A Value of Life Partnership
Steve Cole reports:
I nearly died at 4am Thanksgiving morning, choking on a wad of post-nasal drip (crud, snot, gunk, whatever you want to call it) from my cold. I had woken up a few minutes before, apparently because I was having trouble breathing, and went to the den to see if I could fall back asleep in my recliner. After only a minute there, I was choking and going into a blind panic, hyperventilating (well, I would have been if any air had been moving in or out). The whole thing struck me as slightly absurd; after everything I have done and been through, to die in my own recliner choking on my own snot was just not the way I expected to leave this Earth. Part of me knew that I didn't need to panic. All I had to do was sit up, blow my nose, and go get a drink of diet soda to clear my throat, but the panic factor was rising as fast as the sublime absurdity of the situation. As I was trying to get to my feet, I felt hands on my shoulders. My beloved wife, Leanna, had woken up due to the racket I was making and could tell what that I was choking. (She thought, at first, that I had been eating something that got stuck.) Knowing that I was not alone, the panic disappeared and all I had to do was, as the tiny remaining calm part of my brain always knew, blow my nose and get a swig of something with enough bite to clear the gunk. By the time I was done with the first step, Leanna was there with a glass of Diet Mountain Dew and some kind of cold pill which kicked in a half-hour later and let me get back to sleep. I am, once more, so very glad that I do not live alone, and so very glad that I have spent the last 30 years working hard at convincing Leanna not to give up on me and move out. Marriage is, to be sure, how God intended humans to live, and I really do not understand why anyone would not want to live in that holy estate, and work to achieve it.
I nearly died at 4am Thanksgiving morning, choking on a wad of post-nasal drip (crud, snot, gunk, whatever you want to call it) from my cold. I had woken up a few minutes before, apparently because I was having trouble breathing, and went to the den to see if I could fall back asleep in my recliner. After only a minute there, I was choking and going into a blind panic, hyperventilating (well, I would have been if any air had been moving in or out). The whole thing struck me as slightly absurd; after everything I have done and been through, to die in my own recliner choking on my own snot was just not the way I expected to leave this Earth. Part of me knew that I didn't need to panic. All I had to do was sit up, blow my nose, and go get a drink of diet soda to clear my throat, but the panic factor was rising as fast as the sublime absurdity of the situation. As I was trying to get to my feet, I felt hands on my shoulders. My beloved wife, Leanna, had woken up due to the racket I was making and could tell what that I was choking. (She thought, at first, that I had been eating something that got stuck.) Knowing that I was not alone, the panic disappeared and all I had to do was, as the tiny remaining calm part of my brain always knew, blow my nose and get a swig of something with enough bite to clear the gunk. By the time I was done with the first step, Leanna was there with a glass of Diet Mountain Dew and some kind of cold pill which kicked in a half-hour later and let me get back to sleep. I am, once more, so very glad that I do not live alone, and so very glad that I have spent the last 30 years working hard at convincing Leanna not to give up on me and move out. Marriage is, to be sure, how God intended humans to live, and I really do not understand why anyone would not want to live in that holy estate, and work to achieve it.
posted by Federation Commander at 2:19 PM
<< Home