Died three times

I went out walking today while it was only 75 degrees, not yet over 100. Walking through our neighborhood is safe, but usually lonely. There are not many people outside at any one time, and it's certain that unless you make arrangements to meet, the people you like to talk to won't be outside when you go outside, most of the time.

Today, though, there was cement being pumped from a truck up through a very tall pipe over my neighbor's house into her backyard. They're adding a couple rooms to their house, including a bathroom, and the access around the side is not wide enough for a cement truck to even get close. Naturally I walked over to look at it, and my neighbor was outside. I got to talk to her for a good 20 minutes or so. She's doing well but stressed about this construction project. I'm doing well but stressed about training to become a tutor. We hugged and chatted and both felt better afterwards.

Then I went further on my walk; I need a daily constitutional to keep my constitution working. The sun was hot and I enjoyed shade from elderly trees. Some have fallen or been cut down, and I miss them. The large shady trees were part of what made me fall in love with this neighborhood, along with good sidewalks and an interesting history. I stopped at the Little Free Library box a couple blocks in; most of the books I've donated have gone, which means I need to bring some more from my house.

I thought of The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, which I donated. I hope it went to someone who read it and learned from it. Her story inspired me as a child and again when I had my own children. It led me to research Braille and learn a little of that writing system. I don't have the ability to immediately distinguish which dots are where when I touch them. I also read Follow My Leader, about a boy who is blinded and has to learn to function without sight. His experience led to me wandering my house with my eyes closed, to feel what it was like. In my youth there was a blind band director in the next town over; I had more sympathy with him and more admiration for his confidence in traveling to band competitions.

Around a couple more corners I met a man trying to reattach a fallen flag to his house. The wind had pulled it down, wrenching the bracket screws out of the wall. I offered to hold up the pole while he worked. He talked and talked and I learned a lot about his life. I have admiration for him, too, now, my neighbor.

I greeted him with, "How are you?", a sort of null greeting where I express that I've seen him and recognized him as a person that I hope is doing well, though I've just met him for the first or maybe the second time, I don't remember and neither does he.
He responded with, "I got up." Not enthusiastic, but not totally down. When I said, "You're here and alive," he added, "I don't have no luck," and smiling, shook his head.
I think he was feeling down, dragging emotionally, that flag down that he had to put back up, and his wife gone to the festival to work, so he didn't have anyone to talk to.

I listened and expressed admiration and wonder and congratulations as he told me how he had been windsurfing at age 16 and was struck by lightning on the water. It didn't hurt him none, he said, his left side just went numb. He and his dad went to a restaurant and ate a lot afterwards. He said he'd died three times, and that was the first.

The second was at 29; he was hit head on in a car and ate the windshield, had a hole in his forehead and was drinking his blood as it ran down. A man spoke from behind him, a really mean voice telling him, "Don't look at me, don't you look at me, don't turn around," and giving him something that helped. Then the man said, "I'm going to have to leave now. You're going to be okay," and he was gone. My neighbor said the paramedics had to cut him out of the car; where did that man go? They asked him where the thing that helped had come from; my neighbor didn't bring it with him. My neighbor said it must have been an angel, and he told him not to look, maybe because he wouldn't have been able to bear it, the wonder and awe of an angel. "But he was really mean sounding," my neighbor said. "Maybe so you wouldn't try to turn around," I said, "maybe it would have hurt you to turn."

The third time was about four years ago, in his 50s. He'd always had a hole in his heart, and his heart finally disintegrated, just fell apart. "There wasn't no heart there anymore," he said. He had to wait three months for the doctors to figure out what was wrong and what to do about it, and another three months to find a doctor who would fix it. Finally a doctor came from England to somewhere in the states to do it, Cleveland I think he said.
They had to cut his chest open, pry the ribs apart; knowing this, he was headed into the operating room, not on any drugs yet, and they asked him if he could get himself onto the operating table. He doesn't remember anything after that. Eight hours of surgery, no memory of any of it; he said, "I died. They hurried and sawed me open and put a machine in to do the work of the heart." And then they went on to finish the surgery.

What chu think?" he asked me. "They put a cow's heart in me! Coulda been a pig, but a cow is 80 percent the same DNA as a human, the closest match." A cow's heart! And here he is, my neighbor, four years later; he said before I came up he had just been cutting grass for two hours, no problem.

He told me how he stopped eating beef, and most other meat. He still eats some chicken, some seafood, sardines and shrimp. But not meat. He eats vegetables, he says, because he doesn't want to eat himself, with a cow's heart.

And, he said, they pulled all his teeth, because if even one tooth got infected it might go to his heart. But he can chew pretty well; his gums are strong. He said he took medication for about a year, and then he threw them away. He lives clean, he said, no smoking, no drinking. He don't believe in medication, he said, "Now, I'm not saying it's all bad, but we can heal from within ourselves, by being clean."

Eventually I thanked him, gave him my name and heard his, and he said he was glad to meet me. He showed me some of his reels online, inspirational ones, uplifting and funny ones. He said he loves to be filmed and to entertain. He feels now like he has this to do, an objective.

I walked home thinking and sweating; the temperature rose a good five or six degrees during my walk. Mosquitoes were out in force, but not so much in the bright sunlight, and if I kept walking they couldn't keep up. Now I'm in my air conditioned house, recounting this tale to you, to encourage you.

Enthusiasm and gratitude continue forever if we choose them.