anniversary

Turns Out Heaven Is Real, But Sometimes They Send You Back ~ 2014 Reprise

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We first met on December 18, 2000. Then he died. On this, the nineteenth anniversary of our first blind date here’s a recounting of just what happened from back in 2014. This is our very personal Christmas miracle.


“Life is a dream walking. Death is going home.” – Chinese proverb

He died for a minute and 56 seconds. His heart stopped and his breathing ceased. I’d just say 2 minutes, but hospitals and doctors are exact. They are to-the-second precise. So, when he tells the tale; he died for a minute and 56 seconds because four seconds more would be way too long.
Just writing this makes my eyes well up.

He…is my husband.

In December of 2000 he contracted bacterial spinal meningitis on an airplane. Or as I now call them, flying, metallic, germ delivery systems.
He’s a car guy, often referred to as a gear head. That second week of December he took a one-way flight from LA to Houston to look at a car, which he then purchased and drove back with a buddy. Trouble was, he boarded that flight with a bad head cold. It was mid-December, everyone’s sick with something around the holidays. Right?

As luck would have it, that was just the route an opportunistic virus used to infect him. The meningitis rode in, like a sinister villain in a spaghetti western, on the back of streptococcus pneumonia. Once the pneumonia had chewed up his lungs to the point where they resembled snowflakes, all the meningitis had to do was dismount, and stroll on in.

Meningitis is a jerk. And an opportunist.

He’s a fragile, lazy, coward of a virus. If everything isn’t just so, he takes his badass self and leaves town. But pneumonia is efficient and the path had been prepared, so he set up camp in my husband’s lungs.

Three days after he got back to LA, as pneumonia went about doing its dirty work, he felt pretty lousy. Meanwhile, meningitis was still lurking in the shadows. He felt lethargic. By then he was probably running a fever, but men don’t check stuff like that. He just got out of bed, showered and dressed. He had plans that night.
He had arranged a blind date with someone who was recommended by a friend’s girlfriend. She sounded…intriguing. And she had big boobs. Yep, he was just that shallow.

That someone was me.

The blind date story is epic and meant for another day. We got married nine months later, so I’m gonna say it went pretty well.

I’ve always been fascinated by near-death experiences (NDE’s.) Now I live with someone who’s had one and he’d be the first to tell you, it profoundly changed him, it set him free.

Two days after our first date, and a super gushy follow-up phone call, he drove the new car up to San Jose, with his dog, to celebrate the Christmas holidays with his younger brother, his wife and their two young kids.
He was driving five hours to cook the Christmas bird.

If a turkey is involved you drop everything and call my husband. He is the Turkey Whisperer. THE turkey cooker extraordinaire. The next morning, in between long stints in bed he did all the prep. He was trashed, feeling sicker with each passing hour and had developed the headache from hell. Now, he figured, he had a hell of a bad flu bug.

I will remind you, my husband is a BIG guy. He’s 6’3″ 230 lbs of big handsome, and that helped save his life.
When he makes a promise, he keeps it. It’s one of the things I admire about him, and damn it, he cooked that turkey. From his sickbed, even though he never had a bite.

The next day he got out of bed once and collapsed. The paramedics were called and he was rushed to a local teaching hospital that was affiliated with Stanford.

During transport, the paramedics called him Ralph. “Stay with us Ralph. Any pain Ralph?” My husband’s name is Raphael. I’ve been told they do that to piss you off and keep you conscious and talking. It worked. “My name is Raphael” he kept correcting them.
Genius.
But it was short-lived.
His brother told the doctor all he knew, that Raphael had complained of a terrible headache and the flu. He used to have migraines but this was different. The ER was about to send him home with migraine meds, but his brother refused. He’d never seen Raphael that ill. THAT solitary act saved his brother’s life.

Just about that time, it ceased to matter. His blood test came back with an astronomical white cell count, and he had gone into a coma. Now suspecting meningitis, they did a spinal tap. So, normally our spinal fluid is clear and under pressure. Normal is: 70 – 180 mm H20, his reading was over 400 and the fluid was thick and black, like oil. As the story goes, it was right about this point in the evening where he flat-lined. After they brought him back, they wrote TERMINAL on his chart, pumped him full of morphine and wheeled him into a room to die.

It was during this time that Raphael remembers a foggy, all-white environment, no walls, ceiling or floor. He could see all sides at once. The best thing was, he was out of pain, his head no longer hurt.

He was looking at three beds which contained three Raphael’s.

The Raphael on the right was saying: I am suffering, why would I stay in this bed, I want to go where it’s peaceful. Where there’s no pain. Pointing at a bright white tunnel.
He represented the physical self.

The Raphael in the bed on the left said: Go ahead and go! Quit complaining. That’s fine, it really affects no one except those that are left behind. He represented the intellectual self.

The Raphael in the middle was the observer. He just listened to the two others arguing. He just WAS. No attachment. He represented the soul.

That white tunnel was the path home. It was a silent, pain-free, deliciously peaceful place where he wanted to stay forever.
But they started his heart and brought him back.

That night a female doctor very much like Dr. House from TV, took a look at his chart. She specialized in ONLY terminal cases. Since it was a teaching hospital, she was allowed to literally throw everything in her extensive medical arsenal at these patients, searching for a cure. It was equal parts medicine, alchemy, and wishful thinking. After she did everything she could, she just handed it over to a higher power. Her success rate was 3%. I know, calm down, they were terminal cases after all.

It was the fight of his life and he was on the ropes. At that point, his size was the only thing saving him.

By that time the hospital had reported their diagnosis of bacterial meningitis to the CDC. Thirteen people from his flight to Houston had come down with it, four had died. Raphael’s brother was told to get his whole young family tested. It was a stressful, scary time.

I remember hearing it on the news. It struck me because one of the women who died was my age at the time, 43. Shit. I have to get on a plane in five days, I worried.

Since he was away, I had no idea he was even sick. We only had our one blind date, with a promise of a second on December 28th. He never called. He never showed. I called twice, which was only mildly pathetic, and both times his cellphone went right to message. So I left for New Year’s Eve in Miami. When I didn’t hear from him by the end of the first week of January I told my friends, “Frenchy better be abducted by aliens or dead by the side of the road, because those are the only two excuses I’ll accept.”

Yikes! We still laugh about that.

His medical file is as thick as a phone book with the lists of drugs and scans his doctor administered that first night. There is even a straight jacket included. She did say he put up a hell of a fight to live. Apparently so.
By the middle of the second day of her treatment, he was slightly improved. She determined he would live, but he’d be a vegetable from the cerebral fluid pressure and its horrible condition.
No brain could ever recover from that.

His family, his siblings, who were all now at the hospital, looked at each other to determine who would care for him and for how many months.

A couple of days later, with the determined doctor holding one hand, one of his sisters holding the other, he woke up. Just like that.

Startled, the doctor shooed everyone out of the room and started asking him questions, which he answered…perfectly…in detail. Not just, What’s your name? But since he’s an architect, and French, she quizzed him on the architectural intricacies of the Pompidou Centre, even speaking French with him. It was evident he could see her, he could hear her, and he was still his whip-smart self. THAT she could never explain. She considered him a miracle. Everyone at the hospital did. Honestly.

Finally, he asked what day it was. When he found out it was January, he said, “I have to call Janet.” For those standing around him, some doubt set in, because no one had heard of any Janet. They thought he had an imaginary friend. Uh oh, brain damage.

Nope, apparently, infatuation survives near death. I love that part of the story. It’s like a movie.

He remembers dying as easy, with nothing to fear.
He recalls that he had a decision to make, and either way everything was going to be okay.
Afterword, all the outpouring of love, together with the morphine, broke open his heart—and he was a changed man.

Luckily, he decided to stay and give me a second date, and for that, I am forever grateful.

Happy nineteen years baby! I love you.

Carry on,
Xox

Flashback: 911— How I Remember It

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*This post is from a couple of years ago, but it is forever intertwined with our wedding anniversary, so I can never forget. I don’t think we should.
xox


It is ridiculously dark in a hotel room with the black-out drapes closed.

It is a trip over stuff because it’s a strange room; blink, blink, blink for your eyes to adjust; bang your shin and stub your toe, kind of dark.

I experienced all of those things on the way to answer my phone which was shoved in my purse, somewhere under piles of room service napkins, magazines, and assorted other crap.

La la la la la la, my phone chimed its little heart out.

Who is calling me? Everyone knows I’m on my honeymoon and judging from how dark it is, (forgetting the drapes) it MUST be the middle of the night. How rude!

Five minutes earlier the ringing had woken me up, and I had stumbled like a drunken sailor, half asleep in the pitch blackness, to the bathroom. ‘Wrong number‘ I thought, still half asleep as I felt my way like a blindfolded mime, back to bed.
I heard it go to message. Now I was awake.
Hmmmmmmmm…that’s weird.

It started to ring again; this time, I could swear it sounded more insistent.
LA LA LA LAAAAAA!

Curious, I quietly slid out of bed and started moving heaven and earth to find it, only to hear it go to message a second time.

Not even a moment later, as I was finally holding it in my hand, it started to ring again.

At that same instant so did my husband’s phone charging next to him on the nightstand.  Then the hotel room phone on my side of the bed. It became a cacophony of three different rings, each one of them trying desperately at that point to get our attention.

I heard my husband’s voice behind me in the bed, “Shit, this CAN’T be good”. He was suddenly wide awake as he grabbed both the room phone and his cell, putting one to each ear.
“Hello!” he announced tersely into both.

I had just flipped mine open only to listen to my best friend Jen, mumbling and weeping. At the same exact moment, we both lunged for the remote as three different people screamed into our ears “TURN ON THE TV!”

We were two days into enjoying our post wedding coma. Ensconced in a room overlooking the Pacific at the Biltmore in Santa Barbara, still feeling giddy from the excitement of such a magical night.
Exhausted, we had given ourselves a couple of days to decompress before we were to fly to a friend’s party in Chicago and then on to Italy to have a motorcycle honeymoon.
None of those plans would come to pass.

My brand new husband pulled open the drapes with one swipe to reveal bright sunshine; it wasn’t the middle of the night, it was after six in the morning. This must be a movie, I thought, as we both slowly sat on the edge of the bed; watching in stunned silence as the second plane hit the tower.

I think I screamed. I know I screamed. A movie scream.

Everyone we loved was calling; apologizing for bothering us, but wanting us to know.
Because that’s what family does. They share bad news.

Just thirty-six hours before, they had all been loopy from too much champagne and wine, laughing, toasting and celebrating love…now they were crying and asking me, Why?

I couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening. Everything felt surreal, like a slow motion disaster film.

I certainly didn’t have any answers.

My husband is an architect/builder. He knows about steel and fire and in his most serious Bob The Builder voice he didn’t pose a question or wonder aloud—he made a statement:
“I hope everyone’s out of there, that building’s coming down.”

And right on cue, as he finished that sentence…the first tower fell.

Shit, shit, shit!” he yelled, sitting up straight on his knees.
I was screaming and shaking, “No, No, No…Oh MY GOD!

Peter Jennings’ solemn voice said something to the effect of, “This has turned from an act of terrorism to an act of war.”

Time stopped. The planet shifted, and in my mind, that was the moment it happened. There will always before 9/11 and an after.

It was impossible to look away from the TV and I could not stop crying.

My mom called to tell me that Pam, who is like a big sister to me, and had flown in from San Francisco for the wedding, had to deplane on the tarmac at LAX and run for her life. The pilot had directed them all to run as fast as they could, away from the terminals and the airport.

Really. He told everyone to RUN!

No one knew what was going on, and where the next attack, if there were to be others, was going to take place. Lee and my mom picked her up as she ran east on Century Boulevard with a whole crowd of other panicky and confused thwarted travelers.

Many of the women had ditched their heels along the way, running in bare feet and business attire.

They had no idea where they were going.

How far would they run?

How far was far enough?

Where could you go that day to feel safe? I sure as hell didn’t know.

If you had told me a place—I would have run there with you.

After the second tower collapsed and the news went into that perpetual recap mode, I couldn’t watch another second; so I pulled on some sweats and sunglasses to hide my red swollen eyes and walked like a zombie downstairs to the lobby.

My inner historian/collector had kicked in and I went to see if they had the newspapers in the gift shop without the headline of the event, and the later edition, with it.

The adrenaline of the past few hours had subsided, which had dropped us both into a kind of numb stupor—so we also needed coffee. Bad.

The lobby was a ghost town. Everything was closed. No gift shop, no Starbucks, nothing. There wasn’t a soul in sight…this huge hotel felt deserted.

Back upstairs, I called room service.
It rang for what seemed like an eternity, then the voice that finally answered sounded out of breath and off of hotel protocol. She didn’t say Hello, Mrs. Bertolus, (which I was loving by the way), like they had been doing for the past couple of days.

Yes? Hello, I mean, room service” she said.

Um, are you guys open? Is it possible to get a pot of coffee?”

“I’ll try my best, I’m sorry ma’am, but no one has shown up for work this morning.”

“Oh my gosh, I completely understand—it’s just so terrible…”

Yes ma’am,” she said, “it’s so sad.”
She started to cry, which set me off.

Don’t worry about the coffee” I sobbed, feeling like an ass. “Just forget it, I’m sorry to bother you.”

“No ma’am, don’t be silly” she had composed herself, now the epitome of professionalism, “Your coffee will be right up Mrs. Bertolus.

Ten minutes later a young man brought up a pot of coffee and some croissants, and after some caffeine and food, the shaking stopped and I started to feel a little better.

The government had halted all air travel until further notice. Planes were finding a safe place to land and staying put. It was unprecedented and I was relieved.

The absolute LAST thing I wanted to do was get on a plane.
We had a lot of phone calls to make and rescheduling to do.

Against my better judgment we kept our reservations that night for a seaside dinner. The place was beautiful… and depressing as hell. Everyone seemed to just be going through the motions. I sobbed like a three-year-old through the entire dinner, having a hard time forgetting those faces we’d seen all day of the people who were missing.

“How can I enjoy any of this? People lost husbands and fathers, brothers and wives and sisters. So many people died today!” I put my head in my hands, I couldn’t eat.

How can you not?” my husband whispered, resting his hand on mine.

Those people would give anything to be here, where we are right now, enjoying life. We don’t join them in death, that’s an even greater waste. We enjoy our lives. Every minute. Every day to the fullest. I think that’s what they would want. That’s what I would want.”

Damn, he’s good.

Just writing these memories makes me cry. It instantly brings me right back.

I think it’s important to tell the story. To never forget what happened.
Everything before 911 feels different, simpler somehow, like as a country we lost our innocence.

It just happens to coincide with my wedding. I can never think of one without the other. I celebrate the ninth of September, and I light a candle on the eleventh.
In my life, they are forever intertwined.

Just like our parents had the Kennedy assassination, this is our generation’s “where were you?” moment.

Do you have a 911 story? Tell us.

much love,
xox

How I Remember It…

image

It is ridiculously dark in a hotel room with the black-out drapes closed.

It is trip over stuff because it’s a strange room; blink, blink, blink for your eyes to adjust; bang your shin and stub your toe, dark.

I experienced all of those things on the way to answer my phone which was shoved in my purse, somewhere under piles of room service napkins, magazines and assorted other crap.

La la la la la la, my phone chimed its little heart out.

Who is calling me? Everyone knows I’m on my honeymoon and judging from how dark it is, (forgetting the drapes) it MUST be three am.

Five minutes earlier the ringing had woken me up, and I had stumbled like a drunken sailor, half asleep in the pitch blackness, to the bathroom. ‘Wrong number‘ I thought, still half asleep as I felt my way like a blindfolded mime, back to bed.
I heard it go to message. Now I was awake.
Hmmmmmmmm…that’s weird.

It started to ring again; this time I could swear it sounded more insistent.
LA LA LA LAAAAAA!

Curious, I quietly slid out of bed and started moving heaven and earth to find it, only to hear it go to message a second time.

Not even a moment later, as I was finally holding it in my hand, it started ringing again.

So did my husband’s phone, next to him on the nightstand, and so did the hotel room phone on my side of the bed. All at the same time it became a cacophony of three different rings, each one of them trying desperately at that point to get our attention.

I heard my husband’s voice behind me in the bed, “Shit, this CAN’T be good”.  He was suddenly wide awake as he grabbed both the room phone and his cell, putting one to each ear.
“Hello!” he announced tersely into both.

I had just flipped mine open to hear someone mumbling and weeping, and at the same exact moment we both lunged for the remote as three different people screamed into our ears “TURN ON THE TV!”

We were two days into enjoying our post wedding coma. Ensconced in a room overlooking the Pacific at the Biltmore in Santa Barbara, still feeling giddy from the excitement of such a magical night.
Exhausted, we had given ourselves a couple of days to decompress before we were to fly to a friend’s party in Chicago and then on to Italy to have a motorcycle honeymoon.
None of those plans would come to pass.

My brand new husband pulled open the drapes with one swipe to reveal bright sunshine; it wasn’t the middle of the night, it was after six in the morning. It must be a movie, I thought, as we both slowly sat on the edge of the bed; watching in stunned silence; as the second plane hit the tower.

I think I screamed.

Friends and family were calling; apologizing for bothering us, but wanting us to know.
That’s what family does. They share bad news.

Just thirty-six hours before, they had all been loopy from too much champagne and wine, toasting and celebrating love—now they were crying and asking me Why?

I couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening. Everything felt surreal, like a slow motion movie.
I certainly didn’t have any answers.

My husband is an architect/builder. He knows about steel and fire and in his most serious Bob The Builder voice he didn’t pose a question or wonder aloud—he made a statement: “I hope everyone’s out of there, that building’s coming down.”

And right on cue, as he finished that sentence…the first tower fell.

Shit, shit, shit” he yelled, jumping to his feet.
I was screaming and shaking uncontrollably, “No, No, No…Oh MY GOD!”
Was this really happening?

Peter Jennings’ solemn voice said something to the effect of, “This has turned from an act of terrorism to an act of war.”

It was impossible to look away from the TV and I could not stop crying.

My mom called to tell me Pam, who is like a big sister to me, and had flown in from San Francisco for the wedding, had to deplane on the tarmac at LAX and run for her life; as fast as she could, away from the terminals and the airport, as directed by the pilot.

Really. He told everyone to RUN!
No one knew what was going on, and where the next attack, if there were to be others, was going to take place. Lee and my mom picked her up as she ran east on Century Boulevard with a whole crowd of other panicky, thwarted travelers.

Many of the woman had ditched their heels along the way, running in bare feet and business attire.

They had no idea where they were going.
How far would they run?
How far was far enough?
Where could you go that day to feel safe? I sure as hell didn’t know.
If you’d told me a place, I would have run there with you.

After the second tower collapsed and the news went into perpetual recap mode, I couldn’t watch another second; so I pulled on some sweats and sunglasses to hide my red swollen eyes, and walked like a zombie downstairs to the lobby.

My inner historian/collector had kicked in and I wanted to see if they had the newspapers in the gift shop without the headline of the event and also a later edition, with it.

The adrenaline of the past few hours had subsided, which had dropped us into a kind of numb stupor, so we also needed coffee. Bad.

The lobby was deserted. Everything was closed. No gift shop, no Starbucks, nothing. There wasn’t a soul in sight…this huge hotel felt deserted.

Back upstairs, I called room service.
It rang for what seemed like an eternity, then the voice that finally answered sounded out of breath and off of hotel protocol. She didn’t say Hello, Mrs Bertolus, (which I was loving by the way), like they had been doing for the past couple of days.

Yes? Hello, I mean, room service” she said.

Um, are you guys open? Is it possible to get a pot of coffee?”

“I’ll try my best, I’m sorry ma’am, but no one has shown up for work this morning.”

“Oh my gosh, I completely understand—it’s just so terrible…”

Yes ma’am” she said, “it’s so sad.”
She started to cry, which set me off.

Don’t worry about the coffee” I sobbed, feeling like an ass. “Just forget it, I’m sorry to bother you.”

“No ma’am, don’t be silly” she had composed herself, now the epitome of professionalism, “Your coffee will be right up Mrs. Bertolus.

Ten minutes later a young man brought up a pot of coffee and some croissants, and after some caffeine and food, the shaking stopped and I felt a little better.

The government had halted all air travel until further notice. Planes were finding a safe place to land and staying put. It was unprecedented and I was relieved.

The absolute LAST thing I wanted to do was get on a plane.
We had a lot of phone calls to make and rescheduling to do.

Against my better judgement we kept our reservations that night for a seaside dinner. The place was beautiful… and depressing as hell. Everyone seemed to just be going through the motions. I sobbed like a three-year old through the entire dinner, having a hard time forgetting those faces we’d seen all day of the people who were missing.

“How can I enjoy any of this? People lost husbands and fathers, brothers and wives and sisters. So many people died today!” I put my head in my hands, I couldn’t eat.

How can you not?” my husband whispered, resting his hand on mine.

Those people would give anything to be here, where we are right now, enjoying life. We don’t join them in death, that’s an even greater waste. We enjoy our lives. Every minute. Every day to the fullest. I think that’s what they would want. That’s what I would want.”

Damn, he’s good.

Just writing these memories makes me cry. It instantly brings me right back.

I think it’s important to tell the story. To never forget what happened.
Everything before 911 feels different, simpler, like we lost our innocence.

It just happens to coincide with my wedding. I can never think of one without the other. I celebrate the ninth of September, and I light a candle on the eleventh.
In my life they are forever intertwined.

Just like our parents had the Kennedy assassination, this is our generation’s “where were you?” moment.

Do you have a 911 story? Tell us.

much love,
xox

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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