Sunday, May 20, 2012

Three Days Of Spring - And A Few Indians

 I have been hearing stories of miracles, and amazing events that happen all
around us. Wonderful gifts. I am told that all I have to do is open my eyes and
look - and there they are! Or, open my heart to them - and they will be mine!
 Well, I don't doubt that at all. But I would wish for a miracle, or an amazing
event, a little closer to myself, and within my own life.

I woke up in the middle of the night (a few hours ago) after dreaming about a
house filled with ghosts. These were not the scary ghosts of movies, who come to haunt us, but pitiful souls who had died and seemed to be lost. Or maybe they were frightened by what was happening to them and tried to turn back. I am not criticizing them nor making fun. They died, after all, and that is not a pleasant thing for most people.

 Well, here's an Amazing Event in my own life. On April 6, 2008, at 4:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon, I died. It was a sudden cardiac arrest, diagnosed as "Sudden Cardiac Death" in the hospital. That alone is not amazing. What amazes me is that it was so easy to die - and so pleasant! I had been exercising on a stationary bike, and feeling disappointed with my poor physical performance.
I was 57 years old with a diseased heart and should not have been disappointed, but I was. I wished for the strength I no longer had, to be the man I could no longer be. And I tried - very hard - to be greater than I was. I pedalled that bike, furiously, determined to win a race against time, and against myself. I was like a man flapping his arms faster and faster, hoping to leave the ground and fly. Then, in an amazing moment, I did!
 I not only left the ground, I left my body. I left the Earth. I left this world, and I left my life behind. No more body. No more need to breathe. No more
weight to carry. No more pain. No more disappointment. I was free. I was a soul - nothing more, and nothing less.

 Confused at first, I soon realized that I was really dead. Not the "dead" we see in movies or read about in books, but dead for real. And "dead for real" means "still alive!".

 That was Miracle #1 and an Amazing Event. I was dead, yet still alive.
[April 6, 2008]

 I remained that way, in a hospital bed, for 13 days. My family stood on the
shore of a silent sea. Looking out into the endless dark. As if looking for a
missing boat. Wondering what had happened to me. Where did I go? Would I ever come back. Would I lie there in bed, in a coma, forever? I could not tell them where I was. I could not remember who I had been, nor where I had been. Then, after 13 days, the ventilator was removed from my body, with no one knowing if I would breathe on my own again.
 At that time, I remember falling back into my body, and with a gasp, I started
breathing without help from anyone. It was like being born all over again. But I was reborn into the same old body, now brutally injured from the trauma of
death. But I was alive in my own body, again.

That was Miracle #2. I was reborn. [April 19, 2008]

 The recovery time was easy for me but terribly hard for my wife and my son.
The complete loss of oxygen, and absence of a heartbeat for 12 - 15 minutes, following my cardiac arrest, had left my brain in a kaleidoscope of confusion. I didn't know who I was, or where I was, and I was mostly blinded by tunnel vision - also known as partial cortical blindness; and surprisingly, I didn't care at all.
 I babbled, and talked about God and Spirits, especially the Spirits of Native American "Indians", whom I claimed were there in my hospital room, protecting me from any harm - physical or spiritual. My family was told that I might never return to sanity again, and that I might never be able to live outside of a medical institution.

 To their credit, my Indian friends, Spirits I now love dearly, did a fine job of preserving me during the next four weeks. A beautiful Indian "Princess", forever carrying an orphaned, and injured, baby deer in her arms, saw me through open-heart surgery, and along with Hopi Spirits, stood guard against a terribly evil, unearthly being whose insatiable desire is to steal children away from their parents, and from their genetic legacy. He wanted my soul, as if with a vengeance. During my 13 days of morbidity, the Spirit of a medicine man/chief named "Old Man" (from the year 1833) had warned me about this "evil one" - who had been, and is also to come, and said "His name is called Stork". (Might be spelled "Storch")
 Everyday since, I have searched the internet for such a man - as a favor to the "Old Man", who lost his future generations to child theft, and to whom I am gladly indebted.

 Those were a few more of my Amazing Events.

 Finally, after a total of six weeks in the hospital, my "sanity" returned to me, along with my normal vision. It happened overnight, as I was sleeping. I
simply awakened at about four o'clock in the morning, and I was "me" again.
 Today, I refer to "sanity" in quotes, because I doubt that our earthbound
reality is anything less than bizarre. While I was dead, I had no body parts,
did not need them, and there was nothing in me that could malfunction. I was
sane for two eternal weeks. I now miss that freedom, greatly.

 So, after six weeks, I was released from the hospital, able to return to daily
life. This story has been about me, so I haven't recounted the death of my
father, in 1973. Let me just say that he, too, died of a sudden cardiac arrest
on May 16, 1973. On that date, after failing to resuscitate him, I followed his
ambulance to the hospital, from which he never returned.
 I, on the other hand, as if forgiven by my father for having failed to save his
life, was released from the hospital, on that same date, but alive!

 Both a Miracle and an Amazing Event. [May 16, 2008]

 And if that wasn't enough to humble me, the time from April 6 to May 16 was Forty Days - and Forty Nights! It protected me, sheltered me, quieted me. While hospitalized, the state of mind in which I was captive was an Ark for me. It isolated me from the storm of life that is all around us. It gave me time to heal. It brought helping hands and compassionate hearts to my bedside.
 Grateful, you ask? Of course I am! For forty days and forty nights, I was safe
from it all.

 Today, four years later, I appreciate the insights and teachings of the wisest
among us. I understand 'wonder', and 'gratitude', and 'thinking positive', and
'opening my heart and mind to the wonders of life', etc. It's just that when I
desire the benefits of such actions, I don't have to look outside of myself - not anymore. I've had my Miracles. I've had my Amazing Events. They are a part
of me, now.

 If others don't believe what I have experienced, then I would like to remind
them that there is so much more to Life than "only us". Humans are not the measure of all things, nor of anything at all. We are not here to receive. We are here to give. We are here to give what is greater than us - to give what we do not possess. And yet, it is granted to us that we be the givers of it.
 That, to me, is the greatest, and most amazing, miracle of all.

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