The type of atmospheric violence that rewrites local history was the blizzard that struck northern Michigan on January 17. The whiteout was so complete that it was impossible to tell the difference between the frozen land and the sky. Ruth, my 91-year-old mother, was a ghost in the making among all of that whirling mayhem. She was a 90-pound woman with four-foot-ten weak bones and a mind hazy with dementia. When her own flesh and blood had effectively abandoned her to perish that night, she was rescued by a man named Derek, a tattooed biker, who carried her through the drifts.
Michael is my name. I moved to the sunny, comfortable state of Florida eight years ago, supposedly for a new beginning. I was actually running away. The constant demands of a declining parent—the late-night phone calls, the incessant questioning, and the gradual, excruciating deterioration of the lady who reared me—wore me out. I persuaded myself that it was the “noble” decision to put her in a posh assisted living facility in Michigan. I had the moral justification I needed to sleep at night because my brother Tom resided just twenty minutes away from that facility.
A straightforward collapse marked the start of the crisis. Mom needed X-rays, so the institution called Tom to let him know. Tom said he was “entrenched in meetings” and instructed the staff to take care of his mother since he saw her as an administrative burden. He objected to the $800 non-emergency ambulance fee and called me to complain about the “extortion.” The clinking of glasses and the balmy, humid air at the restaurant in Florida made the Michigan cold seem like a faraway myth. I hung up after telling him to follow his own judgment.
In the end, the hospital decided to send Mom to a three-mile-away urgent care center in a cheap transport van. The driver dropped her off and vanished into the snow, believing that family would be there to greet her. Ruth, wearing a thin knit sweater and slippers, sat in a sterile waiting room for six hours. She told every employee who came by that “Tommy” was on his way with her coat, feeling bewildered, icy, and completely alone.
The clinic was closed by 7:00 p.m. The employees were in a panic. Tom didn’t pick up when they called him. I spotted the Michigan area code on my phone screen when they called, so I purposefully turned them down so I could finish my wine instead of dealing with another “problem.”
Derek entered at that point. Clad in thick boots and salt-stained leather, he was a mountain of a guy who paused to look at the weather forecast before continuing north. He noticed a small, old woman sobbing quietly while hunched in a plastic chair. “My son is coming,” she added, looking up with teary eyes when he inquired how she was feeling. Tommy pledged.
Ruth’s family had abandoned her, and the clinic was unable to house her overnight, the receptionist informed in a voice that was shaking with rage. The temperature outside had dropped to nineteen degrees, and the wind was screaming like a savage beast. Derek, a man who owed this woman nothing, made an effort to make amends. He called me twice and Tom four times. He was sent to voicemail by both of us.
Derek made a decision that neither of her boys was prepared to make after glancing at the small woman in the slippers. He just answered, “I’ll get her home,” after requesting the address of her assisted living facility, which was 3.2 miles away through knee-deep snow.
Swaddling her like a child, he put his bulky leather jacket around her. Taking her in his arms, he ventured out into the blizzard’s raving teeth. The hike was an endurance and ice nightmare. He continued to move despite the wind tearing through his clothing like a blade, conversing with her to prevent her from going into a hypothermic coma. Unaware that the “good boys” she had reared were now disregarding her presence from the security of their heated homes, she told him about them as he told her about his motorcycle and his kids.
A police car noticed the odd silhouette of a huge man trudging through the snow with a bundle halfway there. After assisting them into the cruiser, the officer drove the rest of the way. Derek was a frozen figure when they got at the facility, his body trembling with fatigue and his beard matted with ice. He just made sure Ruth was taken to a warm bed, refusing to receive medical care for himself.
At nine o’clock at night, I received a call from the facility’s director. This time, I had to respond out of cold intuition. Her tone was caustic as well as professional. She described the fall, the waiting hours, the desertion, and the biker who had braved a life-threatening storm for three miles to save a lady who wasn’t his.
The embarrassment struck me like a forceful punch. The bile was a literal representation of my own cowardice, and I spent the next hour throwing up in my bathroom. The following morning, I took a plane to Michigan. Despite having deep purple hips and frostbite on the tips of her fingers, my mother was still alive. I began with a prepared “thank you” when I eventually found Derek’s number and gave him a call.
He prevented me from finishing. “You ought to feel ashamed,” he stated in a harsh, flat voice. “That woman gave you life and carried you for nine months.” Additionally, you were too lazy to answer the phone. Perform better. The line died.
Desperate to regain some semblance of my dignity, I drove to his house the next day with a $5,000 cheque. With a look of sheer, unmitigated sympathy, he glanced at the check and then back at me. Refusing the money, he responded, “Take care of your mom.” Beside him, his wife stood with icy eyes. “You weren’t there, and my husband nearly froze to death,” she remarked. He has a soul, so he would do it again. What justification do you have?
In less than a week, I relocated Mom to Florida and paid all the fees and penalties needed to place her in a facility five minutes from my home. I now go see her every single day. The bridge of our brotherhood was burned in the winter of Michigan, and Tom and I have stopped talking.
Every time Derek travels through the South, he still stops by. Mom doesn’t recall the man who carried her or the blizzard, but she brightens up when he comes in. He reminds her of her father, she says. He simply tells her it’s an honor while grinning.
I once questioned him about why he risked his life for an unknown person when her own sons wouldn’t. He gave me a look that suggested the solution was written in the sky. “Because she required assistance,” he stated. “Because she was important.”
Derek taught me how to be a man, and I will struggle to reconcile the two for the rest of my life. The world frequently passes judgment on this tattooed, leather-clad motorcyclist. However, he was the hero who survived hell in a world full of “good sons” who don’t pick up the phone. In the process of carrying my mother through a storm, he also lifted my spirit from the ruins of my own failure.