Dying at age thirty-seven is something that I would not wish on anyone.

Having to be shocked back to life at age thirty-eight is not something that I would wish on anyone.

But here it is, here it’s happened, and here we are, I guess… except I was the one who lived.

Although I am and continue to be exceedingly thankful to have been given this second chance to start with (my oldest son’s father was not, as his injuries were almost immediately incompatible with life, and I was fortunate enough to be able to access the medical care that put me in the trauma bay of the local hospital when the worst of all of this began to happen), it continues to be exceedingly uncomfortable to me who isn’t here because they died at age thirty-seven. His family wanted so much for him to get help for his drug addictions and mental illness, and they could only do so much for him, especially in the end of all of it when they couldn’t do anything at all other than to find out that he had indeed actually, accidentally, perished.

I have to learn to think of living in a world that doesn’t have him in it since it will never have him in it again.

When you wind up taking paddles to the face (or to the chest), it takes a lot out of you.

And I mean “a lot out of you” when I say that it takes a lot out of you.

I had enough strength to claw my way out of the darkness, back to my babies, although I did have some unexpected help. I’ll get to that in subsequent posts as I’ve had the time to process the gravitas of an NDE.

But I will say that the process of coming back from that, something that some people just can’t do in spite of their strength, is exhausting. You have to give yourself time to heal and to rebuild strength, which is precisely what I have been doing with the help of a great support network in person and online. I have people who have made it abundantly clear that they care about me, doing the things that need to be done so that I can rest and recuperate, and I remain ever thankful for that. I continue to rebuild strength and am feeling better.

As a matter of fact, I feel like I’m feeling better by the day right now. It’s a process, but an exhilarating one.