Death

133. SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

In the mid nineteen-nineties I used to fantasize about dying, in fact it was my dominant thought process. With nothing but spiraling bleakness ahead, I found little to get me out of bed other than the next drink. I detested my job, I despised anything approaching responsibility, I hated the realization none of my time was productive or creative in the slightest, but most of all, I loathed the mirror. All the possibilities my future once held, and moments directly in front of me I used bounce around with enthusiasm over, had long since faded to grey. Why try and salvage a life that had nothing to offer even if it could be fixed? When a car is hit by a train no one ever thinks the vehicle should be repaired, simply junked. Such was my logic. Honestly, I’m glad these days I didn’t own a gun. I did, however, contemplate other forms of ending my existence. Driving off a bridge was probably the most common. In January of nineteen-ninety-five I decided to go ahead and drink myself to death. This effectively pushed me to my recovery in July of that year, and the reason for this evaded me for many years, but the short answer is I finally gave up trying to fix myself. I decided there was nothing in my head I could activate to make life better; no information, no motivation, no fear from within could be leveraged to lift me out of hopelessness.

Suicide was a real option for me, and while I don’t agree these days with those who make this decision, I damn sure empathize. I’ve alluded to this topic many times on this blog, but this entry carries a more focused look at what I can offer on the subject. I’ve known people who have died by their own hand and I can say for sure, the tidal wave that follows the act, no matter what the self-destructive person thinks, is enormously catastrophic. Most times, when the dominos fall, the damage is permanent. Cheerful people become withdrawn, optimistic ones lose the will to follow their dreams, and sometimes, sometimes, they inspire others to follow in their footsteps, which expands the devastation of previously peaceful lives to profoundly distant borders.

So, so far this sounds like a standard stance on the subject, but the REAL reason I’m writing this entry is to reveal a secret no one lost in utter desperation knows exists. When one stands on the very edge of oblivion, when they are a single breath from their last, when light is nothing more than a memory, THIS is where hope and redemption resides. This place, thinner than a razor’s edge, cradles a power greater than most, even those who are happy and productive, will ever encounter. It’s the catapult to a life of unimagined joy and peace. All it takes is the willingness, while standing on this spot, to let go of everything you were previously convinced of. This IS the price of deliverance. Doing this never occurs to most when facing the final step, so they plunge headfirst into the abyss, all too often ignorantly pulling others with them. All one must do here is cry out for help without holding onto the need to defend oneself. When we ask others to take over our lives, when we remain open to EVERYTHING while questioning nothing, when we drop the accumulated baggage of our lifetime, we are swept by the winds of the universe to a plane of existence few experience.

Those of us who have met the rare souls who have made it back from the brink will tell you these people are the best people they know. They are kind. They are grateful. They are trustworthy and reliable. They are envied by many for having the ability to face life with confidence, but most of all they own a tendency to have unconditional Love for everything, and that includes their reflection. The reason for this is simple, when one has visited hell, everywhere else looks like  heaven.

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With Love and Compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood

131. GOODBYE, DAD

My father died on February 15th of this year. It was a Saturday and I was working when my phone went off. I knew what the call was about before I even looked. He had been slipping away rapidly for the past six months, his mind eventually catching up to his deteriorating body, both of which were now just bits and pieces of who he used to be. Departure at this point was just around the corner. The last time we went to breakfast, about six weeks prior, I caught him in a moment of clarity, “You know Dad, if you want to check out there’s no shame in it. I’ll be fine, really.” Honestly, I am glad he heard me. I hope someone reminds me someday, if I am hanging on, fearful of what lies beyond this existence, of the same truth, that life is only a parenthesis in eternity.

We had a weird relationship, more like brothers than parent/child, anyone that knew both of us would readily agree on this observation. As a teenager and eventually an adult I found myself living with him on and off on several occasions, Once I awoke to find him standing over me in my apartment saying he had left his girlfriend and was moving in. We split the bills (which were always late) and never had anything worth eating in the fridge. Our TV was a piece of crap and matched what little furniture we had. We really did live at the fringe of minimum standards. It was not uncomfortable, just sparse. The only really good advice he gave me I think happened by accident. When I was fifteen I left my mother and finally moved in with him. He then laid down his intentions insofar as his parental duties were concerned, “Okay, here are the rules, I don’t care what you do. Quit school, do drugs, go to jail, does not matter, but know this, if you need me to bail you out, too bad. I have my own life and I’m giving you, yours.” I am not too sure he did this as a favor to me, although it did turn out that way. The time did indeed come on several occasions when this “law” was put to the test. He stood by it, and I quickly learned I was the unwilling owner to all the reactions of my actions. It did not keep me from a self-destructive lifestyle, but it did teach me to never expect a net when I fell.

I never knew until after I sobered up, almost twenty-five years ago now, just how much remorse he carried. I was way too self-centered to realize just he much he hated his own life. In our last year together, he lamented he did nothing he was proud of, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I pointed out that I would not exist unless he had been… involved. I could empathize with his point of view because I have been buried by mountains of shame myself, and I know the hopelessness and depression it can generate. Even so he never complained about his surroundings, and he decided early on he was going to make the best of his situation. We were fortunate and the nursing home he ended up in was professional, and his caretakers, kind. I was also lucky that it was only a few minutes from home.

As his health waned so did our public social activities. To keep him entertained I would swing by pawn shops and buy movies for him. Truthfully, it got kind of hard finding titles I thought he would like, which eventually had me inadvertently purchasing several in duplicate. Often, I could come up with twenty to twenty-five at a time, but for the most part it was a dozen or so. Movies had always been a common thread of enjoyable discussion so I was thrilled when he called me and told me he loved “The Whole Nine Yards” which I think is well written and hysterical, but isn’t normally the type of film my father would go out of his way for. Unfortunately, his eyesight started deteriorating past the point where he could see the screen, and I really do think this is where he decided to start (purposefully) shutting down.

My father-in-law’s Wednesday visits were a wonderful highlight in his week, and he and my wife’s father eventually became good friends. His demeanor would always perk up when he talked about him, and I feel blessed to have married into such a caring and loving family that extends well beyond my wife. They helped to make my father’s last days a lot brighter.

I’ve been struggling with whether or not I should share something that happened only a few weeks before he passed. If I do not, I now know I will regret it. He left a message on my cell while I was working, and it broke my heart. He was crying, saying he wanted to go home. “I want to go home, I want to go home, please take me home, son.” It was my Dad of course, but it did not sound like him. He sounded like a little kid, lost and scared. I tried to call back, but he was not answering, so I swung by after work.

“I got your message today”

He started crying again, “I want to go home son, I just want to go home. Funny thing is I don’t know even where home is.”

I took his hand, “Yeah, yeah you DO know where home is, go there if you want.”

Well… he went home.

Be at peace Dad, finally… be at peace.

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Comments are welcome, I will answer in kind.

With Love and Compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood

 

 

127. GODSHOTS PODCAST WITH LYDIA CORNELL

Lydia Cornell

For those who might recognize the name, Lydia Cornell is a star of the highly successful sitcom from the eighties, “Too close for Comfort”.  Her name under the picture is a also a link to her IMDB page. In addition to an acting career, she also runs a blog, PoliticallyHot and a web page called GodShots. Her resume’ includes a wide range of projects, talents, and passions from writing to mentoring and even stand-up comedy. Please visit her links to learn more.

Our paths crossed by coincidence some time back on another web site known as Quora. We have common ground in recovery, and it’s here we began communicating our enthusiasm for helping others. This, I hope, will be the first of many conversations designed and directed towards offering answers where so many silent questions lie painfully embedded in the souls of those who suffer.   

Listen this and previous podcasts by Lydia here.

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With Love and Compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood

117. ALMOST DEAD – PART ONE

One of the weirdest things about my life is the amount of times I’ve almost died. Despite having one foot in the grave on several occasions I’m (obviously) still here, as cheerful and productive as ever. If nothing else, these incidents have served to magnify a continued appreciation for each day. My ever-increasing gratitude towards life has been elevated by several close calls, though I’m not sure how much more I’m willing to take. This ”payment/reward” program I’ve been both fortunate AND unfortunate enough to participate in is getting old, and I’d like to think I can continue my path of elevated awareness without occasionally standing on the edge of oblivion.

1. Car accident

The day after Christmas December 1980, I was planning on spending the weekend at my (yes, we are still) friend’s house. I can’t remember how I got there, perhaps my father had dropped me off. In any case we were both excited to have some time to goof off together during our two-week vacation from school. In our misguided excitement for the forthcoming weekend of pointless activities we managed to talk my friend’s mother into letting us drive to the nearest town for some junk food. Now… my friend, who had his learners permit, did NOT have a driver’s license yet. He promised to stay on the back roads leading in and out of town. It was perhaps six to seven-mile round trip. His brother, also my friend joined us and off we went. Just outside of the limits of his community we got into a wreck. No one else was involved and there was no property damage. We ended up sliding out of control on a dirt road a driving headfirst into a rather steep ditch where the vehicle, a 74′ Ford LTD, flipped over; on its side first then onto its top. The momentum threw me into the back seat and through the rear passenger window where I did a human impression of a cannonball hitting the ground a split-second before pushing me back into the cab. As I was still flying around, I put my hand to my head expecting to feel my brain. No joke, I hit THAT hard. Well, my head stayed intact, and I had no other real injuries. IF I had been wearing my seat belt, I’d be either dead or much shorter as the dash was smashed flat against the floor of the vehicle. I do wear them these days, BUT in this instance my laziness in not putting it on probably saved my life. The emergency clinic my father (reluctantly) brought me to said I had a concussion of my entire right hemisphere. They sent me home to sleep it off. Doubt if that would happen today. Both my friend and his brother ended up no worse for wear than I was. Events such as these serve to solidify my belief that more than luck guides our destiny.

2. Carbon monoxide poisoning

I was a janitor in the late eighties where we used propane buffers quite often as a final step to our cleaning process. They resemble lawnmowers with either seventeen or twenty-seven-inch buffing pads. They’re heavy, but normally extremely safe. Not this night. Apparently, the store we were working in had forgotten to leave the air circulation system on. This, coupled with a faulty scrubber on the exhaust system of the unit we were using, ended up filling the store with carbon monoxide fumes… only we didn’t know that at the time. I recall feeling a little sleepier than normal, but not alarmingly so. Another man who had just moved from Phoenix to work for our company was with me. He’d never done this type of work before and I was training him in our procedures. He too was unaware of our deadly atmosphere. We got a rude awakening upon leaving early the following morning and walking outside. Apparently the fresh are changed how we felt, and I for one began to REALLY falter. I got in my van after loading up our equipment and started driving down one of Denver’s main streets towards home. The highway had little appeal as it was rush hour and I was a good twenty miles from home. Thinking my symptoms might eventually clear, I headed south with my window down in the middle of winter. My suspicions were correct as to what was wrong with me, but I underestimated my condition. The further I went, the worse I felt. It wasn’t long before my arms and legs began to go numb and it felt like someone took a home-run swing with a sledgehammer at my crotch. Looking back the pain probably helped to keep me somewhat alert. The people around must have thought I was drunk and it’s a wonder the cops didn’t pull me over. I recall thinking if I fell asleep, I’d die, so I started fighting the urge. It finally dawned on me I had to go to the hospital. About five miles from home I managed to pull into the parking lot of a 7-11 knowing someone would be there no matter what. I parked next to a cabdriver who was calmly eating his breakfast behind the wheel, opened my door, and fell onto his hood and then the ground with a thud. He was understandably alarmed and ran to get the employees of the store to help. Eventually an ambulance showed up and they whisked me off to the emergency room. I recovered of course, but this incident was the beginning of the end of my career in janitorial.  By the way, the gentleman I was with ALSO ended up in a different emergency room. He quit after one day and moved back to Phoenix. Don’t blame him…

3. Alcohol Withdrawal

In January of 1995 I was six months away from sobering up for good. I was still working nights and on my way to a job surprisingly close to the store I had carbon-monoxide poisoning in several years prior. This was at the peak of my highest consumption, two-fifths of vodka a day, but on this day I hadn’t had a drink for about forty-eight hours. Anyone who has knowledge about alcohol withdrawals will know this is a dangerous time, I hadn’t a clue, but today was about to be a life-changing lesson in it. I was shaky, felt like crap, but going to work nonetheless. It was a Sunday and still light out. Since it was a Sunday the store closed early making the night several hours longer. This never bothered me since a longer shift always allowed more  time to get things done. As I approached the halfway mark between home and work, I had an “incident”. The whole left side of my body shut down. My eye blacked out as my face started melting of my skull. At the same instant my left arm curled instantly up under my chin, totally useless. My leg was immobile as well, no longer able to activate my clutch; all this while going 70 miles per hour. I tried screaming “What’s happening to me!” but couldn’t really pronounce what I was trying to say as my mouth wasn’t working. I managed to pull off the nearest exit and behind a Denny’s restaurant without killing anyone. I managed to get out of my van in panic mode and began trying to uncurl my left arm while hopping on one leg and trying to see everything through my right eye. I imagine the whole scene was rather comical to the casual observer. After about fifteen minutes of flailing around everything popped back, kind of. My mobility returned as did my vision, but I started involuntarily shaking so hard it’s a wonder I didn’t take flight. I crawled back into my van and continued to work. Going to the hospital never entered my mind. Such is the madness of alcoholism. I arrived to the job early and put on a fake smile while hiding my hands in my pockets as much as possible. When I was locked in and knew no one could see me, I collapsed on the floor. Probably stayed there for an hour before I even moved. I called the A.A. hotline that night and although it was some time before I finally quit drinking, this was the first real domino toward my eventual recovery.

4. Heat stroke

I’m a new construction plumber, and since 1995 my job has required me to work outside fairly regularly. Sometimes the weather conditions can be extremely hostile. I’ve had days where it was twenty below zero and some that were pushing a hundred and ten in the sun. This day was the latter. I was installing gas pipe on the roof of a building and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. It was damn hot and had no air conditioning in my vehicle to occasionally retreat to, so I was toughing it out. I DID keep up on my fill of water BUT I can’t stand salt, so I avoid it. As a result my body doesn’t retain fluids like it should. The day wore on and I after approached about thirty piping cuts I began to feel the effects. When I leaned over my work I was reminded of Robert Hayes in “Airplane!” My face had sprouted a faucet, nothing was staying in me, just flowing through me. I packed up around three-thirty and decided to head to our office which was, fortunately, only one mile from the job site. I wasn’t thinking straight and my mental symptoms were rapidly deteriorating into a state resembling being drunk, which I hadn’t been in about four years. As soon as I got behind the wheel I called my boss and told him what I thought was wrong with me and that I was headed to the shop. He yelled at me, rightfully so, but at this point I was only several hundred yards from pulling in. When I did park I fell out of the van (jeez, I REALLY do keep falling out of vans, don’t I?) and another co-worker, Ralph, saw me and came running. He asked if I was okay and I promptly assured him I wasn’t. He literally dragged me into the building and plopped me into a chair in the hallway while office personnel gathered around to see if they could help. By this time my body was shutting down. Both my arms and legs had become immobile. My skin had dried out and I was dying of thirst. When heat stroke (NOT exhaustion, that’s the first stage) kicks in this is what happens. The brain, which has begun to cook in the skull, says “save the core” meaning, of course, the head and torso. Everything else becomes expendable. All body fluids withdrew from my appendages to save my organs and brain and I became a temporary quadriplegic. No one knew what to do; neither did I. Rather quickly an ambulance showed up and took me to the nearest hospital. I called my then girlfriend, now wife, and she met me there. It took a while, but after several hours and multiple intravenous bags of fluid, I was released. Believe it or not I was back to work the next day, though I probably shouldn’t have pushed it.  Those who have had heat stroke become extremely susceptible to a re-occurrence. The “switch” gets turned on but can never be turned off. If I work in the heat these days I take “Thermotabs” and they work wonders for me. They’re cheap and can be only purchased over the counter, but no one needs a prescription. They aren’t for everyone so talk to your doctor before using them.

Since I’m still here I suppose I haven’t fulfilled my destiny as of yet, which means if I want to stick around, I need to keep a road of continued purpose clearly laid out. So far, so good!

That’s all for now, part two coming soon with three more “stories.”

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With Love and compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood

94. A FRIEND HAS DIED

Spock

I wasn’t expecting to be so angry about this. I’m overwhelmingly upset, but honestly, I’m more pissed than anything. What the hell, you know? We weren’t that close but there was common ground and respect. We’d gone to the movies together, worked together, and laughed together. We’d even exchanged a few gifts. He was a good man; not a jerk nor anything unkind or abrasive. He was quick to laugh and in fact I don’t remember him ever being in a bad mood.

What sucks is I hadn’t spoken to him for a while. When he left our company we drifted apart but on occasion we’d still talk. He was a terrific handyman, and I know what I’m saying being in construction myself. He had gotten hired with us just so he could get his Masters license. His real skill wasn’t as a plumber though, it was foremost with wood and secondly with tile. Some of his artistic talents were channeled into making Celtic shields. They were magnificent pieces and they sold quickly for high prices. I had the pleasure of seeing his mountain home some years back and it was filled with beauty from his hand. I was quite envious of his talent and I had planned on hiring him to do some work at our house at some point in the future. It didn’t seem all too long ago when I called and recommend him to a potential customer. I remember going off topic and discussing just how horrifically bad the first Hobbit film was compared to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That was the last time we spoke.  He was the same age as me.

I found out about his death through another close friend who called him up to see how he was doing. He had left a message and his widow called back saying he died last February. I’d love to say I can empathize with her, but I find I’m being selfish and preoccupied. My heart breaks for her, that’s for sure, but my thoughts keep drifting to examining my mortality; my own unrealized dreams. If I were to die tomorrow, what will I have left on my plate? What potential will have vanished? What potential did my friend leave unmanifested? I don’t know, but I’m positive the world would be a better place with him still in it.

The picture of Spock was one of his gifts to me; a rather thoughtful (and rare) one. When the action figures were released in the early seventies, coinciding with the premiere of the animated version of Star Trek, I had made it all too plain to my parents that I wanted Spock.  They got me Scotty instead saying Spock was sold out. I was grateful, but as an eight year old kid I was nonetheless deeply disappointed. We were both fans of Star Trek and this story came up one day as we talked about the show. He must have REALLY understood my feelings on the incident because when I showed up to my job the next day I got a call from him to look under a bucket in the corner. Behold, there was Spock! He sits in a place of honor in my home now, a fitting reminder of my friend.

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With Love and Compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood