I am caught between two worlds.
In one, I am at the beach or in a park or lunching with
friends at Inlet Harbor.
In the other, I tense up, stare at the wall, and wonder
where I am and who I am. I drift off,
imagine I fly over the Laramie Range. Below are the convoluted rock shapes of
Vedauwoo. On one of the heights is my son, waving up at me as he used to wave
down at me on the flatlands as I wondered how in the hell a 12-year-old scrambled
to the top without falling. I soar above the beach and see the waves I no
longer ride or no longer even stand calf-length in since I can’t walk unaided
to the water.
I almost died twice during a four-day hospital span that I
can’t remember. I awoke a mess, unable to walk or shit or even talk. “What month
is it?” I haven’t a clue. The medicos gave me fentanyl to let me float through
the trauma and it worked as a mind-eraser. I float through those four days that
I don’t remember.
Yesterday I sat for three hours in the nicely-appointed
customer waiting room at KIA HQ. The people there seemed human enough as did I.
I read a non-fiction book about Japanese fliers who flew airplanes into
American ships in a last-ditch effort to halt dreaded defeat. Kamikaze, Divine
Wind. In Korea, where my SUV was made, Japanese troops rounded up young females
to serve as “comfort women” and worked to death Allied soldiers my father’s age
of 20 in 1943.
I live on a thin thread. We all do. I didn’t want to die
from septicemia but almost did and it was nothing that I did or didn’t do. An
occupying army of bacteria invaded my bloodstream and began to switch off my
organs, one by one, like you walk through the house turning off lights, eager
to get to grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. Antibiotics stopped the massacre. And
medical staff on a mission. And time. And something undefined. Something
blessed.
I sometimes see the world’s forests on fire. Other days, I peer down into Rocky Mountain National Park and see me hiking with my wife and kids. That is just one part of one summer day. It’s frozen in my memory. I am always on the trail to abandoned Lulu City, walking past falling-down cabins with a ghost in each doorway. One of them looks just like me.
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