What I remember of me…

March 2nd, 2016 is a looming date if only for its temporal marker. It’s an odd relevance that makes it important. At 10:30am, 20 years ago today, I became me. I can’t remember the other guy…he seems like a myriad of good times and bad. Like someone I lived with and knew a bit about, but not everything.

March 2nd, 1996 — I am looking out toward the valley, behind Rattlesnake Mountain in Reno, NV. It’s a bit cool, but in my leathers I am hot. I had climbed up on a bank on the side of the road waiting for Zack and Mike. I had parked down below, lamenting on not stopping for food, sitting on a rock feeling the wind whip the smell of sagebrush around me. The sky was clear and bright. The reservoir, the picture of Mt. Rose off in the distance…everything was mine at this moment, and everything was full of anticipation. That morning Harvey and another officer had come by and told me I had been accepted into the Reno Police Academy. It was a good morning, and despite the good news, it felt off…one of those moments where you can’t put your finger on it…not like Déjà vu. Simply different. Maybe the acknowledgement of a moment passing by, or preparing you to be swept up in it.

Notoriously early, my being vexed at the 10 minutes of tardiness of my friends was a bit amplified as I was ready to go and had to wait for them. The time between 10 and 10:30 went quickly…they arrived and we raced back and forth on the back road. Walker hadn’t shown up. I grew more comfortable dragging knee…then darkness.

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I met Don Piper a few years ago when he spoke at a church in Waller, TX. He is the author of 90 Minutes in Heaven. I found him to be an incredibly patient man (as I had a PhD in patience even then)…I could pick anyone with this skill out of a crowd. He spoke about his time in heaven to a packed church. Standing room only he told a story, his story, of a place he would never stop enjoying to describe…even the painful parts held a beauty as he spoke. I waited until everyone had shaken his hand, bought a book, had it signed and left. I watched as he gave two boys who had no money signed books…then I rolled up.

“Mr. Piper, my name’s Michael: do you ever have anyone who talks to you about a negative experience when they die?” I asked. More worried than anything his smile was going to be at my expense.

“Yes…and they always wait until the end — until everyone is gone.” He grinned and offered out his hand, he then moved around the table so we could talk one-on-one. He gave me his undivided attention. I could see his son boxing up extra books, everyone wanting to shut the church down, lights were being turned off…almost a symbolism of my story…the one I wanted to ask him about.

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I don’t remember anything about the wreck itself except the odd sensation of blackness starting from my left field of vision and putting my arm out…I loved to reach my hand out and touch the road as my knee dragged across the pavement; but this wasn’t that. It was a formless coalition of moments that I cannot give credence to with words. My descriptions give it no justice or vision.

It is March 2nd, 1996–10:30am and all I know is I am in darkness. The void before me, in me, around me, placing warm pressure on my form is everywhere. There is no screaming. No vanity. No belief. No me. There is only one thought. One truth in this place. You are alone. I had no understanding of where I was, only that I existed, and I was utterly, and entirely alone.

This moment was an eternity, I was awash in it, believed it like a religion, and was torn down to my childlike core. There was no id, ego, or super ego. It was primal, beyond anything Jung could explain. For my mind, as scientific as I was in thinking, it was supernatural. The caveat being that there was no safety. I knew that I was, that I was alone, and would be forever. I would not remember this time for months after my wreck…it would ebb and come in pieces…each as physically and emotionally debilitating as the experience itself.

The next thing I knew Mike was standing over me. He looked like a glowing Jesus in his leathers…light sparkled off him. I saw Zack a ways off, “Is he F-ed up, is he F-ed up, man!?!”

Mike yelled, “Go man, go!” In the days before cell phones and their common practices Zack was off to a pay phone. I heard months later in the hospital that Zack had drug knee the whole way to the phone, he buried the throttle and never let off, that’s 160mph. An ambulance had me loaded up within a few minutes. I remember the driver telling me I was the most courteous person he’d ever had on his bus…

Walker had gotten there after I was already gone…the officer told him where I was…he drove to the hospital…he made the tough calls…had the tough talks…he never left my side. He scratched my nose…he carried me to the shower…he told me things would get better…he did what brothers do.

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Don looked at me and said, “That’s a tough story you have there Mike, tell me, what do you think happened? Where do you think you were?” I believe it wasn’t necessarily a rhetorical question…more of a push to get me to say for myself what I didn’t have the courage to say. I’m sure he had a great deal of experience with people who — wanted him to do something for themselves that only they can really do.

“I think, maybe, it was hell, or the waiting place for hell. But it wasn’t hot like fire…it wasn’t a white light for sure,” I said, lightening the mood with humor as I always did. We both smiled.

He said something I’ll never forget: “Mike, separation from God, whether it is an inch or an ocean, is complete. Maybe for you, this was the Lord showing you that there was something between your relationship with Him.”

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There is a desperation associated with paralysis. Paralysis and clocks. Time becomes a different classifier of temporal justifications: My nose itches? How long will this take? I am thirsty! Michael, you can’t drink anymore it’s just the morphine you’re not really thirsty. Expletive! Expletive! Expletive! If I could get up I would destroy you all…How can the weatherman care about weather, mundane antics of a civilization: don’t you know I am paralyzed! My life is over…the second hand keeps ticking. The seconds are minutes, the minutes are days, the days are weeks, the weeks are months, and the months are years…totaling 20. Twenty years is a long time…

The desperation with paralysis is a claustrophobia that never subsides. You become quite patient with it. It’s that sort of acknowledgement with an itch you cannot scratch and that feeling of desperation when you simply want to standup and stretch. The feeling is perpetual, un-subsiding as the burning of my skin, and I believe after two decades is slowly winning against my sanity. There are those who anchor us…who promise without saying anything, “…you are safe…you are loved…you’re not alone…I see you.”

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Two years ago I decided to find the courage to contact a friend who is a police officer in Las Vegas. I filled out the paperwork and sent for a copy of reports surrounding the murder of my sister, Jill. I had decided to write a book about the absence of her in my life…and it occurred to me as it had at the birth of my youngest son, Elias: Jill’s memory is all the glue holding together what I remember of me…I have never had anything as powerful crush my spirit than when I read the coroner’s report, the weights and measures of a little girl’s heart should only ever be known to God.

The interesting aspect, as I wrote over the past two years, is my paralysis never made its way into the story…my wreck is a side-note, even my time in hell trivial, to the travesty of losing a loved one to another loved one…it’s been 20 years and the only interest I seem to have at the moment, this moment, about that experience, my wreck, is wow…that’s half my life. It doesn’t feel as much worth as it did before I held Elias…or Isaac…or Isabel…or was held by Elisabeth. My brokenness is a story worth telling…someday. But, there is another story that requires telling. A sad investigation of memories…an intelligent ribbon of facts. Woven declarative-ly*, as if by a symbolic-reflexive-responsibility, to say: this happened, I was there, and this is what others saw and did.

I’m sitting here on March 2nd, 2016 at 10:30am…dealing with time.

Writing about it, describing it, does the years no justice. What I remember of me is not fashioned anymore around what I have lost physically as a man — it is framed around the story of what it is to be without someone. The loss of feeling, being trapped, is nothing in comparison to the loss of potential that surrounds an ended life.

So…I am almost finished writing: Michael’s Son…

It is not about me being paralyzed. It is about a murder, it is about being a son: How one event impacts the entirety of the lives around it.

Michael Twigg-

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“Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you’ll be.” — Mandalorian saying…

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• The playlist for this writing…
• Romans 8:35–39 — (35)Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…(38)For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, (39)Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Thank you Don Piper…for taking time with me…when you didn’t have to…
• I’ve been asked…yes, I’ll need a publisher…soon…
• Public speaking…yes, a few times…depends on what the audience is receptive to hearing…
• On my fiction and non-fiction writing…I’d be interested in finding an artist to illustrate a graphic novel and a few other books…just being patient…I’ll be posting a chapter soon…
• *Yes, I glued a word together that doesn’t exist…however…if you break it down…it fits nicely into this particular niche…and it means what I intended…