“It’s a long, hard road...
What a change has come, hard change has come...
Flat on my back, out at sea,
Hoping these waves, don’t cover me...
I’m turned and tossed, upon the waves,
When the darkness comes, I feel the grave...
But I still believe, I still believe
Through the cold, and through the heat,
Through the rain, and through the tears,
Through the crowds, and through the cheers...
I still believe, you can’t take that away from me
I believe...”
- The Call, “I Still Believe” *
3.
3 candles.
3 “Oh my God, look! How pretty! Chuck, did you see this? Who would do this?”, mysteriously placed, peacefully shimmering at 5:15am candles.
3 warm, breezy, August, this is the morning, this is the long-anticipated-I’m-scared-as-hell-but-it’s-happening open-heart surgery, front porch step, quietly flickering, pristine, white prayer candles.
3.
3 arteries.
3 severely damaged, widow-maker, 90, 90, and 100% respectively, blocked, “you’ll have a life threatening incident if you don’t have this surgery” fragile, torn and frayed arteries.
3 bypasses made possible by 3 vein segments harvested from my left leg, leaving 3 scars to
match the 3 inches times 3 (or 9 inch) freshly minted chest scar that by-passer comrades jokingly, knowingly, and self-consciously refer to as “The Zipper”.
As in “Welcome to the Zipper Club”.
3.
3 trips.
3 semi-surreal, quasi, out-of-body as in “how did this happen to me”, 1 unexpected and unwelcome, 2 expected, scheduled, necessary but nevertheless all unwelcome, this-is-your-new-normal-even-if-temporary hospital trip overnights, overnights, overnights and then some, overnights.
3.
3 months.
3 months, 3 cardiac rehab days a week, 3 treadmill and treadmill-esque machines waiting for me at my at-least-I-have-a-window-and-a-view station for the rebuilding, restructuring and re-envisioning of...me.
3 months and when it’s finally Thanksgiving, it’ll have been a long, hard road, what a hard change has come, and these 3 months will have been the cherries on top of this little shop of horrors of a year.
3.
Bad luck, they say, “comes in threes”.
“Third times a charm”, they say.
3 strikes and you’re out.
Hat-tricks, three-peats, Triple Crowns, trifectas - the brass rings of sports.
3.
Three Jewels - Buddhism’s refuge.
Bhagavad Gita - Hinduism’s three paths to salvation.
Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot - Judaism’s Three Pilgrimage Festivals.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost - Christianity’s Trinity.
3.
3 mysteriously placed, peacefully shimmering, quietly flickering, pristine, white prayer at 5:15am
candles.
Candles that were a way too early morning, wondrous, calmingly Zen-like gift.
Candles that were a no fanfare, no “here’s a receipt if you don’t like it you can return it for something else”, captivatingly serene, gaze-at-me gift.
I’m learning to appreciate these unexpected, candle-like gifts.
The simplicity of breath-taking moment gifts.
Quiet strength gifts.
Fragile, hypnotic, spirit gifts.
Transformative, tranquil, beauty gifts.
Especially when these gifts appear alternately between the jarring, tone-deaf salvos of politically weaponized comments from Covid unbelievers.
And they do come.
Enough that I’m aware that for the first time in my life I find myself in the bizarre position of having to defend a disease.
Defend.
A.
Disease.
Think about that concept.
“I don’t believe Covid’s real”, says a woman to my wife after Lauren briefly mentioned my year so far.
“You really think it was Covid? Who knows, really, everything’s so manipulated and fake”, say several acquaintances.
“I had it, it’s no big deal, it’s just a flu, the media blows it out of proportion”, text a few more presumably well-meaning friends.
“You’re fine now, right? What did this have to do with Covid?”, comment a few more who’ve read about my, well, apparently just another flu experience.
“Your doctors any good? You should probably check around”, say a few more Old Testament, Job-like naysayers.
Which, just as a side note, I wouldn’t trade my physician/surgical/nursing care team for any other crew anywhere.
In the world.
Period.
Full stop.
But see?
There it is.
The defensive posture many Covid-struck, long-hauling, symptoms loaded, no-we’re-not-all-ancient-aged-weighted-down-with-pre-conditions-duped-by-politicians dreamers.
It’s sad.
It’s really sad.
It’s more than sad, it’s as of this writing nearly 200,000 dead sad.
With each new day of God’s grace I get to live in, I also get to look back and see the peril I danced with.
The proximity to the end I unknowingly tip-toed toward.
The statistic I very nearly was.
I could stop writing about it and chalk it off to a “hey, it is what it is”, time to move on chapter in my life.
I’m moving on, for sure, detractors and Covid-critics be damned.
But I won’t stop though.
I won’t stop telling and re-telling my saga while it matters, and I think it matters as a warning and as an encouragement.
Simultaneously foreteller and soothsayer.
There are too many peacefully shimmering, quietly flickering, pristine, white prayer at 5:15am candles to mysteriously place.
3 to be exact.
I still believe...
I still believe...
* Russ Taff’s version is still my favorite...
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