I Stopped Trying To Tear Down The Walls

That story didn’t take place on Hampshire Road nor did it involve a junior college math professor who looked like a undernourished Herman Munster.

That same skeletal fellow spoke broken Yiddish which wasn’t bad for a guy who was referred to by the Pennsylvania Dutch as ‘De klotzok.’

But we’re going to skip over that sordid tale cuz it may show up in PostSecret one day or potentially Mad Magazine.

We’ll call it “I stopped trying to tear down the walls” and it will be about how my tiny black heart stopped pumping.

Can You Carry The Load

If you didn’t see me wearing the massive brace on my left arm you’d have no idea I had surgery on it.

You’d have no idea the doc cut into my inner elbow to pull down the tendon and attach it to the bone by drilling a screw into my bone.

There is a scab that is quickly fading but if you didn’t know better you wouldn’t look at the slightly red skin around it as being where the scalpel cut me.

Those who see me in the gym have noticed my regular presence on the treadmill and noted that I continue to lift weights with my right arm.

Some ask if I am worried that arm will look enormous next to my left. I tell them I am not concerned about it because the left isn’t shriveled. Certainly it is going to lose a little strength but I’ll be able to start training again long before it could become a problem.

During a recent dream I told my father and paternal grandfather about the guy who called me a fucking Zionist and grandpa said to remember to grab a role of quarters before I throat punched him.

The memory makes me smile and reminds me of watching the fights with them when I was younger,

I saw a few fighters who couldn’t throw a proper punch with one of their arms due to injury still win the fight because their good arm still packed a wallop.

****

The memories flow freely and compounded in strength alongside Man of Steel first flight. I am desperate to test my limits but actively restraining myself because I can’t stomach getting hurt by moving on things too soon.

The memory of the last six months weighs on me, four days at Baylor Scott & White in Grapevine and the ER doc asking me if I knew how close to death I was are close at hand.

It irks me because once I decided I wanted to live there was never a doubt in my mind that I would. It irked me because he made it sound like I had done this to myself and I most assuredly had not.

So I fight to be patient and methodical in my approach to my rehab.

Intermixed with this I think about information I received this past week that was very troubling. I think about how it might have been better if I hadn’t learned certain things.

And then in the midst of it I remember a conversation with my father during that last year of his life and the question of can you carry the load loses the question mark at the end.

It is replaced by a period because there is no other option. It is not a choice or option- it must be carried and I who was born to dance in the fire and proved to be an adept storm walker accept it.

How Much Force Can You Generate?

I went looking for the dog the other night. It was almost 4 AM and my almost 57 year-old prostate thought it was smart to make us wake up to pee.

Half awake I remembered not to use my left arm to pull myself out of bed, stood up, adjusted the brace and headed to the john.

Thought I heard the jingle of his collar and looked for the outline of his body remembering that finding a black dog at night could be a challenge if he chose not to move.

And then I remembered he has been gone since November. Remembered he checked out a month after my own hospital adventure and silently thanked him for hanging on long enough to be there for the family while I wasn’t.

When I had completed my task I headed back to bed, closed my eyes and asked him how much force I generated when I tore that distal bicep tendon.

In my head I told him that I must have generated 3 tons of force to have shredded that thing. I snorted at the exaggeration and thought about how I could post it online and people would blindly accept it as truth.

It reminds me of this comment by Neil deGrasse Tyson:

I can’t say I disagree with him either. I see this happening around me in regular people as well as many in leadership.

I am a firm believer in science and think it is of paramount importance.

Someone asked me how I could say that after writing A Four Day Hospital Adventure and sharing how my father kept me from walking through a door to whatever comes next.

There is no contradiction in my mind, science can’t explain everything that happens and there is a possibility there are things we don’t understand.

Besides, if none of that happened and I was hallucinating it doesn’t matter.

When I read that four day in the hospital post it brings back bits and pieces of things I have already started to forget.

It makes me wonder if part of me is trying to let go of it. It makes me wonder if maybe it scared me and I haven’t accepted I was frightened.

I am not certain because I have tried to confront it head on and explore it. Maybe it is because of the other stuff that has happened since then that has reminded me there is an expiration date on this body.

That one day when the Angel of Death comes back I won’t be able to fight him off again. But I also think there is a chance I might not feel the need nor desire to do so.

Maybe I’ll have accomplished so much I’ll be ready, we don’t know when the day will come and it could happen 50 years from now.

That might be long enough for me to say I feel good and I am ready or maybe it will be less.

While I am interested in figuring out why I have forgotten some of what happened I am not obsessed with it because I can come back to what I wrote and it comes back.

Mainly I focus on trying to do what I can to improve my health now so that whatever time I am given is spent in a body that allows me to live as I wish.

That is a gift I never want to give up.

And I want a mind that keeps up. A mind that doesn’t stop asking questions, learning and exploring. One that doesn’t call information it doesn’t like fake simply because it is unpleasant.

I always said I wanted to live in interesting times, but I could go for some of the duller more ordinary days we used to have.

I’d be ok with that.