Day 3: Scientific observations, one resilient dude.

June 8, 1994

“Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit” -Bern Williams

This quote is framed in Susan’s office. I think I’ve read it before but I’ve never considered it, until today.

I am a devils advocate player. Read that quote, first thought of war movies. The bombs, bazookas, tanks, and all of the man-made material that kills fellow men. Man easily destroying the human spirit, with a click of a button, a pull of a pin or trigger. The human spirit being blown into billions of bloody pieces by man. Resiliency my ass.

Before the surgery, I would have left my thought process there. Patting myself on the back for being so fucking smart and disproving the stupid quote. But now, cliched as fuck, I have a new appreciation for life.

I get a second chance. I’m sure that has the majority to do with my cliched zest for life. But, more than that, being surrounded by people trying to save lives, or so desperately trying to save their own life, I’d be a fool to take my life for granted.

Getting back to the quote on Susan’s desk. The human spirit. Resiliency. Before they moved me out of ICU, they’d wheel me down the hall to various therapy, lab rooms, etc. Somewhere through the purple Jimmy Hendrix-esque cloudy haze of the pain meds, I remember passing his room. Balloons, flowers, stuffed animals and get well type of shit everywhere. Young dude, maybe 21, max. Both arms in casts. Neck brace. Prime of his fucking life. He smiled at me when they wheeled me past. And not just a polite, we’re both in the hospital type of smile, a smile like he knew a fucking awesome secret.

For my one week in the ICU, this is the one memory I have. The tests, pricks, machine beeps, sponge baths, dinner slop, are all one strange, foggy hallucinatory dream. I don’t remember any pain. I don’t remember any faces except that fucking smile.

Sometimes when the nurses thought I was asleep and were checking my vitals, they’d talk shop. One night I learned that Salvador, the young dude next door, jumped off a freeway overpass. Broke nearly every bone in his body. Paralyzed from the waist down. They said it was a miracle he survived, considering when they brought him in how pissed off he was that he wasn’t actually dead. And, considering it was rush hour traffic on one of the busiest freeways in Minneapolis and no one hit him.

This is what Bern Williams meant when he wrote that quote. If a guy can be so at his wits end, he wants to die by taking a header into the hard pavement to be run over by convertibled yuppies on their way to the lake and semis carrying IBMs and big screen TVs, if that guy can come out of that AND have that fucking awesome smile on his face, then that is mother-fucking resiliency of the mother-fucking human spirit.

Until tomorrow, grateful to be yours truly