On June 6th, 2005, the day before our 47th wedding anniversary I “bought the farm” on the floor of the cardiac rehab unit in Ellsworth. I woke up with an IV in each wrist and a strange nurse looking down into my face saying, \u201cI just resuscitated you. Hope you don\u2019t mind.\u201d \u201cHey, that\u2019s great,\u201d I said. \u201cYou just spent one of your nine lives,\u201d she replied.<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/b>So Katrina and I celebrated our last wedding anniversary in the hospital in Bangor with three new stents and a small wedding cake the kitchen set up. We were treated like kings and queens. I was still Katrina\u2019s primary care giver\u201dshe\u2019d been diagnosed with inoperable colonic cancer in May of 2004\u201dso for ten days I would call her up at midnight in the motel next to the hospital. \u201cTime to take your morphine,\u201d I\u2019d say. \u201cI love you,\u201d she\u2019d reply \u201cLove, you too, babe,\u201dI\u2019d answer. Aids would wheel her into my room every day where she would sit in a recliner when she was not fussing about the room tidying things up. She died at home on August 26th while I was lying beside her holding her hand with our son William and his wife Helene close by.<\/b>
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Then on a cold November afternoon I decided to get my things from the Margaret Todd, a 151 foot windjammer I sing sea chanties on every Tuesday in season. I climbed the rope ladder up to the taffrail, went aboard, got down below deck, took my too-heavy bags, went on deck and put my stuff on the taffrail. I climbed down the rope ladder, picked up the lighter bag from the taffrail, over my head, and set it on the dock.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I reached up and picked up the heavy bag, 30 or 40 pounds. All of me drained out of my body. I could feel it go. I could still see and think. Wham! The defibrillator went off. The two wires attached inside my heart hit me with a jolt. I dropped the bag, lay down alone on the cold dock under a grey winter sky, chewed and aspirin, put nitroglycerin under my tongue, thinking, \u201cAm I going to die here on the dock?\u201d\u00a0 After five minutes I took another nitroglycerin and decided I wasn\u2019t going to die just yet.<\/b>
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The doctors told me lifting things above my head wasn\u2019t smart. The memory in the defibrillator recorded my heart rate at 300, no blood moved, the undertaker would have had another customer if the defibrillator hadn\u2019t done its job.<\/b>
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The result is I love life. I love God. I\u2019d like to hang around and share love back and forth with William and Helene, with everyone in my life, with everyone in the whole world. There\u2019s two or three books I\u2019d like to finish writing. A couple of blogs to do. Maybe the world and the church need my take on things. Maybe not. Time will tell.<\/b>
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Dying is OK. Living is OK. I give my permission for either one. I find myself thanking God for the past, the present, and the future\u201dall of it.The good, the bad and the boring.\u00a0 Everything and everyone.<\/b><\/p>\n
George Swanson, May 22, 2006<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On June 6th, 2005, the day before our 47th wedding anniversary I “bought the farm” on the floor of the cardiac rehab unit in Ellsworth. I woke up with an IV in each wrist and a strange nurse looking down into my face saying, \u201cI just resuscitated you. Hope you don\u2019t mind.\u201d \u201cHey, that\u2019s great,\u201d…
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