Death-Defying Part 1

Today I find myself with one day left to live. Tomorrow, I'll have 0 days left to live, and on Monday, I will die. It's a strange thing to know you are dying. It seems there are still so many things that I want to experience. Yet, when you're dying, there's nothing to really do except surrender to what is.

I contemplate what I will say to those I know and love on my final day tomorrow before I die. My plan is to make a video message to them tomorrow, and to simply allow whatever arises to be expressed. Even thinking about it brings up emotion in my being.

  It's not like this is the first time I've "nearly died." I've had many brushes with death in this lifetime, starting when I was just an infant. My mother shares the story of me choking on a small piece of meat she'd chewed up a bit and given to me when I was around a year or two old... like a mama bird feeding her young. My eyes rolled back in my head and I turned blue. Somehow she managed to get that piece of meat out of my throat before it totally took me out. That was my first dance with death.

My second dance happened when I was around six to eight years old. One afternoon I asked my mom if I could have some sugar cubes from the jar she stored in our kitchen pantry. I wanted them for a snack; she kept them for guests who wanted sugar with their coffee or tea. She said no (as any responsible parent would). But I was stubborn and intent, and I LOVED sugar cubes; I thought they were the smartest invention ever!

So I sneakily and quietly opened that jar in the pantry for a small handful of the treats. I hid five of them in my palm as I walked back to my room, closed the door behind me and then sat in front of the big picture window by my bed and ate them... which would have been fine except that I didn't just eat them. I tossed them up into the air like I'd seen my older sister do with popcorn and caught them in my mouth one by one. This was a fun game! The first four went right into my mouth and landed on my tongue where I let them slowly dissolve... yum! The fifth one rolled right down my throat and got lodged there... Yep, choking again!

It didn't take me long to figure out that that sugar cube was not going anywhere without some help. Once I realized that I couldn't breath, I ran out of my room clutching my throat and making a very interesting sound as I tried to express to my mom and one of my older sisters what was happening. My mother stood up in a panic, not understanding; it was my sister who figured out that I was choking on something. They flipped me over and hung me upside down, one of them holding my ankles shaking me up and down while the other one beat on my back; I'm not sure who did what.

Eventually (and I have no idea how long it took) that silly little sugar cube came rolling out of my throat and onto the carpet below me, covered with blood. Well, that's all it took for me to snatch up that sugar cube and "tuck tail and run" in complete and utter shame about what I'd done. I don't recall my sister or mother saying a word; they just let me go hide in my closet, which was my way of coping when I felt uncomfortable.

I don't know how long I stayed in that closet but it felt like a very long time because I missed supper and it was dark outside before I finally eased my way out as quietly as I could and slinked into my bed for the night. I guess they figured the shame I felt for so actively disobeying my mother was enough of a punishment, so they let me be.

From my Spanish Catholic-raised young mind, I thought that God had punished me for sneakily going against my mother by making me choke, and I wondered why he waited until the last of my five sugar cubes to do so. It certainly made for a more dramatic experience. I must admit that I felt somewhat lucky and extremely grateful for it because there wasn't any evidence of the other four that I'd already eaten. "Maybe they'll just believe that I'm not that bad of a kid since they only saw one..."

I had a couple more brushes with death before I escaped elementary school. You can read about them in Part 2...