Category: Reflection

On the Turning Away

1

My new house is dead silent. I can’t sleep at the moment, a minor issue I find has cropped up since my coma. It’s not a bad thing, I don’t feel anxious or physically bad. Neither too do I feel energetic or purpose driven as if this is some psychological replacement for both the time I was nearly asleep for good or the second chance I was given. I’m just… awake.

Living in the country allows a lot of time for quiet and reflection and I suppose that’s a part of it. I’ve finished up my question list for Wil for Sunday’s Rose City Comic Con panel, and I’m making the drive down to Portland tomorrow to see my friend Mark before I hit the event.

It is, as I said, dead silent around me.

Except for Basil’s snoring, a reminder of the life I’m a steward of and how much happiness he brings me. And the clicking of my keyboard as I write, reminding me these same tools I use to write this are the tools that provide my livelihood. The house itself occasionally makes noise, a squirrel or wandering cat on the roof or the simple sounds that all houses make when talking to you if you remember to stop and listen and not tune them out. (They have their own languages, Houses. Some of them shout like Ollie the weather man, and others whisper.) I can hear my own breathing, a reminder I’m still here. My stomach growls loudly because my medication often makes me want to eat something at odd times.

I go downstairs to grab a piece of fruit from the fridge, conscious of the sound of my bare feet on the wood floor. I can hear the soft whir of the fridge. Outside, despite the late hour, a car drives up the gravel main road.

All these noises and sounds happen all around me typically while I sleep, and now I feel pleasantly sleepy having gotten to sit and experience them for a moment. I finish my snack, turn away and go back to bed.

No there ain’t no rest for the wicked, till we close our eyes for good.

4

I’m sitting in a posh hotel bar in San Francisco. Just a couple of months ago, I was looking at the city from a much different view, that of an ICU bed at Pacific Medical Center.

I sit here now, like I sit each day, wondering a little bit about what I am going to do with the gift I have been given. You see I was dead for a short bit. Well, mostly dead. At one point the Neurologists had concluded they could detect little electrical activity in my brain, my foot and ocular reflexes were zero: no response, that of a person brain dead or with severe brain damage. An ammonia buildup in my brain combined with a septic infection in my lungs had put me into a coma. The verdict was that I was either already gone, or so far gone I would not return in anything resembling a normal state.

Then something happened. Thanks to the charity of my friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook and just awesome people in general, my family was able to all fly in to San Francisco from Dallas to say goodbye and decide when to pull the plug. Things were that bad.
Then I woke up. Then I got better. Then I got a lot better. Then I got almost normal. Then I got pretty much normal. And now I sit here awaiting my dinner (Salad!) and a ginger beer three months later, and I stop often to think about this continue button I got to press.

When I was out at the deepest level, the “he’s pretty much brain dead” level, I was locked in. I was aware, but unable to communicate or move. I was able to prove this later by recounting conversations around me that happened at that time that I otherwise could not have known about. During that, I lived other lifetimes. I had no temporal sense at all. It was the single worst thing I have ever experienced, by far, because I was just gone enough mentally to be so confused I thought it was normal. When I awoke they could have told me I had been out for 5 years, 5 weeks, or the 5 days I was actually out and I would have believed them. It is, for all methods I could possibly think of, impossible to describe. This isn’t a case of “It felt like forever”, this is a case of being left out in forever entirely, so deep you have no frame of reference for the word “forever.” I moved from fragments of lucidity to dreamstates to…well something I simply cannot describe to you.

There was no tunnel with a light at the end, there was no sense of anything guiding me or spiritual. There was simply this existence out of time, experiences so far reaching sometimes they hit me out of the blue, not in a traumatic way, but in a way that makes me feel somehow much older. I feel, on occasion, weary mentally. Not unlike I’ve been around in this universe way way too long. It’s not especially unpleasant, and some of the experiences I remember were positive. But it tends to take me by surprise when it happens and it’s sometimes hard to shove aside.

Again, these…reveries I suppose they could be called, are not unpleasant or traumatic. I recovered physically such that I am out of any apparent danger, exercising and trying to eat well. They serve to give me pause and reflection about what happened to me, which is a good thing because I don’t want to forget and become complacent about getting a second chance at so many things. I’m extraordinary lucky to get my health back. I live in a beautiful house on a large plot of land in a beautiful part of the country. I have my dog Basil whose unbridled joy at discovering a simple rock in the back yard never fails to make me smile, and I have a life and more full of friends and people who care about me who I inadvertently scared the shit out of.

Being a writer I am of course mining as much of the experience as possible for pieces to perform, believe it or not there is a tremendous amount of humor to be found in the situation once you’re past it. There will be news on that version of events pretty soon.

But for some reason tonight I thought it best to think about the poignant part of what happened to me, that sense of immense age that hits me out of nowhere sometimes. I’m still me, I escaped any lasting brain impacting issues. My follow-ups are all a-ok.

And even with all the time I felt like I lived in that very weird block of darkness, it still would not be enough time to thank everyone properly who came to my aid, from family to friends. From people I’ve known for decades to people I don’t know at all, but who know me through my writing or performances or work. From people I’ve worked with in the past, and people I work with now at HackerOne. The Internet is a wondrous and complicated thing, full at once with 1’s that are angry at 0’s and vice versa. But it also brings us closer together, and I like to think that as loud and painful as the bad parts are, they are still overall in the minority. Something I try to minimize but sometimes falter at.

Next to me a couple is arguing, from the snippets it sounds like a breakup. Across the restaurant there’s a guy sitting alone like me, reading what I think is the latest Jack Reacher book. My salad is half gone, as is the ginger beer. Moments feel immeasurably longer than that every once in a while, just for a brief bit. But that’s more or less where I’m at too.

I’m only half done.

And We Give Thanks So That There May Be An Accounting In Our Hearts Of Blessings

0

First Thanksgiving alone and spent it awake all night.

That doesn’t mean I’m not thankful for things. I’m thankful for all the good parts of my marriage to Rochelle. I’m thankful for all our pets here and gone (Illusion, Isabeau, Hennessey, Adia, Buddy, Remington Martin, Eowyn Marie, Medallion, Basil Hayden, and Aspen Blue).

I’m thankful for family, heroes, and friends both here and gone (quite literally too many for my brain to hold)

I’m thankful for HBO and Microsoft and the opportunities they have afforded me. I’m thankful for my job now at Black Tusk Studios getting to work on Gears of War. And the apartment I’m in that bridged a difficult gap into a new little place that has a nice sandy beach for Basil to play on that I start moving into this weekend.

I’m thankful for Ikea. If nothing else I will have a bed.

They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving at the same time we do up here in Canada (Canadian Thanksgiving was in October), so today is a work day. I have not decided what bird to cook tonight, it can’t be a turkey of course, too big. But I’ll have my tiny celebration nonetheless and begin to pack for the weekend move.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful day.

On the morrow.

1

My ride share had to cancel this morning, her son is ill. So I tried to catch the valley shuttle bright and early to get me out to work at HBO in time for our morning Stand Up meeting. I love the work being done there and wish I could talk about it but I cant. Suffice to say they are an amazing team of people doing amazing work on amazing things that are amazing and I’m just really proud to be a part of it.

But their offices are in downtown Seattle, roughly 27 miles as the crow flies from my house. By bus on the best of days that’s an hour and twenty minute commute.

This wasn’t the best of days, weather wise. I let Aspen out for his morning routine and did sign language to him in praise while I gave him his anti-seizure meds. It was cloudy out and raining that classic late-January Seattle rain. Misty and a bit clingy more than pure drops out of the sky. It smelled wonderful outside, and Aspen looked like he was covered in dew from it during his morning constitutional.

I love living in the country. I’ve been here ten years now. If you get the chance, try to spend some time living somewhat remotely. I’m not saying it’s better than living in the city, I’m saying a radically different experience sometimes cleanses the mind.

I tended to my own morning routine and donned my “rain shoes”. Yes in Seattle you usually have to have a pair of shoes dedicated to the purpose of walking in the rain. The shuttle pickup stop is roughly three quarters of a mile down the ridge from my house and my canvas Vans weren’t going to cut it. I have a wonderful new greatcoat I bought for the Child’s Play dinner this year that I trot out for the cold and rainy days. I shrugged my way into it, put on my hat, tucked my ipad into the inside pocket, and began my walk. I paused for a moment at the door and listened. I’m not sure why I did it, but there’s something about the sound of rain lightly hitting the trees and the house in the morning that never, ever gets old. Even a misty rain can be loud in just the right moment.

I walked. All around me commuters passed me by and I was wondering what they were thinking of me. Was it “Oh that poor guy trudging in the rain somewhere” or was it “oh man. I wish I could just walk around in the morning instead of driving to work”?

aaaaannnnnnd I missed the shuttle. I wasn’t walking slowly, there was a slight pause in my walk as a family of deer foraged up the hill halfway the journey by one of the housing subdivisions. I thought about taking a picture, but deer in Duvall are fairly common and I was in a really good mood and although I’m not “that guy” lecturing people about enjoying a moment as opposed to stopping to phone-cam it, I enjoyed the moment instead of phone-camming it. I was probably 30 seconds from the bus stop, and a good 7 minutes ahead of the shuttle’s pickup time, when the shuttle blew right past me.

I went with my first instinct, “Oh no that’s the only shuttle for the morning bus runs!” and realized the best I could hope for to reach work would be late morning. I raised my hand and took a few urgent sprint strides before realizing there was no way this was going to work. I stopped, the rain still making that soft patter in the mist, and continued on to the stop just in case that was perhaps a duplicate shuttle or one running really late.

Suffice to say, that was my ride. I stood at the stop until ten past the pickup time and resigned myself to doing some work from home until I could catch the next run of buses an hour or two hence.

The sky had brightened considerably and the actual droplets of rain had increased. My coat and hat made me feel like Tom Reagan in Miller’s Crossing. I imagined a world where I returned home, put a record on my new turntable I just bought, poured a whisky, and sat like a person in a simpler time until things coalesced back to where the things I had no control over aligned again to get me where I needed to be. I was somewhat amused by this line of thinking when I saw the deer again.

They had moved down the hill and were standing square in the center of the road. The curve at the top of the ridge where I live offers a long line of sight to anyone coming down the road, but to anyone going up it’s a blind turn. And the speed limit, while 35, is routinely broken. My appreciation for them standing stock still in the road, a doe and two very young offspring, was countered almost immediately by considering the likelihood of someone hitting them. Sure enough I turned and around the bend were two cars. I raised my hands up in a waving motion, then my hands pushing down in the road construction crew “slow down” motion. They slowed and I pointed to around the curve. They crawled around the bend and saw the deer.

The deer were nonplussed.

This represented a problem. They were in the road. Two cars, albeit with blinkers on, were on a blind uphill curve. I tried everything I could think of: my phone’s ringtone, shouting, etc. I was even considering quickly downloading a bobcat or cougar roar on my phone when the entire family of deer, with a measure of somewhat aloof disdain, snorted and moved off the road into the brush. The cars passed. I stood for a moment. The entire situation had lasted maybe 60 or 90 seconds.

Living in the country.

I made it back home, hung up my coat and hat. I sent a mail letting work know I’d be delayed and my work item updates. I took a look at the phonograph I just bought (it’s this one by the way) still in its wrapping and debated opening it.

On the morrow, I decided. I’m still waiting for some tiny bookshelf speakers en route to accompany it.

The rain still made noise around the house. Aspen, Eowyn, Adia, and Rochelle were asleep upstairs. A new puppy, Basil Hayden, is asleep up in Canada. We see him soon.

I sit at my desk now, finishing a wiki for work, getting ready to catch the next run downtown. Might have dinner with some friends tonight. Finishing up a long overdue project in the late evening.

And I might see those deer again in the morning.

Poignance.

2

It’s well past four in the morning. I hear the ticking of a clock I never really heard before. It’s on the kitchen wall and it’s loud.

Gosh, I’ve been sick, sicker than I have been in 15 years. Food poisoning from some bad vegetables. Better now, but bad enough I’m having to miss my grandmother’s funeral because I could not fly. Better now, but wow was that horrible. Better now, and also worse.

I’m coming to grips with the fact there has never been a time I looked at the home I live in when Buddy wasn’t alive. No wall, no ceiling, no anything in this house we’ve made our home for ten years that I didn’t see through these eyes without him being around somewhere.  But he wasn’t ripped from us. He gave us the gift of his life long after we had any reason to expect it.

We’ve been given permission to spread his ashes at his favorite places on earth. (By the way, here’s one of them: Chevy Chase Beach Cabins. A place we go to vacation and heal, and they deserve your business.)

I would have liked my Mee Maw to see Discovery Bay from the cabins too, but that’s not to be.

We have pink flowers for Buddy, a gift from close friends. We had yellow for Remy. My grandmother is gone and thanks to incredible bad luck I cannot be there to say goodbye.

These are things in various lenses everyone deals with. For certain there are worse lenses, and better. We wish we could change them. I mean, certainly I wish I could, not just for me but for anyone who runs into that buzz-saw of circumstance that provokes sorrow. It is what it is.

I don’t know what makes me think of all this, I’ve written parts of it already.

I suppose it’s the fact I’m no longer sad, at least for now. There’s these pink flowers on the table that smell so good, and I can keep a meal down. We’re dog sitting an 8 month old border collie who has infused our routine with peeing to mark his territory, energy, life.

I try to remind myself I live a first world life, all of it every bit of it. I remember to try and make things better for others.

So! Be excellent to each other for starters. I’ll try and help with the rest.