changes me, changes you

I must apologize to Crimson Fable family and fan(s) for the title of this post....

One of the things that really fascinates me is how huge events in one's life bring about changes in things that seemingly have nothing to do with the event itself.  And, even more fascinating is when that happens to you.  Luckily, I’m either overly self-aware enough or completely narcissistic enough to notice some of those types of changes in myself.  

(Shut up, Gary Z.  No one asked you.)

When I tell people that I was dead for 8 minutes, I’m almost always asked how I managed to not have any brain damage.  I have no idea how that happened, but my overly-glib, smart-assed self almost always gives an equally smart-assed retort like, “you mean even more than I already had?” and I can manage to not really answer the question.  But the fact of the matter is that I have been changed from this experience. I'm not the same person I was.

I have made a statements here like how I’ve de-constructed my faith.  Dying has nothing to do with it.  Honestly, I was on that road months prior to December 13.  My de-construction wasn’t kicked off by dying; dying and what I experienced during death was more a confirmation of my suspicions than anything else.  No extra clarity was presented here.  No, nothing that grand or that obvious.  The changes I've noticed in me are far more subtle than that.

When I got home from the hospital on December 23, a full 10 days after the event, I sat on the couch in my family room and I cried for a full 30 minutes straight.  I’m talking utterly uncontrollable, biblical-style weeping.  I was completely overwhelmed by everything that had happened to me in those 10 days.  I had been convinced that I was going to die in that hospital; that I would never see my family and friends again; and that hadn't been the case.  I was home now, but what came home with me was an overwhelming sense of grief, guilt and loss over the fact that I would never be the same again.  I was now a burden to others.  I was completely disabled.   I would have to be hooked up to a machine on a regular basis, and not being hooked up to that machine meant certain death in under 5 days.  I wasn’t ready to retire, financially, and yet there was no way I could work as I couldn’t walk, couldn't breathe or see well, couldn’t drive and had absolutely no energy whatsoever.  I had to sleep 18 hours a day.  I had no retirement savings left, as I had to spend it on house payments and bills since I had been laid off from my job just prior to getting sick.  I felt that while I had managed to cheat immediate Death in the hospital, it wouldn’t be long before Death found me again, and this time there would be no escape.  I was terrified, anxious, overstressed and overcome with guilt and grief and could do nothing but let my wife hold me as I sat on the couch, while I just came completely and totally unglued.  And this is where, even in the midst of this grief and fear, I noticed the first small change in myself as I finally stopped crying.

It was silent in my house.  Not a sound. 

I know how strange and kind of anti-climactic that sounds, but silence is something I cannot handle.  It has always made me really nervous and anxious to be in a completely silent environment for any length of time.  I’ll almost always cough or sneeze or crack my knuckles in those situations, but for some reason I didn’t do anything.  I just sat there.  My wife started to back off the couch, and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

“Are you hungry?”, she started to ask. 

I closed my eyes and held my index finger up in front of my lips, in that universal sign of “be quiet”, but I made no sound.

“What is it?”, she said, looking a little concerned.

I said nothing.  I sat back, staring at the ceiling, tears and snot from crying running down my face and soaking my shirt. I didn't make a sound.  My wife stared at me for a couple of minutes, and got up and walked out of the room, looking confused.

I sat, alone, in that family room, completely silent, not moving, for 2+ hours.  My mind was totally blank the whole time.  I wasn’t ruminating on recent past events, nor was I considering what life held for me going forward.  I wasn’t thinking about the inevitability of death and a life changed like I had just been.  I had absolutely nothing on my mind at all.  I just sat there and stared at the ceiling.  And the weird part was that I knew I was just sitting there and I knew what this looked like, and still I just sat there.  I wasn’t thinking, “I don’t care how this looks”- I just sat there.  Blank.  Alone.

I’d like to say that I had some epiphytal moment where everything came together, or that something was made clear, but that didn’t happen.  I’d like to say that I was enjoying the peace and quiet, but that wasn’t the case, either.  I didn’t have more questions after just sitting there.  My wife came and went from the room several times, and I was aware of her, so I wasn’t catatonic.  She made no attempt to engage me, and I said nothing.  In that 2+ hours, absolutely nothing happened.  At all. And, after 2+ hours, I simply got up (as best I could), made my way upstairs (with a lot of help) and went to bed, saying nothing.  The next morning, my wife asked me what was I thinking about during that time the prior evening, and all I said was, “Nothing”.   I spent much of Christmas Eve Day saying nothing at all.

This strange occurrence has happened more than a few times since then, but never for a full 2 hours- more like 20 minutes or so- but never in my subsequent hospital stays.  It’s kind of like a reboot, and I don't have any control over it. It just kind of happens......

A couple of weeks ago, a very close friend asked me if I could help his business with a tech project.  This friend had visited me numerous times in the hospital, and he knew all too well everything I had been through. He demanded that if I did take on this project, that I not over-commit and over-stress myself, and work no more than 10-15 hours weekly.  I agreed.  Whenever I take on a project like this, I start to do research, which almost invariably means I’ll write some code- something I haven’t done in a long time - and something I almost always dread doing.  (I have a crippling case of 'imposter syndrome' where coding is concerned....) This was no different, so I went about researching my solution with technologies like NodeJS and ExpressJS, JWT, MySQL and Vue3, all running on Linux - all technologies I know pretty well.  (with the possible exception of Vue3, that is)  As I dug into it and started coding, I found that I was really enjoying it.  I only needed a barely running portion of code to demonstrate the idea I had (aka "Proof of Concept"), but before I knew it, I had built a fully-fledged backend, complete with tests, a GIT repo with CI/CD- and all in the space of a few hours.  That’s weird- I never really enjoyed writing code like this, and something like this would usually take me hours and days to do, but…….

This afternoon, I picked up a bass for the first time in 5 months.  I haven’t touched a bass since this whole thing began way back in late October/early November of last year.  Didn't really want to.  My favorite bass- my beloved pre-CBS Lake Placid Blue 1964 Fender Jazz Bass (with matching painted headstock), which has been sitting in a guitar stand this whole time, had literally a quarter of an inch of dust on it and strings that were deader than Julius Caesar.  I plugged it into my practice amp in my office- a TC Electronics BG250-12- that also had the same amount of dust on it- didn’t tune the bass- put on “Journey From Mariabronn” off the first Kansas album and went for it.  Played the whole thing like I’d never stopped playing, sort of.  And I had a blast doing it.  An hour later, with incredibly sore fingers, I put the bass down.  The fact that I had a blast playing isn’t the surprising thing; neither is the fact that I remembered the Kansas song with all the key and time signature/tempo changes- the surprising fact was that I blew whole passages that I have played for YEARS and didn’t stop, didn’t get mad about it and just kept playing.

Now I know what you’re thinking here- “so what?”

This is REALLY not like me.  I've been playing the bass for 52 years.  I’ve been a relentless perfectionist about my playing.  I am INCREDIBLY hard on myself all the time about how and what I play.  The fact is that while I am most definitely an above-average bass player, I have never felt like I was.  (More of that imposter syndrome....)  Blowing the bridge on “Stop Loving You” by Toto would normally send me into an rage, but I just kept going.  I don’t even know if I ever played the part right as I played that song, but I didn’t stop to figure it out.  And I didn’t even notice that I didn’t stop.  It never occurred to me to stop, and it didn’t occur to me that I hadn’t stopped.  I even played through a handful of tunes from Peter Gabriel’s new album,  “I/O”,  that I have NEVER played thru, lifting them by ear as I played them as best I could. Never once stopped to examine what I was doing. I just kept playing and it was fun. 

When I was done, I came out to our family room where my wife was sitting.  She’s been after me for weeks to start playing again.

“So- how was it?” she asked.  

“Like I never stopped.” I replied, flatly.

“You don’t have your old stamina to play some of that faster stuff.”, she said, smiling.

“I didn’t really notice.”, was my reply.  That was true- I really hadn't noticed it.

WAIT.  WHAT???!?? HUH?!!??  I didn’t really notice?  WITAF is going on here?

This is where these change are.  Even though I have been through the veritable ringer, I’m WAY more ambiguous about my feelings and reactions to these kind of things than I was just a few months ago.  You might chalk that up to me seeing different things as more important now, but I’m telling you, that’s not it.  I’m not slowing down, either.  I’m more determined than ever to get well from all of this, and I know that will take time- my physical therapist can't keep up with me.  But for some strange reason, I'm finding my approach to all these other things in life just a lot more........different. 

Is this brain damage? I tend believe it probably is in some way.  I can’t say I’m comfortable with that thought, and I won’t say that I’m happier as a result of whatever this is, but I’m also not afraid of it.  It’s just a very strange point of view to have, and I’m fairly certain that, whatever it is, I’ve got to learn to live with it in order to keep moving forward.

Moving on...........

Your thoughts?

no more dancing about.....

So, maybe I’ve talked too much about my death on December 13, 2023.  In my mind, I haven’t.  I don’t know too many people who have done what I did that day – oh, I do know one person, but that’s it, honestly, so you’ll permit me the “novelty” of that particular circumstance.

I’ve been dancing around a subject for a long, long time in reference to God and how He fits/didn’t fit into this equation, and I think it’s high time I spelled it out.  So, here we go, and I know I’m gonna catch some serious backlash from some of my more evangelical friends for this, but I have to be honest here.

A few weeks before I got sick, I started have some real, existential kind of issues with regards to God, the world and my place in it.  I’ve been saddened to watch a movement that I was very much a part of fall farther and farther away from the truth, and, was instead, embracing really sketchy ideas like how a rather infamous orange-colored human being was the actual second-coming of Christ and the pushing away of whole classes of people because of what they did or didn’t do in their bedrooms……all of this did nothing more but make the sour people more sour and the already distanced feel even farther away.  Never once did these people who fostered these “Q”uestionable stances (ahem...) realize that this over-indulgence in quasi-militaristic and wholly sociopathic stances on religion, life and politics didn’t bring one single person to a saving knowledge of anything – and even less so in the face of a worldwide pandemic and new, extremely violent wars.  This existential crisis of mine came to a head when one of my best friends, who I’ve known the entire span of his adult life and a good portion of my own, renounced his faith because his world had come crashing down around him of recent, and (I think) his feeling was that a loving God wouldn’t and shouldn’t let that happen in the first place.  I couldn't argue with his point.

And then, about a 6 weeks after my friend told me of his decision to leave the faith, I died.

I’m not being overly dramatic here- I literally ceased to have life.  No blood pressure, no respiration and no meaningful or effective heart beat for 8 minutes.  And all because a surgeon slipped and cut into my lung, nicked an artery along with a nerve in my leg during a completely mundane out-patient procedure.

And, here’s the thing: throughout this ordeal and the days that came after during some really trying recurring medical “fun”, God wasn’t there.

Let me say that again- GOD WASN’T THERE.

To give you some perspective, my entire life I thought I had heard and felt God on a number of occasions.  When my son, Stephen, died in 1991 for instance- He was there.  When my wife landed in the hospital in late December of 1992 all the way to March of 1993 in pre-term labor with my youngest daughter, Sarah (who just turned 31 the other day) He was there.  When my wife and I befriended her first hospital roommate who was pregnant and suffering terminal cervical cancer at the same time, He was there.  Or so I thought....

But, when I died - when I had been separated from the people and places that told me where and who God was by the absence of my life - He wasn’t there.  At all.  In an another incredibly stressful moment a few hours after I had left the ICU, early in the morning of December 15^th, I cried out to Him, literally.  What I got back was utter silence.  Not a word.  I was completely and totally alone. 

It was then that I knew.  The God that I have heard about and told others about during my life was a lie.

For the record, what I mean is that the God that has been pushed on us by a large portion of the Western church, does not in any, shape or form, exist.  Moreover, a lot of the trappings we’ve been taught about Him are equally false.  Specifically I mean the following:

·       The supposed “inerrancy” of Scripture;

·       The idea that we are supposed to be like Him to be a valid and successful believer;

·       The idea that conformance to Scripture is based on beliefs like how you dress, what you eat, who you hang out with (or don’t hang out with), daily Bible readings, participation in small groups, going to church every single week lest you “backslide”, the holidays you celebrate and the political figures you align with and/or vote for;

·       The idea that certain people and/or genders are not equal – or for some strange reason that it's ok to shun some of them altogether;

·       That there is a hell that those who don’t profess exactly what and how others say they need to profess their belief;

·       The trappings of Western theology like Arminianism vs. Calvinism, Pre- or Post-Tribulation viewpoints, Catholicism vs. Protestantism, or that groups like the Mormons and JW's are somehow evil, etc.;

All of these are absolute lies.  Completely and totally unprovable and untrue.

It took me staring right into the face of the Abyss and having it staring right back at me for me to realize how foolish we all have been in spreading and believing this garbage.  I have spent my entire life evangelizing others directly into the things I now rail against. It pains me to realize that I have been basically lying to others the whole time.  I hate the fact that I spent many years, many miles and a lot of time away from my wife and children in order to help spread these falsehoods.  I’ve stood in front of hundreds and even thousands of people on a number of occasions, telling them that God loves them and that He has a plan for their lives if they would just believe……

……and that just isn’t the truth.

So, what is the truth, then?  I mean, like, Marc- "What are we supposed to do, and how dare you have the arrogance to say these things- like you’re the only one to figure this out?" 

That is a very fair question to ask.

First off, God does exist.  I don’t doubt that, even for a pico-second.  Historically, it’s been proven that Jesus did exist, and there are stories from writers of that day that weren’t Christians that also tell of the “resurrection”, so I can accept that, too.  And I find that a God who loves us, wants the best from us and accepts a belief in Him that supersedes our actions (see Ephesians 2:8-9) extremely favorable.

However, I do not feel that that much of anything beyond the above mentioned items are real or truthful.  These are the things that the Western church has brought to bear on an otherwise simple concept, which is nothing more than love and redemption of others. 

God has no interest in dragging people down, nor does He have any interest in people living their lives one certain way.  To be “conformed to Christ” means for YOU to be like Christ TO OTHERS.  That means loving them and accepting them no matter what.  This is what I had been eluding to in an earlier post about how if you love someone, you have to accept them – and yes, that means you have to accept what they do, how they do it and who they do it with as part of that love, because God’s love is UNCONDITIONAL.  To say “love the sinner, hate the sin” is actually nothing more than a cop-out.  For instance, if and when that sinner fails on any level, your responsibility for love and acceptance is somehow absolved because you can and will blame the sin, say something like "I tried," and walk away.  God says to do the opposite- that’s the time you are supposed to double down and really dig in with them.

I find that the topics of inerrancy in scripture and hell to actually be the same topic.  All Western churches believe that once saved, we are new creations in Christ.  If that’s so, why is the church so concerned with dress, food, church attendance and politics?  You can’t go to hell if you’re saved, and one certainly doesn't go to hell for voting Democrat, despite what some may think. (and, btw- God doesn't give one single, solitary crap about US politics or anyone else's politics......and, no, God is neither Republican nor Democrat......and this country was never founded as Christian country, and the Founding Fathers were absolutely not Christians.......)  All the greatest theologians have agreed that no one has a complete handle on all aspects of Scripture, so who's "non-errancy" of Scripture is correct and should be followed?  Further, I and many others have had a difficult time believing that a loving God would send the majority of humanity to hell (remember- in terms of the entire world’s population, Christianity is a small number of people – in fact, in those terms you could just say that it’s a cult………) because they haven’t read the Bible or heard of Jesus.  John 3:16 says nothing more than Christians have assurance to eternal life- but it doesn't say that others don't, and John 14:6 doesn’t say that the act of coming to the Father through the Son has to happen in a certain timeframe or in a certain way.  In both cases, today's Christians are far too wrapped up in them for the wrong reasons, and honestly, use these two topics as nothing more than a control mechanism.  

Shunning people from your life and from knowing God- that is just wrong on every level. If you think that a certain church follows the correct teachings and knowledge of God regarding this hotbed subject, then you are in the midst of some pretty pharisaical thinking, my friend.  And, if I recall correctly, Jesus wasn’t terribly fond of those who were supposedly “in the know” like the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Instead, He favored and hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors, transgender, LGBTQ+ and the like, rather than the "Supposedly Knowledgeable", who He instead referred to as a bunch of "white-washed sepulchers” or a “brood of vipers”.  It would seem the old adage, "You wouldn't know a snake if he bit you" might apply here.... 

God wants us to be Jesus to others, not tell others how to be Jesus, plain and simple.  There is a tremendous difference between these two concepts.  The reason that God wasn’t there for me at the time of my death was because I was looking for someone who wasn’t there.  When I was finally confronted with my own mortality and in a moment of serious, honest spiritual stress, the comfort and caring I was looking for wasn’t there, because I was leaning on those very things that I now know are untrue.  That entity with those personality traits doesn’t exist, and those things that I have stood on for a very, very long time wouldn’t let me see Him, because in that moment of utter mortality and being human; when all those things were swept away as I passed away- I had to find Him as He really is instead of what I thought and was told He was.

I know that I have probably deeply offended some by what I’ve said here.  I’ll not apologize, and I’ll also not say that you’re stupid for believing the way you do.  People may say things like "you're demon-possessed" or "you were never really a Christian if you believe things like that" or that I'm just "bitter"- go ahead and think and say whatever you like.  I already died once, so nothing anyone says or believes about me comes even close to a slight rise of beans, let alone a whole hill of them.  Live and let live.  For me, I understand now that it's more important than ever to just love and accept others, regardless of my hang-ups or the level of my non-comfort. 

And, I’m going to do just that.

And, as usual, let me hear your thoughts...

finality

 One thing that has really been impressed upon me over the last 4+ months of never-ending health issues is the finality of it all.  I’m not necessarily talking about mortality – although that certainly has its place in the topic- no, it’s the fact that these issues are now issues that I will have until the day I kick this nasty oxygen habit and assume room temperature.

For most of us, if you think back a bit, any childhood malady like a broken bone of chicken-pox, or even something worse – a broken heart after having broken up with the “love of your life” – at the time they happened, it seemed like they would never end.  And, they were THE most cataclysmic events ever recorded in the history of man, too.  I remember having pneumonia in 4^th grade, and I was out of school for almost 2 weeks, and when I went back it felt like I would never catch up.  When I was 14, my first "real" girlfriend broke up with me, and I was completely and totally devastated for weeks. I literally said aloud, “That’s it.  I’ll never fall in love again.  I won’t let it happen.”

(this October will be my 39^th wedding anniversary, btw)

We always seem to get over these things- and in fact- we even forget them or at least most of the circumstances surrounding them.  If you were to ask me why my girlfriend broke up with me, I know I couldn’t tell you.  I don’t think she could tell you now, either.  Oh- it was vitally important then, but now, not so much……..

Now, normally, I am so delightfully insightful (ahem) that people’s entire lives change when t hey read my posts (the crowd yawns……..) but probably not this time.  If you are my contemporary, you already know how supposedly “important” things when you were 16 are so NOT important now, and things that weren’t important when you were 16 are extremely dire now- yeah, yeah, yeah……..

But I have to ask: do you really know that?  I'd be willing to bet you don't.  I know I didn't.

I, like many others, suffer under the delusion that these kinds of things always happen to someone else.  I mean- yeah- as I’ve gotten older, a lot of values and ideas change.  Some for the better, some for the worse- and just like everyone else I would see those things change within myself and I’d say something like, “Geez.  I sound like my dad now”, and make a joke about kids in the neighborhood getting off my lawn.  I still giggle every time I’m in a grocery store and hear “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath on the Muzak system.  The other day, my wife and I were having dinner at a restaurant and they were playing “Bulls On Parade” by Rage Against the Machine while other couples were having romantic suppers nearby……I’m reminded of the mom in Monster’s University sitting in her car listening to ‘her music’……..

But I digress.

We’ve all done it.  Not only that, but we think that’s the extent of it.  A few minor changes here and there and life marches mercilessly on.   Well, let me tell you…….

In the blink of eye, that can change.  You won’t even see it coming, either.  When you least expect it, it will sneak up on you and bang you over the head like a screen door in a hurricane.  Only quicker and with way more finality than you ever thought possible.  Seemingly small and innocuous things can suddenly have far reaching and even seemingly non sequitur consequences.

8 years ago, a dear, dear friend of mine went out for a jog around the Greenlake area of Seattle.  This was a nightly event for my friend, and he’d done this hundreds of times.  And, as a result of this, even though he is about 4 years my senior, he’s in fantastic shape.  Mentally and physically, he was doing very, very well – until a few minutes into his run, around a particularly desolate corner of the trail he had a massive cardiac event and dropped – dead.  A runner on the same trail found him – no one knows how long my friend had been there – and the passer-by was none other than an off-duty paramedic, who managed to resuscitate my friend, call for help, load him into the ambulance and disappear back into the night.  For several days, my friend lay in a drug-induced coma with his body temperature lowered to prevent further brain damage as his friends and family prayed and hoped he'd wake up...........

My friend survived.  Not only that, but without any brain damage at all.  He bounced back in record time, and to talk to him now, you’d never know that any of this had happened.

That is, until you bring this subject up.

The night after I left the ICU, I had something happen to me in the hospital room that was exactly a“screen door in the hurricane” kind of event.  I shan’t go into it here, because it was way too personal (and the story long), but suffice it to say that it was life-altering.  In some ways more so than my actual death just a few hours before.  It was something that constantly haunted me and  I could not shake it for next week as I waited to leave the hospital.  When I got home on December 23rd, I sill couldn't get it out of my head,  I ended up asking three very trusted friends to come over and talk with me about it.  Among those friends was the one who had died some 8 years ago. 

I'd never had an occasion to talk with my friend about his experience – I thought it was too personal a thing to bring up in "Casual Conversations"  (sorry- Supertramp reference) but this was a different scenario.  When I brought it up to him, my normally affable friend turned very, very serious.  I don’t know if my other two friends that were there noticed it like I did, but the room got a lot darker and heavier as he and I talked – at the expense of my other two friends – about the extremely and intensely unique experiences we’d both had.  It was almost as if he and I were speaking a completely foreign language.  To an outside listener, I’m not sure that they would have understood what we were talking about at all, because to talk about one’s death in the past tense is just not a normal topic of conversation.

And this “special language” is really what I’m getting on about.  As we get older, the things that happen to us have much more immediate AND long lasting effects, and it’s very difficult for people who haven’t experienced those things to understand that.  I’ve had conversations about my own medical problems of late, and folk’s reactions have sometimes been pretty comical;

“Wow.  That’s terrible.  Did I tell you about the time that I had to have a hemorrhoid removed?  It got infected and I couldn’t sit down for 4 months.”

“I know a guy who went in for a minor appendectomy and died 4 days later.  They found out he had cancer and didn’t know it.  He left a wife and 2 small kids”

“You must feel pretty lucky to be alive.  You should have bought a lottery ticket.”

“I have a neighbor who told me he’s died about 4 times.  He says it’s no big deal.”

(Yes- these are actual responses I’ve gotten.)

Hypocritically enough, I, too, have made statements like the above.  But not anymore.  What I’ve learned through the particular trauma that I’ve suffered is, that, yes, it’s unique, but more than that, it just can’t be made light of or played as a poker chip in some weird contest of “How Bad Has It Gotten For You?”.  I’m also not saying that what I’ve been through is any worse than what others have been through.  I honestly don’t know what possesses people to go into “comparison mode” about these things, but I suspect that it has something to do with a level of uncomfortability about the subject that people try to equate to their own experiences.  All I do know is that I don’t do it anymore.  Moreover, when I hear other people bringing up their own similar-ish experiences, I just keep my mouth shut entirely – even to the point of waving someone else off that said, “If you think you had it bad, you ought to ask Marc about what’s he’s been through”.

And the finality of it that I spoke of in the beginning of this post- I’ve lost not only time and my health, but my employability, my ability to walk and drive a car, my retirement, my ability to travel – all with the errant wave of a scalpel, near asystole and cessation of my renal system.  It’s difficult to grasp.  I’ve been through it, and I can barely get it.  This has challenged me in ways I never thought possible, right down to the gut level.  The questions are almost endless, and some of the answers will probably elude me until my dying day.  I realize now, that I wouldn’t have ever really “understood” something like this without having gone through it myself, so how can I hope to make others understand it?  

I know that this all sounds super depressing, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t experienced more than a few dark moments.  I have, and I probably will continue to do that.  But, more importantly, I’ve also had some moments of real understanding about what life is truly about and why we are here in the first place.  I’ve come much closer to understanding my place in the universe and to understanding the nature of and manifestation of God, and I no longer fear my own death.  (hey- I already saw the trailer…..)  I have also learned that as people pass away, the process for them is not scary, and we should all take some comfort in that. 

And most importantly of all – I have learned to stop the comparison of experiences and try and listen to someone who is in pain or distress.  I mean really listen.  Not for the purpose of trying to fix it, necessarily, but to listen and give time to people who are losing time and give them that human connection when all other connections seem lost.  (BTW- that is part of the nature and manifestation of God.  More on that is coming up in future posts.)

It's funny how the viewing of these things change in our lives.  I’ve found that part of this journey pretty fascinating from my own POV, and that it continues to evolve.  And even though the cost of this lesson has been pretty high for me, I look forward to learning more.

 

no thanks

 Now that I've gone thru the events during my death last month, I wanted to let folks in a little more on some of the psychological effects of all this - and, as you might imagine they are many. And this is going to get extremely personal, so buckle up.  One reason I want to do this is catharsis for myself, but the bigger reason is that this might illuminate things for others who have friends or loved ones who have gone thru a terribly traumatic event and are having trouble in breaking thru to them.

Yesterday, I had 3 pastors over to my house- 3 men who I respect immensely.  They wanted to come over and pray with me because- simply put - I have not been able to pray or talk with God since this happened.  In fact, I have had an overwhelming amount of silence where God is concerned in this- He's just not there for me, and I have had no desire to talk to Him, either.  Why, you ask? Because I'm still very, very angry with God for what has happened to me. (I'll write more about that later.)

At any rate, I fully recognize that this absence and distance is not normal or healthy for me, so I was happy to have them come over to talk with me and pray for me- and, btw, one of the pastors that came over (the current interim pastor at my church) had given a sermon just a few days prior to all of this where he said that sometimes, we need others to believe for us in times of strife and stress.  That sermon meant a lot to me and means even more to me now.  So, again- I have to say another thank you to Pastor Tom and that message.

During this chat, I related what had happened to me to these men.  It's a story I've now related a hundred times (and I'm not tired of telling it!) but the insights that I got from these three just incredibly gifted me with something new and fresh.  And, as it happens, one of these men actually died from a sudden cardiac arrest about 8 years ago, so there was a kinsmanship there that would have been hard to find any other way.

I asked my friend if he had felt like I did after his revival- like I didn't belong here and why was I alive and why wasn't I thankful just to be here - and he had and still does.  The commonalities in our experience here were striking, to say the least, and it gave me a lot of comfort to know that I wasn't alone in feeling like I did.  He suffered the same levels of despair and depression after awakening, and didn't understand why he felt that way.  Now, mind you, I had already had that talk with the hospital chaplain about this being a normal response to trauma, but hearing this told to me from a very trusted friend who had been thru exactly what I had just gone thru added a layer of confirmation that probably couldn't be gathered any other way.

I did not and do not feel thankful for being alive.  Now, this not is a suicidal thing at all.  I just don't care.  My life has been turned upside-down and my health is so frail now, the question I keep asking is, "is it worth it?".  I feel like a complete burden to my friends and family for the simplest of things; I can't drive myself anywhere; it takes me 45 minutes to clean up and get dressed in the mornings; I spend all my waking time either watching TV or in doctors office; and I am in constant pain - it just plain old sucks.  Now, I want you to understand that I'm not having a pity-party in telling you this; I'm merely explaining why it is very difficult to have anything that even looks like "thankfulness" because this is all-consuming.  My wife, my family and my friends have assured me that I am not a burden, and the doctors have assured me that I will get better and life will return to some kind of normalcy, and I try hard to believe them- but it's difficult, to say the least.  Whenever I express these thoughts to others, their tendency is to try to equivolate their own experience in to this, and in the case of my wife, try to "fix it'.  In fact, almost every day she says to me, "I wish I knew how to fix this", and I know she can't.  No one can.  Although my mental state today is FAR better than it was a month ago, it's still difficult for me to relate to others and I'm still very distant and pre-occupied.

The general tendency of a supporter is to be kind of a cheerleader and aid and support your loved one in order to "fix it".  That attempt has it's place in all of this, but you no doubt face frustration when your damaged loved one just doesn't respond.  Talk like, "well. they're just depressed- who can blame them" and "they've been thru so much" occurs here, but that doesn't really tell you what is going thru our heads.  Yes, there is depression here, but it's so much more than that.

What is going thru our heads is 2 questions that come up over and over again, and there is no right or correct answer to it- "Why did this happen, and  how am I ever going to be the same again?"  Both of these questions sound very simple to answer when you haven't directly gone thru the trauma, but when it's you asking this for you, those questions are far, far deeper than you might imagine.

"Why did this happen" is a form of self-blame.  It's the worst case "coulda-shoulda-woulda" scenario.  It's not just a case of asking whether or not there was more you could have done to prevent the traumatic event, but rather, it's a case of feeling so terribly guilty that you hurt or terrified others by your "inaction".  For me, I spent the entire first 24 hours after being revived apologizing to everyone for putting them thru that- and even though I knew it was not my fault, the guilt I felt was just overwhelming.

But, it's the "how am I ever going to be the same again?" question that's really the most insidious.  Every trauma sufferer wants nothing more than to feel some small sense of normalcy, and we believe that the only way to do that is to return to our old life.  All of our efforts are to do that very thing, and it is an impossible task to do that in every, single case.  On top of that, if we did return to our "old lives", we all realize, deep down, that the "why" question is no longer really answered or is changed in such a way that the previous explanation is no longer valuable. 

These two questions go round and round in our heads in a never-ending battle.  And when we hear from our supporters that we need to "cheer up" or "move on", it becomes even more evident that we are alone in this quandary.  Lather, rinse and repeat........

I spent the first three days after being revived doing nothing but crying and apologizing.  I couldn't really hold a basic conversation, and I had absolutely no sense of humor.  (those who know me, know that I have a joke or inappropriate quip for all occasions)  The two questions I mentioned above were literally all I could think about- and I mean in a truly obsessive/compulsive way.  And it got MUCH, MUCH worse at night when I was alone with my thoughts in my hospital room.  It just spiraled and spiraled.  A lot of those 3 days I was pretty much catatonic.  I couldn't sleep.  I couldn't watch TV.  I could take no joy in anything.  I put on a brave face for my visitors, but I was dying inside.  When my visitors left, I was exhausted from the effort of trying to appear normal. (the manifestation of "how am I ever going to be the same again?" question)  For those that did come to visit me or talk to me on the phone during that time, please understand that all of what you saw was acting and fake, and the whole time we were talking, I was screaming inside my own head.  It's not that I didn't trust you to take my honest feelings- it was because I thought if I acted "normal", I would be normal.  Pretty stupid, huh?

I can confidently state that this is what is going on in every PTSD sufferer's head.  In fact, I'll guarantee it.  The inevitable question here is "how can I actually help?", and that is what I'm driving at here with all the context. Some of the answers here are obvious- don't act like you know what's going on in their heads or what they've been thru, but here's some not so obvious ones.  

• Don't push.  ALWAYS ask if we are comfortable in talking, and back off 100% if we say we aren't.
• Be there and present for us.  This does not require platitudes to accomplish- in fact, it doesn't require you to say anything.  Just listen.
• Don't say, "I can't begin to understand what you've been thru."  That makes us feel even more alone.
• Don't say, "It's gonna be ok."  It's not.  Life is different now.
• Don't tell competitive stories like, "you know, I know this guy that went thru what happened to you, an he said....."  because that just shows us how out of touch with us you are.  Second or third- hand story telling does nothing but make us feel worse about where we are at the moment when we hear someone else go thru it.
• Don't say, "You're gonna get thru this."  Because in our mental state, that is a lie.
• I know this might seem obvious, but unless you have suffered the same kind of trauma, it's very difficult for us to relate to you.  Every time you try and fail at this (or we fail with you) it makes us feel even more alone and speeds up the spiral in our heads.

I'm not saying leave us alone, but what I am saying is be prepared to leave us alone. Give us space.  But do keep trying. The thing you have to understand here is that what we've gone thru has caused a huge distance between us and the "shore of normalcy" and it takes time and effort to cross that distance.  It just doesn't happen overnight. 

As for me and how I'm doing now with all of this, I still struggle daily with those two thoughts.  One thing that was very helpful for me yesterday was that one of the pastors who came to visit me told me "yeah, Marc.  Let me confirm for you that you have lost your mind.  Your old mind.  You have a new one now, and you need to figure it out"  and that REALLY resonated with me.  My life is so different now, and it's never going to be the same again, and that is the context in which I need to operate.  That takes acceptance and patience on my part as well as the ability to forgive myself when I stumble thru these things.  I've heard that this will be a bumpy road, but I'll never know for sure unless I get on it.

I really hope that this entry helps someone who might be dealing with someone who has suffered trauma as I have described.  As I go down this road, I am happy to take questions, and together we can all find some of the answers.

what it's like to die - pt. II - the aftermath

 Sorry it's taken so long to get to part 2 here- there has been a lot of things going on here, mainly in the area of adjusting to a dialysis schedule.

In Part 1, I covered the higher points of what I saw during my death.  There were some finer points I left out- my wife called my son in Boston to let him talk to me one last time, and the fact that I did recognize some of the people on the hill as I was descending- family members that had passed on (my paternal grandmother, and my uncle Carl) and a couple of friends - but I was in such a hurry to get to the town, I figured I would catch up with them later.

At any rate, as I said I was in the ICU and I was intubated.  And, I had absolutely no idea of what had happened.  Oh, I remembered the "hovering" in the recovery room and seeing my wife and daughter crying, but the context of it was all scrambled.  I was sure it was still Wednesday, but I couldn't understand why I was intubated?  My left side hurt terribly and the right side of my neck felt like it was in a vise. 

Turns out that they had inserted a chest tube into my left lung to drain the 2 liters of blood that had gotten into it, and I had a sub-clavial IV (central line IV) inserted on the right side of my neck, directly to my heart.  They had sedated me, but they had also paralyzed me and restrained me so I would stop trying to tear out the tube.  Oh, and it wasn't Wednesday morning- it was Thursday around noon.

The intubation and neck IV were removed about an hour after I awoke and I could prove to the docs that I could breathe on my own, and a variety of other (painful) catheters were also removed, but the chest tube remained.

So, I was alive.  My wife was there and looked terribly tired and terribly relieved.  She went thru what had happened to me, to which most of replies were a very hoarse, "Really?".  It took me quite awhile to accept what had happened.

And then a very strange thing happened.  

One would think that if they literally dodged death, that their immediate reaction would be on of joy and thankfulness.  After all, I obviously had a family and friends that loved me very much, I had first-class health care and had been assured that I would walk out of the hospital under my own steam, and it was super-obvious that I must have some purpose left to fulfill by continuing living.  LOTS to be thankful for, right?

And yet, I felt none of that.  At first, I really felt nothing at all, neither good nor bad.  But as the hours wore on in the ICU, I started feeling more and more empty inside.  I also had this overwhelming feeling of "You don't belong here" and even though I wasn't wishing for death or being suicidal, I didn't really want to be alive, either.  It's so difficult to explain, and even now, a full month later, I can't hardly do it justice.  I described it to my wife like this:

"It feels like a big chunk of me is missing."

One of my closest friends, Paul, came to see me in the ICU.  Paul and I mess with each other all the time.  He walked into the ICU and said, "Dammit, motherfu**er, don't you ever do that to me again" with a big smile on his face, and my response was to burst out crying.  It wasn't from sadness and it wasn't from happiness at seeing my friend- it was because I actually felt NOTHING at that statement.  Not a blessed thing.

During times like this, my usual response is to cry out to God to help me.  So, I did that, and I got absolute, total silence as a response.  Nothing.  This deepened the feeling of being alone, immeasurably.

They moved me very early Friday morning to another room, and then to another room later that day, where I would be for the next 9 days, trying to recover.  For the first 4 days. my strength was completely non-existent- my wife literally had to bathe and shave me; I could walk no more than about 2 meters (and had to use a walker to do it) and then would have to sit for about 30 minutes trying to get my wind back; I was completely unable to feed myself and couldn't do the simplest things like rolling over in bed or adjusting my position in bed.  This just added to my despair, and I spent those first 4 days doing nothing but crying- especially when I was left alone.  It got so bad that my wife decided to stay at the hospital with me so I wouldn't be alone with my thoughts.  My nurses were very worried about me, too- they could tell this wasn't "me".

What I had never considered throughout this was this wasn't a lack of thankfulness or emotion, rather, it was the absence of thankfulness and emotion.  Yeah, I was alive, but I was emotionally wrung out like a dry sponge.  And the harder I tried to "come to grips" with it, the worse it got.

One day, the hospital chaplain popped into my room.  Turns out, my wife and the nurses had collaborated on getting this together, but didn't tell me.  After establishing that she and I would actually be able to talk (she was Episcopalian, so that was cool) we started talking about this "absence" I was feeling.  What she said was (and I had never considered this at all) that my reaction to this was coming from 2 places: I had just experienced MAJOR trauma and that I hadn't assembled all the pieces in my mind as to what had happened.  She also assured me that this was the most common response to these things, and likened it to a soldier who had just experienced combat.  So, basically, I have PTSD, and that is perfectly normal.  

This was a HUGE relief.  I thought I was going to completely lose it, but this is what it is, and it will take time to get thru it.  We're talking therapists here, and I'm 100% ok with that.

I was released on December 23, and on the drive home with my wife, I cried uncontrollably the whole way.  When I reached my couch in the living, I literally collapsed on it and cried like I have NEVER cried in my life for about 2 hours.  I was wailing and moaning thru most of it, and my wife could do nothing to give me solace except hold me.  Again- not sadness or happiness- and it wasn't all that cathartic, either.  It was just so completely overwhelming.

I managed to get to church for Christmas Eve service, and I wanted to do that because my church has been an UNBELIEVALBE support mechanism for me during this time.  It was also so good to be around people- that did help my mood a lot.  Christmas Day was very, very down (I never left the couch) and that Wednesday was my first dialysis treatment at the clinic.  My family had a small gathering for Christmas on New Year's Eve.

On New Year's Day, however, I started having trouble breathing and started experiencing chest pain.  Rather than mess with it, we returned to the hospital where an X-Ray and CT revealed that my lung had decided to start leaking again.  This required 2 more blood transfusions, another chest tube and another 4 day stay in the hospital.  I was finally released on 1/4 and have been home since.  I still cannot walk very well and my right leg (where they inserted the embolization catheter to embolize my lung) really doesn't work well.  My energy level is still darn low, but getting better.  My doctors are optimistic that things will turn around (I'm still not so sure) but we'll see.

The road ahead is steep and painful, but we're gonna tackle it.

what it's like to die - at least for me

 

It's taken quite a bit of thought on my part as to how to describe my death.  A bit of my hesitancy is because this is probably one of the most difficult things to explain, but it's also because I honestly can't think of anything that has happened to me that is this intensely personal.

If you've ever read or heard someone's accounting of a near-death experience (of NDE), you'll hear some strange similarities between them.  I had those, but I also had some other things, too, and I'll do my best to describe them.

My surgery, a kidney biopsy to establish whether or not I had MCD (you can look that up if you like- I don't have it), started at 8:30am on the morning of December 13, 2023.  Pretty uneventful start, actually- just the usual stuff.  The last thing I remember well was laying on my stomach on the operating table and meeting the surgeon just as the anesthesia was starting to take hold.  No counting backwards- just lights out.

I vaguely remember waking up in the recovery room, and was still laying on my stomach.  Every time I took a breath, however, I was groaning involuntarily.  I remember quite a bit of pain, and I remember asking my wife to get the nurse because it really hurt.  My head was extremely foggy, and I really didn't quite know what was happening, but it hurt.  And it was hard to take the painful breathes, as well.  

They quickly gave me a shot of hydromorphone, and that helped a bit, but not enough.  I remember laying there, still not really able to get a decent breath and feeling like someone was pressing in on my left side.  After just a few minutes, however, the pain got markedly worse.

"Who is kicking me?" I started asking.

"No one is kicking you, Marc." my wife answered.

"Someone is kicking me!  Tell them to stop kicking me, please!", I implored.

This went on for a bit until my wife got the nurse again, and I asked for more painkiller.  They gave me more hydromorphone.  

And, that's when it got bad.  I apparently went to sleep.  Like REALLY asleep.  This is a really big problem, you see, because I have very, very bad Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA.  Because of the anesthesia AND the painkiller, this kicked my OSA into overdrive and I immediately started losing respiration functions.  On top of all that, during the biopsy, the surgeon had nicked an artery near the bottom of my left lung and I was unknown to everyone, I was hemorrhaging inside my chest cavity very, very badly.  Within a few seconds my breathing stopped entirely, my blood pressure dropped to 0/47 (no systolic pressure and unstable diastolic) and my body temperature plummeted to 74F.  My wife and daughter, who were both standing there in the room said that I turned pale blue and then white as a sheet and became diaphoretic and cyanotic.  

They administered NARCAN to try and counteract the painkiller, and it didn't work.

I was dead.  Just like that.   

It took 8 minutes for the Rapid Response Team to get me intubated and into surgery.  It's what happened during those 8 minutes that I am going to try to describe for you. 

The "Crowd"

It's very - well- foggy.  But it's not fog.  I don't know what it is.  And there are people standing in front of me, but I'm looking at them from the waist down.  They seem to be 2-dimensional, and they have no discernable features- like my eyes are out of focus.  They seem to be moving together in one motion, like their heads are moving, but there's no parallax - so they move more like they are "melting" into different shapes.  It's a little alarming.  It also looks like they are "contained" on a piece of cardboard or paper that is cut out into something like a pyramid.  (the picture above is the best approximation I can make) There is no noise at all.  It's very silent, which is weird for me because I have mild tinnitus, but that is completely gone.  The silence is overwhelming.

All of the sudden, I'm moving, backwards, away from the cardboard cutout of people.  It's a slow movement at first, then picks up a little speed.  Then I stop, and the cutout looks like it's about 3 or 4 meters away and I can see the crowd's entire "bodies" now.  Surrounding the cutout is.......it's not blackness.  It's not "nothing".  I honestly can't describe it other than to say it's "pretty".  I sit at that vantage point for a minute, kind of marveling at everything.  I'm not scared, and I'm not thinking anything- I'm just kind of enthralled and I'm trying to make sense of it.

I start getting this sensation of being really, really small- like I'm a drop of water.  I manage to look down, and I can't see a body or legs.  I'm just kind of floating in this ether, and I get another sensation of ascending up.  It's really slow, and my aspect of the cutout is changing.  I also notice that I am simultaneously seeing the cutout from the initial point of view.  But, as I "ascend" where I am starts to come into really sharp focus.  All of the sudden, I'm about 3 meters above the "crowd", looking down at a 45 degree angle.

There are 11 people in the room, and they are standing against a wall.  The room is very bright.  In the middle of these people is a tall, blonde woman.  Her arms are folded against her chest, and she is very angry.  She is yelling at all the other people in the room- barking is more like it.  And is she LOUD.  Next to her is my wife and my daughter.  They are both crying, and my daughter looks completely inconsolable.  My wife is leaning over something, and her right arm seems to be going back and forth very quickly, but I can't see what she is doing.  I'm starting to hear other sounds now, too.

"Will you please just look at me?" I hear my wife say.  I have no idea who she is talking to.  My wife is the only person talking that I can understand, but the rest of the people are talking- no, they are yelling, but it all just sounds like gibberish.  I'm still not scared, but I am confused as to what it is I am looking at.  The tall blonde woman motions to another woman, who touches my wife's arm and says something to her like "you are going to have to leave now", and takes my wife and my daughter out the door at the end of the room.

I notice that there is a little guy laying in a bed just below me.  I'm looking at him and I suddenly realize that it's me.  I don't look right.  My face is all contorted, my head is off to one side, my mouth is wide open and my eyes are rolled back in my head.  My color is really weird- it actually kind of looks like a mannequin of me, and it's not real. 

It dawns on me- very suddenly - I know what's happening.  

"Oh, wow!  This is really happening to me!! I cannot believe it!"  I think.  A teeny bit of panic hits me, but for some reason, I can handle the panic.  It's scary, but it's also kind of fun in a really weird way- kind of like being on a roller-coaster for the first time.  I watch the nurses grab my body, and start to turn it on my side, and I get this weird feeling like I'm being bent in half- I don't quite know how to explain it, but as they moved my body, I could feel stuff.

Oh, boy, does it hurt.  The pain is.........I can't describe.  I've told some people that the only way I can really explain it is that is was "perfect".  It was EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE- it was life itself and all consuming- but, here's the weird part- as much as it hurt, it didn't phase my thinking.  I just marveled at it.

All this time, I'm still seeing all this happen within that "cutout" that I described earlier, and all of the sudden there is a REALLY loud noise like a million people all decided to march forward in one step, and the cutout flew at me.  It's such a jarring motion and sound that I backup along the ceiling and notice the metal bezel plate that holds the light fixture screen- like I almost crash into it.  Then another "WHUMP" sound, and the cutout is suddenly a mile away from me, and it's at a different angle.  WHUMP again, and I'm looking at a corner of the cutout.

The "whumps" and sudden movements and aspect changes happens about 8-9 times and it's starting to really scare me- I really don't like this.  The yelling in the room has gotten an awful lot louder and more frantic.  Things start spinning then go completely black.

I'm standing in the ether.  I still don't see my body.  I'm also moving, very, very fast but I'm actually not doing the running or walking.  I'm just standing still and things are rushing by me.  It's dark, but I see what look like low hills on either side of me, and it looks like I'm travelling over a big grass field.  There are people in the field, just walking around, and I fly by them at ridiculous speed.  I really can't see who they are, but I get the feeling I know some of them, and I want to stop to talk to them but I have to get somewhere.  The field seems to be on the side of a small hill, and there's some lights at the bottom of the hill that look like a small town, but it's hard to make out in the darkness.  I'm picking up speed, too, and it's really exhilarating to feel the cool grass going under my feet (even though I can't see them) and the wind in my face.  I'm getting the feeling like wherever it is I'm heading is some place I really want to get to in a hurry.  I can smell what I think are pancakes, too!  And BBQ.  The people that I pass by start waving at me- I get it.  I know where I'm going!!!!!!  The town is Heaven!!!  I can't wait to get there, and...........

Everything goes completely black.  No sensation.  No movement.  There's something in my mouth and I don't like.  All of the sudden, it's really hard to breathe.  I can't see.  I want to yell, but I can't make any sound at all.  I can't open my eyes. Ok, I can barely open them.  

I'm in a big, dimly lit room.  There's  a small platform on the other side of the room, and sitting on it, staring at me is- Elmer Fudd?  What the fuck is that?  He's just sitting there, his right arm wrapped around his shotgun, staring at me.  It isn't alarming or scary, and I immediately know that this is a hallucination, and it makes me laugh.  Some people get Jesus in their hospital rooms- it figures that I would get Elmer.  Elmer disappears and the blackness comes back.

Someone is holding my hand.  It's my wife.

"Can you squeeze my hand?" I hear her say.

I squeeze her hand as hard as I can.

"YEAH!!!!" I hear her exclaim.  "Do it again!"  I do it again.

"Can you take a big breath for me?", she asks.  I take as big a breath as I can.  There is cheering in the room.  I'm alive, and I'm intubated (which sucks) but this is where I will leave the story for now for the next installment.

well, that was different

I was going to write a new entry today to try and clarify my last post a bit, but since I had written that last post, a rather significant event happened that I really must write about.  It's one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime events, too, and it really can't be ignored.  What happened, you ask?

I died.

Last Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at 8AM I went into the hospital for a pretty routine procedure- a kidney biopsy.  Supposed to be in and out in 3 hours.  Supposed to be 3 hours......

Instead, what happened was that the surgeon made a mistake, and unknowingly severed an artery near my left lung, and for 5 hours after the procedure, I quietly bled out internally in the recovery room while my wife and daughter watched.  During this episode, my blood pressure went down to 0/47 and my body temperature went down to 74 degrees.  I was without respiration for 8 minutes.  That's dead, folks.  The hospital called a full Code Blue on me, the Rapid Response Team took over my care, ushered my family out and resuscitated me thru 2 different CT scans, 2 surgeries, a chest tube to remove 2+ liters of blood in my chest, re-inflation of a deflated lung, 3 separate blood transfusions and intubation.  I was placed on a ventilator and in the ICU for recovery.   

When sedation medication was lifted and I began to wake up, I thought it was still Wednesday, but it was in fact Thursday evening.  I had no idea what had transpired.  Oh, wait.....yes I did.  It started coming back to me.........oh, boy.  Did it ever.

I will be writing much, much more about this- I promise.  I'm still collecting my thoughts, but suffice it to say that yes, I did leave my body.  And yes, I did see things.  And, yes I will describe them.  There is much to tell here, but for now, I am still healing and still pretty weak from all of it.  I am also home now, and it's Christmas Day as I write this, and that is a very, very good thing.  For now, this is really all I have to say, as this experience is a little bigger than a breadbox and I want to take the time to describe all that happened as accurately as I can and that is going to take time for me to do properly.

In meantime, I covet anyone and everyone's prayers and good thoughts as I try to heal, so if you are in the mood, please feel to send those my way.  I can really use them.

More to come.