The chilled air of Alabama. The warm, wear your shorts kind of days, are amongst all. As are the desert chilled nights. Paradoxical weather moods. One frozen fact is that no matter mother natures whimsy, I am still broke. I was in sleep medicine for seventeen years. Until I needed to know what happened to my grandfather, Donald Reed, a.k.a, Pop-Pop. He left us the summer just before my car crash. This man was a saint to me. As a young boy, before kindergarten, my grandfather gave my Pop funds to allow me and brother Donny to attend St. Johns catholic school. Dave my oldest brother was off to junior high. This guy Pop Pop had seven children before us, three knuckleheads. He fought bravely in WW2. He returned home to my grandmother Mary Hyland before becoming Mrs. Reed. Post-war meant baby-making time. Why not right? The dastardly German putz was gone. They had seven kids, five boys, two girls. How that beautiful woman put up with all those kids, the commotion is way beyond me. So my pop-pop had passed and I am losing it a bit. I ask God what has become of him? No answer. I asked a hundred times, got nothing. I devised a plan. I am Irish Catholic, I cannot just kill myself and go to see him. Suicide is a sin. So I planned on running about the town of Princeton New Jersey, as I have often previously done. Only these times I will consume at a ferocious rate. Prior to this, I would take it slow, never surpassing the speed limit. But now I would get blinding drunk then have to drive home, blinded by booze. I took into consideration the fact that innocent people were on the road. True but, not at three in the morning.
I succeeded. I got into a fight with a drunken telephone pole!, a coma ensued for forty-six days. My first memory of the hospital is talking as loud as I could, which only amounted to a whisper, due to the tube injected into my esophagus. I was calling my dad down to bed level to tell him that I just saw Pop Pop! This is what I saw and experienced in my scientifically brain dead experience. I was standing at the foot of a field. A couple of miles of land with a small stream. Demanding their presence in the background were mountains, snow-capped. Two mountains. It was partly cloudy, not hot, not cold then... My grandfather appeared in the sky, filling it. He said ' Dan, we all like you up here, we like how you treat others but, you can't go out there and do what you did to get here..you'll end up here way before your time.' He then reached down and pinched from the sky. I promised my grandfather to never let go again.
Well, I ended up with fifteen brain hemorrhages. I couldn't walk for a few years. Dragged my right foot for thirteen years, like a cripple. I mashed up my words for a good eight years. I stuttered. I got stuck on words but, not one bruise. Clean as a whistle. I was thirty-five when this went down. I am forty-nine now. Basically all good. I only say that because after healing up for fourteen years, I am considering seriously, going back to work........
Author Notes: Me and you and them
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United States • 52 years old