Snake in the Grass

I don’t like snakes. Let me rephrase that – I hate snakes.  I don’t think you understand yet – I really hate snakes.  They are the devil’s spawn, his playmates, his friends, his compatriots.  I've never established any kind of enjoyable relationship with a snake except one - it dies and I live. 

Actually, there haven’t been very many snakes die at my hands. That’s mostly because if I see one I give up all pretension of being manly and brave and run in the opposite direction trying not to squeal like a little girl. I can be in a car driving 70 MPH, see a snake on the other side of the road and every hair on my body will stand on end; chill bumps will pop out looking like small mountains; I stop breathing for a few seconds; I am embarrassingly unreasonably, uncontrollably afraid.

I’ve been told there are “good” snakes. Somebody once tried to convince me there are snakes who eat other snakes. I doubt it. That’s probably an absolutely false story propagated by poor misguided foolish people who think all creatures are equal.  Give me a break. Look at a cute little puppy or an adorable little kitten. Now look at a baby snake. Difference!  There’s not even a sweet little name for a baby snake. A baby dog is a puppy. A baby cat is a kitten. They conjure up images of sweet little adorable balls of fluff. A baby snake is a snake.  I've never laughed at the antics of a baby snake.

So the other day I was in the back of the house pulling flowers from one of our weed gardens.  Actually it’s a grass garden, but don’t get the wrong idea; Bermuda grass is what I’m talking about. I water, fertilize, trim the grass in the yard and can barely keep it alive most of the time, but the patches in the former flower beds can go months in 100+ degree heat with no water and still flourish; growing densely up to my knees in deep, dark green.  With the amount of neglect we heap on those beds, one would think nothing would grow in them, but one would be wrong.  Every now and then, I get a bee in my bonnet about making the beds into flower beds again and for a few days attack the grass and weeds like a man possessed. It usually lasts for about a week or less until my back hurts from bending over hour after hour, my hands hurt from pulling handfuls of tough, stubborn grass/weeds and I have a bunch of cuts on my arms and hands from the few wooden stemmed flowers and bushes hardy enough to not have died yet. At that point I declare the beds to look better than they did and beat a hasty retreat back into the air conditioned comfort of my abode.

I was in the 3^rd day of my weeding frenzy, wearing thick gloves to assist in gripping handfuls of grass for pulling, tugging, and yanking. I reached into a particularly dense clump, back where I couldn’t see, grabbed a good handful and pulled. I felt some break, but some held so I pulled again and then a third time when the clump came loose. And that’s when I saw that along with a few blades of grass, I had grabbed a huge, squirming, man-eating snake! It was in my hand, slithering!  I’m telling you, it was about the size of my arm and that’s just the part I could see!  I wondered why there were not as many dogs in the neighborhood as there had been in years past and now I knew why. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure there are a couple of teenage boys missing too! I’m not overly religious, but oh my Lord God Jesus Mary and Joseph I've got a *%&$# snake in my hand!!!

Blink your eyes. Go ahead and blink them as fast as you can. Pretty fast, huh?  Well that was glacier speed compared to how fast I threw that snake down. I threw it down so fast it didn't have a chance to rear up, unlock its lower jaw and eat me whole. In my mind I could see it above me, its mouth open, coming down around my head and slowly working its way downward, swallowing me agonizing inch by agonizing inch. So yes, I speed of lightning quick flung it down, down and away from me, and off to the side.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and started to turn back to the task at hand when oh blessed Jesus the damn thing starting slithering back toward me! I cannot believe this; it really is coming back at me!  I had a pair of grass clippers right there beside me so I quickly grabbed them up and brandished them at the evil monster. I warned it. I swear I did. "I have clippers and I’m not afraid to use them!" It fazed him not. He continued slithering through the grass right at me. I do believe he had only one thing on his little snaky mind and he was not looking for a best friend.

So I did it. I held my breath, extended the clippers toward him and quick as a guillotine, scissored the blades together, cutting it neatly in half, 3 inches on one end, 3 inches on the other. And I felt no regret. The monster had been dispatched and I had once again somehow, someway, cheated death.

Dead Man Walking

Happy anniversary to me! Exactly 6 months ago today, I died. If you don't know the story, feel free to read my earlier blog entry where I talk about it. The short version is that I had a severe heart attack and died, twice - as in no pulse, no response, plug pulled, all systems shut down, clinically dead. Both times I was brought back into the land of the living by mouth-to-mouth, chest compressions and having the crud shocked out of me by medical people welding those little electric paddles. I suffered the blue screen of death and got rebooted. Even though I remember none of that happening, it was a life changing experience to say the least. So today I feel like I need to say something about it, about getting a 2nd chance, about the extra 6 months I've been given (so far) and hopefully many more. I don't have anything prepared and haven't thought a lot about what to say; I'll just wing it and if you don't want to read my ramblings, no hard feelings.

I am well aware it sounds weird, but in a very strange way, a piece of me considers what happened to be a gift. It's real easy to say, "Stop and smell the roses" and theoretically everyone knows they should, but few really take it to heart and it's oh so easy to forget with the little day-to-day crap that always seems to come up. There's always tomorrow to spend time with your kids; there's so much stuff that needs to be done at work and there's not enough time to go see that friend. We all get through life knowing that some day we will die, but some day is never today. Until it is. And then it's too late. For most people anyway. Just not for me and the approximately 12 million  other people who peaked behind the curtain and beat a hasty retreat back for a 2nd round of life. And that's why to me, my heart attack was a gift. I've gotten to look into my daughter's eyes for 6 more months and give her lots of hugs and butterfly kisses and tell her goodnight every night and sing her the goodnight song and hear her say, "I love you, Daddy." And I've gotten to hold my wife's hand and give her kisses and eat her cooking and occasionally sit on the couch together just enjoying being next to her and hear her say, "I love you, babe" when we go to bed at night. I've really felt and appreciated each and every time. No taking any of it for granted now or not enjoying the moment just because some bozo did some bozo thing at work and I'm all upset about it.

Don't get me wrong and think I'm now this angel person who never gets upset and goes out of his way to help little old ladies cross the street. I still get pissed at a bozo at work, I still do not like playing kids card games, and I still hate going shopping with my two girls (being with them is wonderful, but shopping with them is pure torture). However, being pissed off at Bozo usually now ends by about 5:01 every evening and I have made myself play kids games with my daughter a few more times and smiled the whole way through. The shopping, well, no, I still don't do that. My God, what do you expect? I'm only human, you know. I have found myself to be a lot more tolerant of people (even the bozo's; well, some of the time), I enjoy the little good things more, the smell of honeysuckle, coffee in the morning (especially when I didn't have to make it), the feel of cool water cascading down my body in the shower after I've gotten hot and sweaty working in the yard. Enjoy more, get pissed less. Not a bad thing at all.

On a different level, another reason I consider it a gift is because I'm really not afraid of dying now. No way am I looking forward to it, but not because it's some big unknown scary thing; I want to spend more time with my family and friends, I want to see my daughter graduate, I want to see more places (so many places, so little time) and meet more people, and I want to see if my Texas Longhorns win another national championship. But dying itself is not that big of a deal to do. It's not something in and of itself to be afraid of. Pain goes away, there's no hot or cold, no anger, no wailing or gnashing of teeth, and you don't think about having to pick up little Johnny after school today and take him to soccer practice or buying the groceries - all of those annoying day-to-day hafta's go away. No, I didn't see a bright light or my dead relatives or hear angels sing. What I felt and was totally aware of was floating in blackness that was comforting and soft and peaceful, no regrets, no longing, and I didn't have any fear at all. I felt safe like a baby falling asleep in their mother's loving arms. There are answers on the next level, answers to questions we think we know the answers to but don't; answers to questions we don't even know to ask. It was so nice. And then, I was being gently, but very quickly pulled back and in the blink of an eye, I woke up surprised as hell to find myself in the hospital and most surprising of all, to find out it was almost 5 days later! To know death is not this thing to be so frightened of brings peace.

I consider it a gift to learn who my true friends are and who truly cares about me. Laying in that hospital bed in a coma with tubes sticking out of me everywhere and looking like death warmed over, well, it could not have been a pleasant visit for anyone. But I had people who came and stayed, people who went out of their way to visit and check on me multiple times, friends and family members who helped my wife and daughter get through the long days and nights when they didn't know if their husband and daddy was going to come back or not. Friends who sacrificed vacation days and drove hundreds of miles to come and stay until I got back on my feet again. Those wonderful folks will never know how much that truly meant to me unless they find themselves needing help and they will find I'll be right there for them for as long as they need. You need somebody to have your back? I got it, my friend. I also found that a few who I thought were friends and loved ones were actually strangers. Hang with me when times are good, but disappear if you might have to go out of your way or use a couple of precious vacation days or drive a few miles. I'm glad to know that about them. Forgive, yes. Forget? I don't think so. When the bullets are flying, you need to know who you can trust.

When I first started to comprehend what had happened, I lay there in that hospital bed thinking, so this is what it feels like to have been on the other side and come back. I didn't have broken bones, but I did have a broken body, a broken life. Will my body repair? Will my life repair? Will I ever be the same? What about me is going to be different than before, different than before my body turned traitor on me. Yesterday I was myself. Today I'm somebody different. It was forced on me. My old me was taken away, never to be seen again. I didn't realize how I felt until I didn't feel that way anymore. And then I so wanted to feel that way again.

So here I am 6 months later, happy to be alive and mentally probably in a  better place, but I still have a way to go physically to regain the old me. I'm not sure that's possible. The old me thought nothing of hiking 4 or 5 difficult trail miles just to see a waterfall or a natural stone bridge; the new me cannot as yet walk more than 1 mile without my body saying that's enough and I can't go further. I have to remind myself that when I first got out of the hospital, walking from the bedroom into the living room resulted in sitting on the couch for 10 minutes just to recover. I used to hate taking any kind of medicine, especially anything stronger than an aspirin and now I take 5 pills every day. I used to never bruise, now, because of the blood thinner medicine, I bruise so easily I often don't know what caused it.

Life is different now, but all in all, it's all pretty good. There are so many others who have it a lot worse than I do so yeah, 6 months after I died, I consider myself to be an exceptionally lucky fella who was given a rare and precious gift. And I fully intend to keep on enjoying it.