Romance, disappointment and the nature of not getting what you need

 The title says it all, right? 

How do we reconcile our need for romance, connection and intimacy... with the fundamental nature of disappointment? It can be argued that no one person can satisfy every need another person might have. In part because there are parts that remain unvoiced yet just as needy as the parts which are being voiced. Disappointment climbs right into bed with abandonment at the first sign of failure. Whatever that failure is, it means catastrophe. That's where I am... thinking about feelings. Probably better to feel the feelings, think the thoughts and tell the story.

When I was a teenager, I fell in love with someone who was unable to respond in kind. We tried to form our young relationship around teenage sex without understanding all of the stepping stones necessary to build trust to eventually build a solid base for a relationship. Instead we took on roles for one another. I was a life jacket in a sea full of heroin, cocaine and such. She was an out-of-reach, unattainable yet fixable problem just begging for the right solution. My family had two parents, a steady income, relative normalcy, and stability. She read Kerouac and Dostoevsky, and knew every cool band from our parent's generation. 

We met when we were in middle school. She was a year ahead of me in school. Through some rather odd circumstances, I was placed in her physical science class mid-year. We sat across from one another. She was smart and understood more of what was going on in class than I did. She struggled with math, but that made sense to me. I did too. The assumption from the principal was that I would be challenged by being in a more advanced class, but my focus was purely on the person sitting across from me. Occasionally we would walk home from school together. The long walk gave us a chance to talk and to get to know one another. I was new in the neighborhood. Friendless. Of course the attention and affection of a cute girl threw my head into a tailspin. So many things happen in middle school... none of them good. If I hadn't been white, middle class, and heterosexual, I am sure I would have ended up in jail. Suffice to say, I did some bad things. That's a story (or two) for another day. 

Eventually I skipped a year and we ended up entering high school at the same time. We ended up in the same honors English class. Mrs. Doyle had no idea what to do with us. Most of our peers were still trying to figure out grammar and basic writing skills. We wanted to write like the people we were reading. She had her head in Tolstoy at the time. I was discovering Richard Brautigan and Ray Bradbury. Our classmates had to be assigned weekly readings which just seemed silly to us. What the fuck else do you do with your life, if not reading? We read a lot back then. 

On weekends, if we could arrange transportation we would hop on the Metrorail and go downtown to the big city library... multiple stories and full of hundreds of times more books than our local small town library. They also loaned out records and tapes, which meant I was constantly finding new things to listen to. Sometimes we would take the train further south and hop off in South Miami and go to one of the record stores. Occasionally we would walk through Coral Gables and go to a used Blues record store called the Bluenote. I remember sorting through LPs and 45s of Lightning Hopkins and Leadbelly and Clarence Gatemouth Brown and Robert Johnson... amidst the dust and the cigarette/weed smoke. It was other wordly. Because we could get there, no one cared that we went. Out of sight, out of mind.

Once in a while we'd go to the "new" record store, Peaches. Near the University, it was definitely a few steps up for us. Prices were higher, that's for sure. But they had popular music, rock n' roll, punk... and they sold concert tickets. This was before Ticketmaster came and screwed up everything. For a big name band, we'd camp out for a night and be early in line when they went on sale in the morning. We were maybe fourteen, fifteen.

She had a boyfriend who was thirty-something. About the same age as my parents. She would describe in detail the drugs used and the sex they had... leaving me wondering what the hell I was sitting there for. I had no idea I could just walk away. So I stuck around thinking that if I helped somehow, if I could find something in me that was better than shooting smack into her veins, then maybe we could make it work. Wholly unrealistic. But we stayed friends. The romance was awkward. We both took whatever was offered, because we were starved.... knowing that it wasn't enough. It wasn't what we needed... but it was all the person had to give. So we gave as much as we could give till we both we dry, always afraid to ask for what we needed. I cannot speak for what she saw in our friendship. I know that my home life was a myth. Lies that looked like suburbia... but were really just a facade. The abandonment, neglect and abuse I experienced was very real, just colored in stucco and closely mown grass. 

I would oftentimes stop by her house after going for long bike rides in the evening. When I had exercised the day's demons from my system, but before going home, I would stop by her parent's house. Most nights her mom was tending bar and her grandmother would have gone to bed for the night. We would listen to the Doors or Bob Dylan on her stereo in her bedroom. It was a crappy stereo, always on the edge of not functioning. When the needle on the turntable died, she would often have to wait weeks before either getting a replacement stylus or just buying another compact stereo to replace it. Needles were expensive back then. 

Depending on which drugs she had taken in the afternoon or evening, she would sometimes be in the mood to talk or listen. Sometimes she'd be so high she'd just want to make out. The next thing I knew Riders On the Storm would be reaching crescendo and her tongue would be in my ear. I had no idea I could say no. It never occurred to me. Hormones raging, boundaries vaporizing. 

When we were at school, folks assumed that on some level we were a couple. But we weren't. Not really. She had a boyfriend, and she made sure that I understood that. She talked about him more than she talked about music or literature or school or home stuff or anything else. Because adult sex with underage minors was a crime, she'd seldom use his proper name. He wouldn't come around her house. She would have to sneak away to see him. Her life revolved around clandestine trysts, sex wherever, and a roulette wheel of drugs. 

 Every few weeks I would find some new band or musician and I would bring a tape over to show her. We'd listen to it for a few minutes, but it wasn't what she wanted to hear. It wasn't Dylan or the Doors. So, after a few patient, strained minutes, we'd put on whatever she felt was more appropriate for the evening. I'd ride home later, usually sexually frustrated, aroused and confused. Worse, I felt like the things I was offering were meaningless. Here's a new band... nah... pass. That was hard. 

I'll wrap up this story with our trip to St. Petersburg to sell t-shirts at the Grateful Dead concert. We were nearly done with high school. I had a car... and I sold tie-dyed shirts at local concerts in Miami. The Dead came to down in the late 80s and we saw them in Miami... but decided to follow them to St. Pete to see if we could sell more shirts. The Deadheads were already massing when we arrived. They filled the parking lot in front of the Salvador Dali museum. I don't even think Dali could have imagined a more surreal scene. People getting stoned in public, playing music on/over/under tarps or cars or vans, offering blowjobs for a grilled cheese sandwich all while surrounded by tie dye as far as the eye could see.  Like I said, it was surreal. 

We opted to stay in an old hotel right near the concert venue. Paid for our room and went upstairs only to find that the room didnt have hot water. During the evening, she was coming down from the heroin she had done before we left. Not in any shape to go to the concert or sell shirts, she passed out in the bed while I listened to the crowd trying to push down the gate so they could crash the show. Police sirens serenaded me to sleep. 

On waking up, I thought there would be our first opportunity to have sex without one of our family members walking in on us. (Another story for another time). Needless to say, it didnt happen. Instead, she was in the throws of needing a fix. Her sweat was half junk and half grilled cheese in rancid oil. Not a romantic moment. We hit the road back to Miami, rather than having breakfast in a diner... we just pressed on. Sooner home, the sooner this debacle would be behind me. 

Driving across the Everglades on Alligator Alley in my mom's old Toyota minivan... we had Michelle Shocked cranked up. The minivan was such a shit design. They put the engine right under the driver's ass, so it was always overly hot in the van. Even with the AC cranked up,  you needed the windows open to not overheat. Listening to Making the Run to Gladewater, with the base guitar thumping in time to the cracks in the concrete pavement on Alligator Alley... and wanting nothing more than to be home, sitting on the couch, AC cranked up. I felt like such a failure. No shirts sold, money spent on a shitty night in a hotel, no concert, no sex, no fun. Worse, she was sick as shit the whole drive home. Five hours of driving that felt like an eternity. I had given everything I had (which arguably wasn't much!) but I felt empty handed. Disconnected, broken hearted and hurt. Somehow, I knew it was all my fault.

Forty years later I am trying to learn how to have healthy boundaries.

 Tomorrow we either turn the face of our nation into the sun and wind

or we embrace shame and rancor.

I fear for my adult child.

I fear for my nieces in Texas where their bodies are not their own.

No matter where I turn my eyes,

I see hatred, violence, division. 

I tried the usual distractions and found no solace.

I am not ignorant enough to think that by midnight tomorrow we will have a new president.

I expect we will have to wait for months, if not years perhaps to exhaust the legal proceedings.

I have never experienced this sort of dread before.

In 2017, I expected Trump to leave office almost immediately once he realized it was a service job.

Now he has his sights on imitating Hitler and Mussolini.  

Something has to change. Citizens United needs to be overturned.

Women's health needs to be exactly the same as men's health. Total bodily autonomy.

Health care needs to be free for everyone... and not tied to your employer.

The rich need to be taxed to the fullest extent possible. 

My fear is that this is impossible. 

If this simple thing is impossible, what hope is there?

What does liberty mean if it only applies to the rich white men?

Scene from a Mexican restaurant

 Morning comes early in the Springtime desert. Before the glow of dawn becomes raw rays of sunshine, the scent of the portulaca and roses fill the air. 

No one wants to cook inside today. It's going to be hot. In the pre-dawn hours, breakfast, lunch and dinner preparations are taking place under the wooden-roofed open shelter. The big clay stove crackles with the first logs of the morning ablaze. Smoky mesquite wafts in tiny streams over the rusty tin roof. 

The big clay pots on the stove are already starting to bubble. In a little while, the red teapot that looks suspiciously like a tin chicken, will begin to whistle. With water ready for tea, my morning can start. The late sleepers can have their percolated coffee... I need the quiet for my milky tea and I to greet the dawn.

The low stone and adobe wall provides the perfect place to rest my tired ass. No amount of sleep satisfies the deep need for more rest. The smoky tea, sweet enough to cut the bitter, is just enough to pry my eyes awake. Long shadows roam across the open yard, chasing slow chickens and sleeping dogs. 

I would hold this morning in my hands forever, but the memory is sand and my fat fingers cannot hold the slippery grains. 

Back in the open kitchen, onions are being sliced methodically. Fresh peppers join the onions in the huge open cast iron pans. Simmering in leftover fat from the chorizo, the onions take on the rich red oil. Once the garlic has been added, and the soaking guajillo peppers are ready, everything will simmer on the cool side of the stove for a while. Tia is peeling tomatillos for the salsa verde that will cook most of the morning. Later today the pork will be added and tonight we'll have my favorite tacos. 

This morning's breakfast will have to wait. With only a few of us awake and working, the kitchen is slow to get moving. Even the dogs know that there are no scraps to beg for yet. I helped Tia bring over the big comal to the adobe stove. Once everything warms up, we'll all have fresh tortillas that smell like fresh air and toasted corn.  

Before the percolating coffee has finished, I am already being told to go scatter feed for the chickens. No one wants them underfoot in the kitchen. The dusty dogs stir and let it be known that they want breakfast too. Two of them join me to help fetch water from the standpipe. Nothing wrong with each of us catching a quick drink of cold water from the faucet. With the bucket full of water, I head back to the kitchen. 

The water joins the other pots on the stove and starts heating up. There's always something that needs boiling water. Rattling lids echo the soft knife cuts against the wooden cutting boards. The happy chickens murmur and purr their contentment. It is this place where I can fall asleep again. I close my eyes just for a moment as the sun peaks around the low walls. For a moment the light is warm and the kitchen is warmer. Slowly they combine like a silty canal and I am left with my closed eyes feeling hot to the touch. 

When I open my eyes, everything is gone. 

The dusty yard is there, but the dogs and chickens are gone. The kitchen is bare and cold. The light is gone, night is here. Everyone and everything is gone. The last smell of the night is the Cerus, blooming in total disregard to everything else.

Invitation from a raven

 The grey skies are wet sails full of ice and wet.

Ravens swing low over the garden, inviting me to join their frolic.

Trees are reduced to coat racks.

By early afternoon the sun is tired and weary. 

It must be difficult to bring warmth when all around is chilled to the bone. 

Inside the house the floor's chill sucks the comfort away. 

Now and again,  I hear the raven's invitation, and again.

If I were a better friend, I would join them. 

The bathroom cleaning can wait. Dinner can be late. 

Flying is the order of the day,  at least that's what the ravens say.

Cold hands tie me down with rotten shoelaces. 

Gritty snow slips inside my boots, leaving me colder and wetter. 

One last look to the west and the final sliver of sun snuffs out,

Leaving nothing to hold back the cold wind.

Timing is everything when it comes to ravens and the Emergency Room

 This morning I watched pine cones pretending to be autumn leaves. They did their best parachute impersonation. Splat, crunch. 

The morning light was a wan yellow haze. Glow permeated everything, even reflecting off the ever-browning leaves. No rain this month has left the air filled with dust and debris from autumn detritus. Milkweed and cattails have spilled their guts to the air. 

Three weeks ago, I came home from the hospital. This time it was a short visit; only four days. Congestive heart failure caught up to me at last. My grandfather died from congestive heart failure not long after Mt. St. Helens blew up. I remember reading the National Geographic issue with the eruption as the lead story. Timing is everything. I was heading into fourth grade that fall. After his last call to my mom, he had explained that there was ash falling in Wyoming... miles and miles from Washington where the eruption occurred. As a kid, that seemed impossible. Bit by bit, as I watched the news and saw whole towns where day was turned to night by falling volcanic ash, I came to realize how enormous this eruption was. And then my grandfather died.

We never had all the talks we were meant to have. Only the brief talks kids have when they know there will be more time later on. 

Six weeks ago my nephew Jack was murdered by the police on the road that led to where my grandfather had lived, and where recently Jack had lived too. Off the grid. Off the beaten path. Jack had been stopped for an outstanding warrant, but when he came out of his vehicle with a gun, he was killed. No judge or jury. 

I learned about Jack's death from another cousin in Montana who I hadn't heard from in years. A few days later, I heard from David Hall, eldest son of my uncle Ed Hall. The last time I saw David I had just gotten married for the first time and was on my honeymoon road trip across the country. I think David was probably in high school. His call was a huge surprise. He and I talked about family stuff that we should have talked about over the last thirty years.... but we hadn't had those conversations. Timing is everything. 

David told me about his younger brother Benjamin having had a heart transplant the same day that Jack was killed. Timing. Oy.

We talked about how David had experienced a heart attack when he was in his twenties. Ben had lived with an LVAD device until his heart replacement. My mother has congestive heart failure too. We all inherited it from my grandfather. 

When I was in the hospital emergency room, my brain was on full alert. I hate our local hospital. They nearly killed me 13 years ago. This in the same hospital that kept me in a coma for 6 weeks waiting for me to die nearly every day. Going back to the ER was difficult. I had chest pain and trouble breathing. I had been told by my asthma doctors a few months ago that I just needed different asthma meds and my breathing would get easier. When I called the doctor that Thursday, they prescribed more medications. By Friday morning, the doctor's office called and said I should go to the emergency room. I spent the day trying to understand why I needed to spend hours and hours in the ER. What was wrong? They just kept telling me to go to the hospital. I finally relented at 3pm. 

Over the next 9 hours, I would go from struggling to catch my breath after walking across the parking lot, to barely being able to breathe at all. My blood pressure sky rocketed. My anxiety and PTSD exploded in my chest. Leto was kind enough to join me in the ER. I was completely unable to get my panic under control. After the first eight hours of waiting to be examined, I finally was able to meet with a doctor to discuss my bloodwork, x-rays and EKG. He explained very gently that the x-rays showed dentritic formations, so they had been able to rule out pneumonia. He had asked that Lasix (a diuretic) be given. He was working under the impression that something was very wrong with my heart. The last time I had been in this hospital, thirteen years ago, I had been tachycardic for a few seconds while my body was septic after the anastamosis had failed and I was becoming septic. 

The ER doctor finally said the words: congestive heart failure or cardiovascular disease. 

Knowing that my mother had lived with congestive heart failure for the last thirty years, I figured it wasn't an emergency. As the doctor continued talking about the various tests that needed to be run, I asked if I should just go home and schedule these tests for another time. The ER doc was a fairly tall fellow. He stretched back on the examination stool, and looked at me. He adjusted his mask, cleared his throat and explained that if I went home, I would likely die. 

Timing is everything.

Panic washed over me like a tsunami. After the doctor left the exam room, Leto resumed playing Robin Williams on YouTube over our phone.  The ICU department brought down the big black standing fan so I could have moving air in the closed space. As soon as I saw the fan, I broke down. Tears streamed down my face. It was like seeing an old friend. That fan, that EXACT fan, had gotten me through the worst of my coma and my subsequent recovery. That fan had been my best friend while I sweated my way through pneumonia for over a week with a 104 fever, and had needed my trach tube suctioned every five minutes as it clogged with phlegm. The hospital allowed me to bring the big fan with me when I left the ICU and moved to rehab. It was my constant friend in the hospital. And here it was again! 

As the night dragged into the next day, I was assigned a room upstairs. The staff moved me from the ER into my own room and they brought the fan up too. By now, I had been in the hospital nearly twelve hours and it was nearly dawn. I met the night nursing staff. They patiently set me up for the night, explaining about how my urine output would be measured due to the Lasix, and how blood would be drawn again at 5am. With the fan pouring over me, and the air conditioning on high, I slept for a few hours while Leto snored in the bed beside me. Yes, they let Leto stay in the room. I think they figured out early on that I would have someone by my side until I left the hospital.

Over the next three and a half days, I would have a dozen blood draws, six different nurses and six different aides, six different hospitalists, two cardiologists... and finally a trip to the cath lab. The catheterization was why I had needed to stay in the hospital over the weekend. Rural hospitals dont do catheterizations on the weekend. No staffing. They couldn't even do an echocardiogram. 

Monday morning, 7am, I was wheeled down the dark hall towards the ICU and the cath lab. I thought I had forgotten that hall. Nope. It was just as horrifying as the last time I had been wheeled down that hall. 

As I laid in the prep room, and my arm and groin were shaved in preparation for the catheterization procedure, the cath nurse started explaining the procedure. What they could and couldn't do at this hospital. Since they didn't have a heart surgeon on staff, there was not a ton they could do if I had complicated blocked arteries. Leto asked what would happen if they discovered complications... and she said that I would be flown to Rochester to Strong Memorial. I nearly shit myself. We were no longer okay. Everything spun. My heart rate went through the roof. I think my blood pressure might have doubled. I remember being given some Valium. 

I was surprised when the echocardiogram started. I didnt realize they would do it in the prep room. After fifteen minutes of trying to get a good image of my heart, they gave me a dose of contrast agent. The tech performing the echo was quick, efficient and patient. She said something about my ejection fraction but the rushing in my ears kept me from understanding. Next thing I knew, I was being wheeled into the catheterization theater. Operating theaters are awful places. Especially if you are laying on your back. You are one step away from the abattoir. The room was chilled down to about 60F and I was suddenly much more awake than the Valium should have allowed for. They started to transfer me from the gurney to the exam table, and I asked if I could just get up and walk over to the table myself. All of a sudden, they realized I was fully capable of moving myself into position. The cath lab nurse and I continued to talk about chai, yes chai tea. We had been talking about where to get good cardamon seeds for chai. 

One of the things they had told me before my procedure was if they needed to put a stent into my arteries I would be spending the night in the ICU. If that wasn't necessary, I would be returned to my room and would go home the following day. 

Before I knew it, I was being cleaned up and wheeled back to my room. Apparently my arteries were clear as a bell and big enough to drive a truck through. My ejection fraction though. They kept using that phrase. 

Later on Monday afternoon, I got my first visit from the three cardiologists. One was the ghost of Christmas past, one was the ghost of Christmas future, and the other remembered I was a Jew and don't celebrate Christmas or believe in ghosts. The first cardiologist said that I could go home tomorrow, Tuesday. The second cardiologist said so many things, but her favorite word was "mortality". If it had been a drinking game, I would have been laid flat on the floor with the number of times she said: mortality. Then she explained all the new drugs. They had stupid names. Like names of designer clothes or perfumes. Made up fancy names. Then I met my "new" cardiologist. 

My new cardiologist looked at me and started right in with saying the same things that everyone else had said. Arteries clear but ejection fraction below 35%. He said I would be going home the following day with follow up, blah blah blah. I asked if I could resume my normal activities. He said something about avoiding typing for a few days to keep the wrist area where they had inserted the catheterization device from having any issues. I asked if I could work in the garden. This would be the first of our many misunderstandings. 

He thought I meant pick a few berries or zucchini. I explained that we move multiple wheelbarrow loads of compost every day. We plant dozens of plants every single day. He said something about how we were actually farming. Leto and I both laughed... oh, no. We are definitely gardeners. We started explaining about how we garden for our critters and birds. He was very confused at this point. We explained that we have multiple ravens who fly overhead each day to check on what we're doing. He immediately said that there were no ravens in our area, they only fly singly, and what we saw were crows. I laughed and explained how we had watched these ravens for three years, knew them by their calls and he kept interrupting to say that he was sure they were crows. Finally, Leto sat up in bed and said "what black bird in North America has the wingspan of a red tail hawk and a beak over three inches long and croaks?" The cardiologist said "who are you?" Leto explained their relationship and then explained that they were an animal behaviorist. They went on to explain their research into the behavior of cichlids from the African Rift lakes that they had researched at Reed College. Needless to say, the cardiologist finally acquiesced.  

On Tuesday, the let me walk out of the hospital. No wheelchair, no supervision. I explained that I drove stick shift. They suggested I take it easy on the drive home. Yeah... impeccable timing. 

So here I am three weeks later, having seen the cardiologist yesterday. I have appointments for more tests and another echocardiogram in two months. In the meantime, I will be outside at every opportunity, conversing with our resident ravens. Moving wheelbarrow loads of compost and woodchips. And having conversations with my grandfather in my head.

Trading stories for feathers - a working title

 Waking up is the hardest part. 

Not the leaving sleep part, but the part where the inside your dreams is abandoned for whatever is happening outside your body. 

When I found myself warm on one side, cold and wet on the other... it wasn't unexpected. The shallow scraped out hollow was warm where I had laid. My backside was pressed firmly against the ewe, who was also solidly asleep. My eyes were just about ground level, scanning across the rough dirt. There was a frost last night. Not brutal cold but still cold. 

Every warm bone in my body argued with the chilled side that faced out of the byre. There was work to be done. In a few hours, the sun would be up. But first it was time to go and talk to the birds. I had been mocked for talking with the birds. Folks generally didn't get it. The conversation went both ways. In the hours before the dew saw the first rays of sunshine, we would gather near the hedge. Some mornings it was just a few of us, the birds and I. Other mornings it would be so crowded with everyone trying to get a word in edgewise. 

I sat down atop a flat stone near the hedge, forgetting for a moment how cold it had been last night. The rock was quick to remind me. With my eyes closed, feeling for the last stillness of the not-quite-broken-dawn, I reached out. It was really nothing more than listening with more than my ears. Holding the silence close while spiderwebs sparkled and held nothing more than diamonds in their webs, I waited. 

The first warm beam of light came over the hill gently. I felt it first as the leaves behind me turned to listen too. Even the flat rock craned to listen. 

Waiting is always the hardest part. There is always that fear that today will be the day when no one comes. The day when the birds act like people. Worse, maybe today they will mock me too. I never really understood why people in town felt like they had to tease me. If someone had told me that they couldn't hear what birds and trees were saying, why didn't they tell me that? So instead I assumed innocently, that other kids would want to share their stories they had heard from the birds and leaves and stones. Maybe other kids' parents told them not to talk to birds or maybe they were afraid of the things the trees had to say. I just didn't know.

By the time the light mist had started to lift, the smallest of birds had found a spot to perch beside me. At first, they were content to just stare across the field with me. We exchanged a few looks back and forth, but after each glance, we would return to looking out into the wet grass of the field. A sharp chirp from behind me made me turn around. A chipmunk had decided to come join in the conversation but will still trying to work up the courage to explain everything they had seen this morning. 

MORE TO COME - 

Revisiting Thirteen Years Ago - another introduction to the coma dreams

 It is such a strange thing to reflect on. Thirteen years ago, I was dying in the ICU. The surgery that was supposed to fix my diverticulitis had gone sideways. The anastomosis had failed, allowing fecal waste to enter the abdominal cavity. This led to sepsis and peritonitis along with about a dozen other catastrophic issues. I was dying. They had done an emergency surgery, performed a lavage, and given me a colostomy. They sent me back up to the ICU knowing full well that I was still dying. 

How do you reflect on reading the notes from surgeons who you trust/ed with your life, when their very notes clearly indicate that survival was not guaranteed. By the time I read the surgical notes five days post first surgery, the notes from the surgeons and ICU intensivists read like a very confused teenager being asked to write a book report that they forgot to read. Thirteen years later, it does not inspire confidence.

So I was dying. 

I guess we all are, whether or not we choose to recognize our mortality as being far off or imminent. It is the other side of the monotony of living. The abruptness of dying. 

I hadn't done anything wrong. I wasn't in the ICU because of a car crash. I hadn't overdosed on drugs. I hadn't fallen from a ladder. Nevertheless, I was dying. That's what the notes all said. Five days post-operative emergency. Yesterday I sat here when I should have been off to bed. I put on music I hadn't listened to in thirteen years. I let myself get carried back into the eddies in the current of time. I pushed against the double doors that opened onto the ICU, where the lights were all set low. And there I saw my dying.

I have looked at my death from myriad perspectives each time it has come to greet me. Always curious, slightly confused, always hyper-aware. Those memories have stuck like tar on a hot day. When I was in first grade, I was riding my bike to school. I was crossing one of the busier streets in Hialeah, in the crosswalk, with the light red and cars stopped. A white Camaro ran the red light. There was no sound of brakes until after I felt my bike torn from under me and I was on the hood of the car, pressed against the windshield. My mom had followed me to school that day, driving just behind me. I don't know if I imagined it, or if I really saw her over my shoulder... but I remember her face in a rictus of screaming fear as I entered the crosswalk. I was dying in that instant. By the time I came to rest on the asphalt, my bike nowhere near me, I was alive. I've been told (or maybe I remember) that I wanted to get up and go to school so I wouldn't be late. My legs refused to obey. My shoulder hurt. I couldn't find enough air to breathe. I don't know if I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I remember being in the hospital, on a gurney... waiting for x-rays. Might have been my first x-rays. I was sure that I had brain damage. Brain damage was what my child mind was certain had made my brother David unable to communicate. We didnt know anything about his autism at that point. We didn't know that he was a chromosomal anomaly and that his failure to speak wasn't caused by any damage done to his brain after his birth. But I didn't know it that day. I was sure that my injury was going to make me like David. 

I didn't die. I injured my collarbone. Nothing broken. Just the spell of childhood innocence. 

Reading the surgeon's notes from my failed surgery is similar in many ways. 

In my mind, there is the last memory before the coma. It is a strange disconnected memory. The heated air was being pumped through the gown I had put on in pre-op. I was so upset that the air was hot. The nurse was trying to explain that I was going to be cold otherwise... but I hate being hot. I remember being wheeled into the operating room and being so unhappy about the hot air blowing through the stupid gown. 

After that, there was blackness for a moment. Much like the time I spent in the air after connecting with the white Camaro in the crosswalk. It was a time when I was released from all the tethers that tie you to here and now. For everyone else in the world, the day continued on. I stopped. Due to the insane concoction of drugs (fentanyl, Propofol, and morphine) that they used to keep me in my sedated comatose state, I was gone. I stepped off of the merry-go-round and fell into a different stream. I was dying. 

If I am honest, I knew I was dying. I just couldn't figure out why it was taking so long. Let me back up. For the next thirty years or so, I experienced time pass just as I had for every day of my thirty-seven years up until that moment. I know now, that they didn't happen the way everyone else talks about time. But I also know that my body and mind experienced thirty years of strange, horrible, boring, wonderful, lonely things... and I also know that I was dying. In many of the coma dreams (as I euphemistically call them) I tried to die. There were all sorts of weird stories about me trying to find a way to either die or to be released so that I could die. Each time I would fulfill the task, some new revelation would make it such that dying wasn't possible. 

But I knew I was dying. I just didn't really understand how to do it properly. Through the perspective of thirteen years, I think the hubris is slightly more amusing. In the coma dreams, I tried to do just as I do out here. I tried to fit in... to blend. I tried to follow the rules as I understood them. No one explained shit to me. No different than out here. 

To this day, I think the most interesting aspect of the coma dreams was the idea of waking up somewhere, fully formed, at a seemingly random age, sometimes not even male, in a place I had never been, as though it was just another Tuesday. Sometimes I woke up in a barn, asleep against the side of sheep. Other dreams had me waking up in old abandoned houses whose basements connected to underground caverns where people raced illegal cars. Each time I woke up, I was there. But most importantly, I had never been anywhere else. I didnt carry with me any of the memories that we all carry. I wasn't Alex from Miami. I didn't have my parents or siblings. I hadn't been married. No history at all. Whenever TV or movies depict a person suffering from amnesia, there is always that mythology about how memory vanishes. Far stranger for me was to lose that entire sense of self that connected to past self. I was fully there, just as real as today... but I had no day before and somehow, that was just fine. Would you remember yesterday if you weren't trying to remember it? Life without rear view mirrors and windows. Just straight ahead. None of the experiences in the coma dreams carried from one dream to another. I was always someone different, somewhere different, a different age, and usually lonely. 

And because my body outside (in the ICU) refused to let me forget, I was also dying. Periodically the coma dreams would toss me into a blended Frappuccino of hospital and Salvador Dali. If it was an easy coma dream, it might almost make sense. Other times the coma dreams would take a real-world physical setting in the hospital and just play havoc with it. I'll get to some of those stories soon. I needed time to write this preface (again). Probably just for my own sake of understanding. 

I was dying thirteen years ago, and I did it badly. I failed miserably. Instead I ended up living thirty years or more, in ways, places, times, and people I could never have been. Those experiences have changed my understanding of what it means to be alive. So many of the negative associations I had previously held about death, don't apply anymore. There was never a "white light at the end of the tunnel" moment. It was so much more mundane and prosaic. I was dying inside a Burger King where I couldn't find a bathroom to pee. 

Like I said earlier, I really struggled to die any differently than I have lived. 

Between now and October 10th when I first woke from the coma, and which we celebrate as my second birthday... I try to reflect on the bizarre experiences I went through. When I can free up my hands to type and convince my mind to untangle some of the threads of the coma dreams, I will write more of those stories.