Earlier That Day

"Dear Lord, I pray you will bless me, enlarge my territory, keep me by your hand and keep me from evil." (I Chronicles 4:10) (my translation)

This well known prayer of Jabez from the Old Testament was part of my daily devotions, usually the sum total of my devotions. The day before my heart attack, I'm pretty sure it was the sum total.

On a bleak Missouri December day, I woke in the comfortable confines of yet another Holiday Inn Express, somewhere just off the interstate between Springfield and St. Louis. I had my devotions as I dressed.

Breakfast buffet! Egg patty, sausage patty, orange juice, coffee.

The local marketing rep I had come to train arrived and we worked together in the lobby until noon. The snow began falling and provided a good reason to wrap up and let me get on the road to St. Louis for my return flight to Atlanta. This would be the end of day 3 in Missouri.

Take off was scheduled for 5:53 p.m. with arrival at 8:35 p.m. The Avis rent-a-car lot was off site, so I needed to hone in on it with the GPS unit built into my laptop computer. I wanted to have enough time to turn in the car, catch the shuttle bus, argue about being overcharged again, and get to my gate dragging my "carry on" suitcase and computer case, without having a panic attack.

I assumed my flight would be delayed. It was. But you can't plan that way. If they decided to leave on time, I needed to be there. Let's just say I got home very, very late. Technically, I got home very early Thursday morning, December 3, 2009. Something happened very late that night. I will always remember the date. I was born January 6, 1953. I died December 3, 2009.   Later, we would learn to call it a "near death experience" because I was resuscitated.   But for awhile, I was dead.

If my wife, Barbara, had not acted so wisely and decisively and if the medical team of paramedics and doctors had not been so prompt and skilled, these would be the dates inscribed on my tomb stone.

In March, 2012, Barbara had her own experience with cardiac arrest and NDE in the same hospital where I spent so much time.  But that's another story.