole caboodle was accidently tossed during a move, or got soaked and then discarded after a plumbing leak, or was thrown away after the box had been colonized by mice. So maybe Ari actually did me and the entire family down through the generations a favor by disposing of at least one family heirloom.

I wonder what my father would have said if I could have asked him whether he wanted me to save his retirement watch. Who knows? But my guess is that he would have shrugged his patriarchal shoulders, shook his head, and said, “Why the hell would I care what you did with the damn watch?” Not terribly sentimental, my dear dad.

But still, even if I had my father’s sanction, disposing of such family heirlooms would be a difficult undertaking. Perhaps a compromise would be to digitally document susceptible items, then trash the originals so they don’t weigh down the inheritors. For years I’ve actually been thinking about doing this for each of my parents’ stacks of diplomas. (I have all of the diplomas commemorating my father’s sequence of science degrees—BS, MS, PhD. With glee, he once told the young me that they stood for “Bull Shit,” ”More of the Same,” and “Piled higher and Deeper.” Like I said, dad wasn’t the sentimental type. Fortunately my mother’s degrees weren’t in science, so they weren’t susceptible to the same explication.) My plan has been to take nice photos of all the diplomas, which are encased in rather large, deteriorating frames with peeling brown paper backing, then discard them. The digital images could then be stored in the electronic equivalent of a filing cabinet drawer, likely to be accidently discovered and fleetingly viewed, when a grandkid is rifling through his grandfather’s antique hard drive. Well at least they won’t take up very much room that way.

Anyway, perhaps the most meaningful family heirlooms aren’t the physical ones. Maybe they are the legacy of the ancestor’s personality and character, their humor, and values. In other words, what they leave for subsequent generations not in the way of watches, but by example. More important than documentation of their academic achievements is the wisdom my parents acquired in the course of their lives, which they passed on to me to incorporate into my life, and which I, in turn, will hopefully pass on to my kids and grandkids.

Now I appreciate that in addition to all the good things, I may have inherited a deficit of sentimentality from my dad. So if anyone feels that my father’s watch deserves to be recovered and has the motivation to do so, please let me know and I’ll send you the GPS coordinates of the toss site. I understand that renting a metal detector is pretty cheap.