I have for days been watching small, bright-yellow, black-walnut leaves falling to the neighbor’s lawn across the street as orange-tinged maple leaves waltz like airborne breast feathers to my backyard. Early? Yes. At least two weeks ahead of  last fall, which I remember well.

Premature crunchy leaves underfoot should come as no surprise. Hasn’t everything else since springtime been two weeks or more early? Why should foliage be different? Likely, by the time leaf-peepers clog our highways and byways for Columbus Day Weekend’s traditional “peak,” most of the maples will be nude, the oaks turning red and bronze, more typical of November. Such is life, a higher power finessing the strings, answering to no one, beyond our control.

North of here, on the road to Burlington, Vt., Route 89, the colors were advanced, actually nearing peak, though still short of it, muted, many soft yellows, some orange, little red. At least that’s what I recall. Maybe there was some red. Can’t remember. It was tough to focus on scenery. I was distracted, in an emotional fog, cranial wheels spinning, traveling on a serious matter, no joy ride, a family emergency that’s consumed and debilitated me. Twenty-eight-year-old son Gary II, father of two young boys, is fighting for his life following open-heart-surgery complications in Burlington, Vt. I didn’t think he was going to make it at 2 a.m. Saturday, blood pouring out of his chest-drainage tubes, life-support his only hope. His will to live is strong. I am now more confident. Still, all I can do is hope, a day at a time. He’s critical but stable, a long road to recovery, longer for him than me. For sure, life can be unfair. This is a salient example, medicine and nature’s mercy his bedside allies.

Nothing is so painful as reality. The courageous face it head on. Others curl into a pathetic, clammy, fetal ball: fear paralysis. Gary took it like a man. I’m proud of him. “Don’t cry,” he told his terrified lover as nurses wheeled him toward the double operating-room doors, “I’m going to come through this. I’m meditating, am focused, know what I’m facing, what I must do to survive.”

He did know, had been through open-heart surgery at age 15 to repair an aortic aneurysm. Before he passed through those O.R. doors at 7:30 a.m. Friday, he started to sing a song he wrote, one he has sung many times in coffeehouses from Montpelier to Burlington. I don’t know its name or lyrics, but I’ve heard him sing it, have even seen his 4-year-old son sing along, so I know the gist, “I love my family, I love my life,” repeated in the refrain. This from a young man who’s known good times and bad, sober and impaired, healthy and sick, happy and sad. Recent years had been productive and happy until this sledgehammer wallop from the heavens. Or was it hell? All I know is that it came out of nowhere. A sucker shot at the supper table. Intense chest and back pain. A registered nurse, he knew it was serious, probably a heart attack. He was wrong, though not far off.

What he, in fact, experienced was an aortic dissection, excruciating pain, could have burst at any moment and quickly flushed his life. No time for medics or ambulances. Miraculously, it didn’t happen. He made it to one hospital, then another, where they hooked him up to tubes and bags and monitors, stabilized him, and ultimately tried to heal him with medicine, buy time for inevitable surgery, potentially weeks, months, even years away. But no. The day before his expected release, a CAT Scan revealed that the aortic arc exiting his heart had bulged to a frightening diameter, requiring emergency surgery to repair it with a synthetic replacement.

All I can now do is hope. I don’t pray. Refuse. To whom? But that’s just me. I view life as a sequence of choices, some crucial, others trivial, all mine. In the old days, tragedy victims believed they were being punished for immoral actions by them or someone close to them, mischief an unforgiving God did not approve of. I have never accepted that. Not for a second. I cannot believe in a vindictive, hateful creator. If revenge is what God’s about, I would rather fight him, openly defy him, slug him in the mouth, beat him with a club, sit on his chest and pummel him into the bedrock. I want no part of anyone, man or myth, who’d inflict physical pain and suffering as a control mechanism. That’s why I have always preferred to remain a flock of one, picking my way through treacherous terrain, alone, alert, resolute, perceptive and reflective whenever my world spirals toward potential disaster.

I have faith that Gary will again play his guitar and sing a happy tune, maybe about beating tall odds, being independent, playing the game his way and winning. No annoying rules and regs, no boring, self-absorbed authority figure to spew tired slogans, prod him toward deeply trodden paths a blind man could follow. Some prefer to blaze their own trails, and pay the price. They, if any, are to me worthy of praise and worship.

Perhaps it’s a fault, but I drop to my knees in prayer for no one. It has many times been said that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Here, Gary is the fruit resting in high grass warming the roots like a bear’s dense winter coat. I believe we’ll beat this challenge, move on and thumb our noses at the genuflecters, the reciters, the jeweled choir singing others’ words in perfect harmony, more than willing to offer insulting pity to those who’ve lost their way.

I say to them, followers all: follow us if you dare. You may learn a lesson that isn’t etched in stone, taught in parables, memorized in hymn or prayer or patriotic pledge. Some prefer to write their own songs, cut fresh paths to old places, grooming profound borders along the way that sprout courage, intellect and independence. Such a route can bring confidence, humility, self-esteem, dignity and, above all, wisdom, the greatest of all gifts. Without it, life is dull and meaningless. Not worth living.

Not for Gary.