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This month I’m starting with a quote from the Bible. From the book of James:
“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”
I make my little plans for this afternoon and next Thursday; put together ideas for the month of July, and the second half of the year. As though I have any control over such things.
A recent early evening found me relaxing on my back porch, shelling my small harvest of sweet peas, rather free of worry. Being a healthy adult male, free of debt and with a great job, my calendar tends to fill with nonsense. Small annoyances of daily life are wrought from molehills to mountains. For instance? As I peeled open those pea pods, my left hand twitched in an odd manner. I had to pause for a few seconds, to allow it some rest. Again, a strange jump. I gave it a shake.
My thumb, at that moment, withdrew inward until it touched my palm. Involuntarily, my other fingers closed around. I felt the sharp pain of a Charlie Horse, except with it came a terrible pins-and-needles sensation which encompassed my entire hand. I did not at all understand what was happening. As I attempted to talk, I felt the entire left side of my face droop.
My mind quickly took inventory: numbness and pain down the left arm. Drooping on the left side. This made no sense, but I knew what the equation added up to. Bryan Gadow was in trouble. Serious, serious trouble. My wife dialed 911, but I did not hear her. To the floor I collapsed.
As of this writing, there is much I do not know, and a bit that I do. I’ll start with the best news, which is that I apparently did NOT suffer a stroke. The diagnosis, so far, is that I had a seizure. Why? Well, now, at press time this remains a mystery. Extensive testing found a long list of things that didn’t cause it.
Likewise, I do not know who helped me to the gurney, who the gentleman was who looked down upon me in the back of the ambulance and tried to coax me into talking some sense. (Had he read my writing here in the Caroline Review, that might have lowered his expectations!) Eventually, I did manage to utter that it was 2026, and that Donald Trump is the president. Other factoids seemed more vague.
No, this was nowhere in my plans. Consider: I have driven across over half the United States, in all manner of cars and trucks. My driving record is something to be proud of. My home state may not be known for efficiency, but I was barely home from the hospital when my email inbox contained a friendly notification from the folks at MDOT letting me know my license has been invalidated. I have, for the duration, become a hitch hiker. This certainly puts a new perspective on things.
Indeed, this will be a summer like none other in my life. I didn’t say it would be a bad one, though. I’m going to try and find the silver lining. Maybe I can take things even slower than usual, and even closer to the ground. I may get to know some of my friends on a deeper level, from the passenger seat.
I seek not your pity; I don’t ask for your help. I tell my story, partly as an explanation of my absence to those who might not see me for a while. But I tell it also in hopes that you, too, can find the good in the gristle life throws you. I believe I’ll need your good cheer, now and again; I’m already battling a funk. Better days, though, I know are ahead. The Bible? It clued me in on that, too.
