The Burrow

TBG told me that it is possible for hackers to penetrate any computerized system in any automobile.  Although it hasn't been reported as the cause of an accident... so far... it is conceivable that someone could hijack your brakes and apply them, full force, while you are tooling down I-95 at 85 miles an hour. 

I could die if that happened was my immediate thought.  And then I went back to watching Zorro. 

A beat or two later the whole thing hit me.  I thought of dying with absolutely no affect.  It was a fact without emotion attached.  I considered it and moved on. 

I type that without judgment, because not judging is the single most important lesson I've learned since being perforated.  I believe that as the amplitude of a situation increases so do the individuality of responses.  At the risk of sounding like R. D. Laing, my experience of you during a period of intensity is not your experience of you nor is it your experience of me or my experience of me.

Going back to a place of horror is, for me, going alone.  Those moments on the sidewalk outside the Safeway are as vivid to me today as they were when they were happening.  The brightness never dims.  The connection is as deep now as it was then.  I can close my eyes and, even as my fingers type these words, I am holding her hand....

That piece is and, I imagine, always will be sad.

The fact that I almost died is another matter entirely.  I believed Nurse Nancy when she told me that I was not going to die; she claims to have said it as more of a hope than a reality but I took it at face value. 

I believed Christina-Taylor's shade in the medevac when she told me the same thing. "You'll be fine," was actually said by the nurse in the seat behind my head.  I didn't know he was there; I saw CTG's face and believed her words. 

Through it all, I was more worried about falling off the slant board as the EMT's carried me from the parking lot to Ina Road where my helicopter awaited.  I was happy to be reassured, because I certainly did not want to die.  It was easy for me to believe what I wanted to hear.

For 14 weeks on the couch, Platonically examining my life and the lint in my navel, I poked around the edges of death.  After three months of thought, I wasn't much deeper in understanding why it is, but I was convinced of what it is.

I'm really not afraid to die.

Don't misunderstand me - I really do want to continue to live. I want to work on developing a fluid gait. I want to watch FlapJilly and her future siblings and cousins grow into amazing young people.  I want to see if anti-vaxxers are vilified and if Republicans can govern.  I don't relish disease or infirmity, but death is no longer looming as the most awful thing ever.

In that context, I really don't care.  Oh, someone can hack into my car and turn the cruise control to 90 while I'm driving on city streets.  I could die.  Oh.

I'm not sure if I'm happy about this situation.  If I approach it from a mindfulness perspective, as Yogi Marsha recommends, then I must not judge.  If I think it stems from being close and then saved, then, as TBG reminds me, the situation is too big for judgment. 

It is what it is.  It's just very odd.