Tomorrow I’ll go see my surgeon for a follow up on my surgery and I am sure we’ll have a very interesting conversation.
Maybe I’ll tell him to go read my recollection of my near death experience but probably not. But for those of you who are confused you can catch up by reading Four Days In A Hospital Part II.
Go on now, we’ll wait.
That isn’t one of my pieces of fiction, that’s what happened.
I can’t decide if I want to play this clip from the Princess Bride and share how a dear friend told me of his own near death experience.
When we exchanged our tales we laughed at Miracle Max’s line about the difference between mostly dead and all dead.
It got me thinking if subconsciously I was quoting the movie when I pushed back against those who said I almost died. Ultimately it doesn’t matter to me because I didn’t die, there are no medical records that will say I was revived.
Though I will share the paramedics gave me TXA and the docs at the hospital gave me two units of blood.
I Looked Into The Abyss
Mom and I talked about that moment when I lay bleeding out on the floor and how I saw my father and grandfathers standing behind a door.
When mom said “your father protected you” she couldn’t see me nod and smile. He did. It is how I always thought of him and it makes perfect sense to me.
My children can tell you a few stories about me and my protective instincts, mom definitely gets credit for some of that but what most of what I learned about being a father came from him.
Ever since I was quite little there have been moments where I have felt like something in the dark was coming for me. I have wondered if that Friday night is when it finally made its move.
But I haven’t been a child for decades and this time when I looked into the abyss and felt it look back at me and I roared with anger.
If you look at the picture of my dad holding me and cover everything but his arm and hand you’ll get a pretty good sense of what my own arm/hand look like. We weren’t built for grace but we are built for hard labor and using our limbs for defending things.
If past lives are a real thing I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I was a warrior, but it doesn’t matter if there is truth in any of that.
The only thing that matters to me is I am here and that I am getting another turn at bat. The only that matters is that sense I have had of the clock ticking is stronger than ever.
Because it is and I just experienced something that could have ended it. An old friend died the same day the paramedics took me in, I don’t take any of this for granted.
We Love Life
I have watched and rewatched the videos of the last hostages in Gaza coming home. I have shared the joy of watching them be freed from the dungeons of Hamas with Jews around the world.
We have talked about how we’re one large family and how it is easy to imagine it could have been anyone of us. That would happen with or without connections to those who had immediate family members captured and or murdered by Hamas.
I have followed everything that has happened since October 7 very closely. I have seen the reports of Hamas terrorists leaving messages and or comments about how they love death and will slaughter us again.
Every time I do I think they misunderstand who we are and the power of life over death. They talk about the joy of becoming martyrs and see this plane as temporary, but that removes strength.
Because when you love life and you cannot say for certain what comes next you do not give up your seat on this big blue marble.
You fight to hold onto it, often with a ferocity that surprises others. This I know from personal experience.
So I haven’t any doubt we will beat these guys and one day they will be a footnote in history like so many others who came for us. Ask the Babylonians, pharaoh, the Romans or the Nazis.
Certain things have me thinking about One Day More and the things I wrote last April in They Resuscitated Me…Twice.
There is a going to be a hard stop to this post, it is intentional. There is more to say, more to share and more to do, but not tonight.
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