No dark tunnel materialized and no bright light, nor familiar voices whispering through a filmy barrier. Instead I stood on a beach in broad daylight. And I knew this beach well. The sand cushioned my bare feet while a stiff plank ran the length of my back, from my head to my ankles. “It’s a surf board” my mind explained, “see, your’e on a beach.” The location made sense. A still lake spread to my right, Cocolalla Lake in northern Idaho where I spent all my summers as a kid.

But in reality I was anesthetized, undergoing surgery at the University of Utah in Salt Lake. My colon had perforated that morning, and as I later learned my body was strapped down to a table. Still, while under I found myself in an alternative consciousness, standing on the shore of life and death.

The hardness of the board impeded easy movement, but I could shift my eyes side to side, and my feet just a little. To my left, seated on a rock wall, waited my ex-husband. That was not a good thing. Marriage to him had been difficult. He wasn’t a serious husband or father. Sadly enough his behaviors were fixed, and after our divorce he continued along his destructive path, succumbing to an early death about a year before I went under the knife. 

But at that moment he lounged on those rocks very much alive, watching me intently.

Wearing pink nylon shorts, a baggy white tank top, and flip flops, he continued to stare. Finally he spoke, “Hi Gail.” 

I reacted with contempt thinking, “Oh, Hell No!” If staying with him is what’s in store I’m not sticking around here. That’s when I shifted my eyes in the other direction, to my right where my son waited for me wading in the still, shallow water.

My son is very much alive, and I was glad to see him.

In tiny steps akin to a Tim Conway comedy skit, I made my move ignoring the guy on the seawall, shuffling instead toward my son.

Flash to the following morning when I awoke in the intensive care unit at the U hospital. With a tube forced down my throat, my wrists tied to the side bars, my daughter stood over me with worry etched in her face. She and the ICU nurse both spoke as I struggled to convey I wanted that plastic obstruction out of my wind pipe. 

This hospital stay extended to seven days, with a repeat admission shorty after due to a related complication. The holiday season fizzled out as I was in poor shape and trying to recover..

It now has been over two months since surgery and that strange vision. The intubation tube is long gone and I am sporting a colostomy bag with a slowly healing incision down the middle of my gut. Bye bye belly button. The Home Health nurses visited every day for nearly six weeks packing gauze into two fissures pitted along an incompletely healed stomach. 

On one particular visit the nurse explained that I had indeed been strapped to a hard foam-core table in the operating room. My head, torso and legs were firmly secured down so as not to move during the procedure. But in my mind I did visit another place, a vivid locale somewhere between giving in or fighting back.

This Tuesday I will celebrate my 71st birthday, and I truly welcome the day. I have children and grandchildren who all mean the world to me. Ahead there’s athletic events, recitals, graduations, and with a little luck a wedding or two.

Besides I can’t kick the bucket right now, I must do what I can to help save the Republic and see Trump behind bars.

There is still much to do.