Good Morning
By Craig M. Szwed
10 Days After Open Heart Surgery: Today is finally discharge day (copyright: 2019-12-20).
4 days ago, I woke up feeling a bit like someone hit by a bus, but who was starting to shake it off.
3 days ago, I sort of felt like a dog that had been hit and started to run away from the scene, limping.
Yesterday, I was like a guy and his dog who had both gotten hit, but gotten up and were already starting to shake off the injuries, looking to all bystanders as if the cheering should start.
Today, I woke up like cat that you might have seen clipped hard by a fast moving taxi. (The cat gets thrown further into traffic.) After much noise, glimpses of the cat, and its ricocheting off numerous wheels in various directions, the cat flies though the air one last time, coughed up by traffic onto the city park grass.
Onlookers think the cat must be dead after seeing it pass through that intense pinball-like meatgrinder.
The cat lays there, looking the part, and even pigeons drift by to test-peck it, but they feel a detectable pulse.
Finally, the cat (eyes yet closed) realizes it is still alive and takes deepening test breaths. Its memories, like nearby traffic, rush past the cat's wakening brain, it starts to twitch, teasing the onlookers. Yet, even like waiting for an hourglass to pass its last, scarcely noticeable, few grains for the hour, the cat doesn't spring and run.
Reset after numerous mental resets, the cat tries to waken, to get its bearings, until finally it starts to stir.
With its reeling mind and body, finally, starting, again, to assimilate some of the thoughts and feelings of the whole incident, the cat's eyes open and it begins the long process of checking itself and its surroundings, taking slow careful stock, starting the cleaning process and reassessments preparing me for that proverbial earthly "life number 9" .
