EP 128 - The Friend at the End - Part VI

As we ended the last episode, the doctor had told me to eat, and oh man, did I start eating. Looking back on it, I call it ‘Healing in the Beehive,” because they put me on a standard American diet loaded with carbohydrates and sugar. And I loved every bit of it. Cheeseburgers, tuna melt sandwiches, cookies, cake, pie a la mode. You name it. It was like going down a nostalgic memory lane of the favorite foods of my childhood.

I stayed in the hospital for a total of ten days.

They explained to me that I had suffered a massive stroke, but for some reason, call it grace, luck or both, the huge blood clot that had caused it found its resting place in my lower right cerebellum. Although that part of the brain is responsible for movement and balance, and the clot had destroyed a large portion of it, it landed in a place that did me no lasting harm, except for a very minor visual impairment. It wiped out a small portion of my left peripheral vision, which just happens to have been where I started seeing that light in the beginning that started the whole thing.

During my stay in the hospital, it seemed like everyone who was taking care of me reminded me again and again of how lucky I had been. It was kind of funny because I really didn’t have that much of a direct connection to my actual situation. I mean in my experience, I did have a day or two of being pretty out of it, but that’s about it, I was pretty out of it. And then the next thing I knew, I felt fine. Of course, Sally knew what had really happened because she had lived through it. But in essence, I kind of slept through it.  And if I hadn’t been told how sick I’d been and how close to death I had actually come, I would never have known it. 

Anyway, during the hospital stay, it seemed like I was constantly presented with reminders of my situation . One night, for example, they brought me a piece of cherry pie ala mode, which was always one of my most favorite desserts,  and I always get it with vanilla ice cream. Early on, that combination of cherry and vanilla had become a central part of my happy reward center.

 When I got to dessert and uncovered the plate, I saw that it had chocolate ice cream on the pie rather than vanilla. It was a bummer, but hey, I could handle it. 

“Oh,” I said, somewhat disappointed as I looked at the plate.

A doctor was in the room, just finishing up his quick exam of me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Oh nothing,” I replied. “It’s just that they brought me the wrong ice cream. I like vanilla on my cherry pie and they brought me chocolate. It’s no big deal.”

“Do you know where you are?” the doctor asked me, quizzically.

“Sure,” I replied, “I’m in the hospital.”

“You’re in the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of Neuroscience. You’ve had a massive stroke and you’re in the intensive care unit,” he corrected me. “And you know what? Most people get carried out of here or they get wheeled out. And it looks like you’re going to just stand up and walk away from all this.”

He wasn’t confrontational at all. He was very nice, but he was clearly making his point. “If I were you,” he added, “I wouldn’t be thinking too much about chocolate and vanilla anymore.” He smiled at me and left the room.

I got the message and took it in. It never hurts to be reminded of how fortunate you really are.

Finally, my blood levels got to the right point and they decided to let me go.

At the end, when I was ready to leave, I was sitting in my room and the head nurse came in to do some final paper work and say good-bye. Her name was Anna. She was in her late-forties and had come over from Russia about 20 years earlier. She saw me several times every day and we had become quite close.

“You know, David, we have a folder here that we call the Hand of God Folder and that’s where your file’s going,” she said as she was filling out a form. “It’s for cases where a horrible tragedy could have happened, but for some reason it didn’t. And we can’t explain it. We don’t know how these remarkable things happen. If we did we would certainly try to do it ourselves. But we can’t. So –we have the Hand of God Folder…”

She kept writing and then she looked up at me.

“OK, we’re done,” she concluded. “Now, don’t take this the wrong way. You’re a very nice person and I’m glad we got to know each other. But I hope I never see you again.”

She paused for a moment and looked me in the eye. I felt intuitively that she was about to say something deeply meaningful or me, and as soon as she began talking, I knew I was right.

“Look, you were here for ten days. I’ve been here for twelve years, and believe me, I’ve seen everything. And you really have no idea what happened here and, let alone what you’ve been spared from.

“Let’s just put it this way,” she continued, “For the rest of your life, if you woke up every morning and before you did anything, you got down on your knees and thanked God for the miracle that happened here, you’d still be understating it.

“And even from just a medical perspective, this really was a miracle.” She went silent for a moment or two. “And believe me, you’ll never be able to come up with the amount of gratitude in your heart that would be appropriate for the gift that you’ve been given. Never. Ever.”

Moving me to silence, her words went straight to my heart.

“Well, I’m sure you’re right.” I thought to myself, deeply moved. And then something hit me, “Well, at least I can try.” Then another thought hit me, “Not a bad way to spend the rest of your life.”

“Thank you, dear,” I finally said to her. “Thanks for everything.”

She hugged me, gave me a kiss on the cheek and had me sit in the wheelchair that was mandatory for check outs. She wheeled me out into the hall, where Sally was waiting for me. They talked warmly for a few minutes, then my ever-faithful wife took the chair from her, and with rock-steady hands, wheeled me out to the car and drove me back home.

Within a few months, I made a complete recovery from the stroke and was able to return to my normal life once again. It kind of felt like nothing had happened and physically, nothing really had. All my faculties were intact and my life went back to business as usual.

          But that was all on the outside. Within myself, I was never really the same again. How could I be? When you’ve been unexpectantly taken to the Exit Door like that and then you’re suddenly given another chance, it can be subtle, but everything on the inside changes.

Now, for the most part, we all have our normal routines, our responsibilities, and of course, our hopes and fears. But as the years go on, most of our focus goes to solving our problems, big or small.  It becomes a never-ending process and we can end up taking the best parts of our lives for granted while ignoring the incredible beauty that’s within us and around us.

For me, that had all come to a sudden, screeching halt and I had been removed from my own routine for quite some time.  Now, as I returned to it, even though externally it was basically the same, with the understanding that I had been given a second chance, I was seeing it with eyes that were drenched with gratitude.   

But something else was running through me as well. A feeling kept welling up within, like a powerful current at the bottom of the ocean that you can’t see from the surface, but you can certainly feel it if you’re standing in it. In this way, deep in the core of my being, I kept feeling a strong determination to make the most out of whatever time I had left.

In that regard, as the stroke had begun and I was instructed to prepare to die, at one point I was asked if I had learned anything. And that simple question led me to realize how much I actually had learned about the higher understandings in life. At that point, I felt content with how I had lived and how much I had learned and I quickly came to the conclusion that if my time on Earth was really coming to an end at that point, I felt ready for it. 

Now, looking back on these extremely powerful events, I could see that my inner growth, the evolution of my awareness, was clearly the most important part of my life.

 

And that made perfect sense because everything on the outside, my relationships with my family and friends, my life in the world, in essence who I thought I was and what I was doing, was just a basic reflection of my inner being, which was who I really was, within myself.

I understood that I really could have easily died at that point, but I didn’t.

Instead, I had been given more time and I was starting to grasp what a tremendous opportunity that was. Whether I had a few more months, a few more years or a few more decades, it was becoming clear that my focus was to keep on growing toward the highest. So, I returned to my inner practices with a renewed sense of determination.

But I was in for an unexpected and rather pleasant surprise. It had all gotten much easier.

Actually, looking back on it, it made perfect sense. A lot of the allure of the outer life had fallen away. A close brush with death has a way of doing that to you. It automatically reorganizes your priorities. Trivial things become really trivial. And what matters most, becomes what really matters the most.

Now, my practices still required making effort, but things were very different. It was like what happens when winter starts turning into spring. You have the same back yard, but what a difference. The frost is melting and the frozen stream starts running again. Soon buds appear and the scene becomes filled with beautiful flowers and birds, not to mention the sweet fragrances that continually fill the air.

But as beautiful as it is, it still requires conscious effort to tend the garden. But this is a different kind of effort – it’s the effort of finding, rather than the effort of searching. Although the outer may seem to remain the same, like a rocket that finally escapes the earth’s atmosphere, with the resistance gone, the inner transformation keeps picking up speed.

So, to go from a space age analogy to an ancient one – as the Zen saying put it a couple of thousand years ago – Before Enlightenment: Chopping Wood and Carrying Water. After Enlightenment: Chopping Wood and Carrying Water. And to close with a much newer old statement from a song by David Byrne Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

Well, let’s let these observations put a timeless end to this episode. And as always, keep your eyes mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.