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?