What Might Have Been…

Our neighbors own an unfinished home in our development.  It has a walkout basement (unusual in our land of high water tables and heavy clay soil) that wasn’t waterproofed properly.  In order to make the house habitable they need to dig down 10 feet to the foundation—by hand, since it would be too easy to damage the foundation using power equipment.

Last fall they hired Josh to do the job.  For days and days he dug after school and on Saturdays.  Much of the time it was a 2 steps forward, 1 step back process.  He would dig one day and it would rain the next, carrying more dirt into the hole.  If it rained he would have to wait a few days before he dug again because the wet clay was too heavy to work with. 

One night I was kneeling to say my prayers and I had the unexpected image of Josh digging in the hole, which by that time was over 6 feet deep.  I had a worried feeling that his hole was too narrow, but no more than that.  The next day I told Josh about my feeling and asked him to widen the hole—even though that would add so much more to the job.  He agreed without any fuss. (Much to my surprise.) Later I asked him why he had, and he told me that he had made a decision at EFY that if anyone ever told him that they’d had a prompting about him, he would follow it.

Russ also had Josh brace the walls of his hole as he dug deeper.  At one point he had a small part of the wall cave in and Russ had him brace the walls even more.  Sometimes he complained about it, but he still did what Russ asked.

In the beginning Jared helped Josh dig.

Eventually Josh decided that he was going to do it on his own because I told him he was going to have to pay Jared a significant amount of money for all of that hard work.  So for most of the time, Josh was there digging alone.  In the back of my mind I was always concerned for his safety, even though he was certain he would be fine.

Josh has been really busy with lacrosse practice for the last couple of months and so hasn’t done any digging.  Last week the neighbors told him that her brother was going to finish the job.  I think Josh was sad not to be able to earn the rest of the money, but maybe a little relieved too.

 

This evening my neighbor called.  She explained quickly that her brother and his friend had been over there digging (after a night of torrential rain) and the wall had collapsed on them, trapping the friend.  She was still in town and wondered if Josh could go over and help dig the friend out.  Josh was great—he knew how dangerous it was and left immediately.  He returned about an hour later.  I assumed that that meant the guy was out of the hole, but he said no.  He had been helping to dig him out when the fire department arrived.  According to Rachel & Jenna, who were playing at a friend’s house nearby, there were 5 fire trucks, 3 ambulances, and 3 sheriff cars.  (And an undetermined number of volunteer fire department cars as well.)  It must have been a slow night, because everyone came.  They pulled out all of their rescue equipment and spent a long time stabilizing the situation.  (Josh’s opinion is that given a few more minutes he would have had the guy out of the hole, but we’ll never know.)  The firemen didn’t get the guy out of the hole for 3 hours, and then it took them another hour to pack their equipment all away again. 

Josh said that the two men had just finished digging the hole when it collapsed—so they were ten feet down.  Initially the guy had been buried up to his chest in the heavy wet clay.  All I could think was how grateful I was that Josh was safe while he was digging there alone.  I’m grateful that he was careful in what he did and I’m grateful that he listened when we asked him to take even more precautions.  Tonight I’m just grateful all around…

 

Here is a link to the news story, which is about half accurate!