Surviving

 I have experienced a lot of near deaths. However, my reaction to these experiences is usually me asking the Angels if I'm dying. Usually the Angels tell me: "No. This is just temporary. Don't freak out!"

However, other people maybe who have not made friends with the angels like I have would have died at any one of these near deaths or all of them?

However, starting with Whooping cough the Archangels Saved me. Then with a concussion from Rock Climbing and seizures often at night between 10 and 15 years old God eventually saved me and I think insisted that he lived and lives in my body with me so I would be safe to have on earth being as Supernatural as he made me and as intelligent as I am.

So, God and Angels have made me safe to be on earth which is good.

My experience is two near deaths before age 15 and then multiple near deaths from divorce and health issues like heart and burst appendix and the resulting hernia from a laparoscopic procedure.

However, I keep watching around me and so many many people have either died from heart attacks or other stuff and so many people have died from burst appendixes usually from Sepsis. But, luckily because my parents were anti-Vaxers I have an 1800s immune system.

What do I mean by this?

Most children (about 50% of them) used to die in other centuries so people needed to sort of get used to at least half of their children dying otherwise they were going to die too.

I don't think children were loved any less when I grew up in the 1950s, it's just that people sort of thought as children as too good to be true but also temporary sort of like Flowers.

So, they didn't get attached to us the way people do now with vaccines where maybe 90% of the children survive compared to about 50% or less in the past.

So, everything keeps changing and life goes on and I have an amazing immune system so I'm one of the people who survived likely in previous centuries without any vaccines. So, I tend to survive things other people either don't or won't choose to survive.

By God's Grace 

Surviving

 Most people might see surviving as one thing but for me survival is mostly about a relationship with God and Angels.

When you have this type of relationship with God and Angels you tend to live a long life. I cannot speak for another path. I just know my path might be very long even though I'm presently 77 years old.

They say if you live to be 30 you likely will see 90. I think this century for many people it will be: "If you live to see 30 you will see 100. Not everyone. But, likely more educated people who aren't usually so at war with themselves from bad childhood programming will see this manifest in their lives.

However, after 40 or 50 it is really important for almost everyone to have health insurance so they are fully covered and all the members of their families are fully covered too.

Otherwise whatever happens health wise could easily bankrupt you or make you homeless. So, finding a way to have good health care after 40 or 50 years old is really one of the main keys to longevity.

My father and his father didn't believe in Doctors since around 1900 (my grandfather was born in the late 1870s and his father had been a captain for the northern Army in the civil War from 1860 to 1865 out of Kansas.

So, I have interesting stories about my grandfather after having been crushed under his D-9 bulldozer by tightening up his drag line on a boulder and stump too tight and turning bulldozer upside down upon him with hot engine water and oil coming down on him for a few days so he had a collapsed lung.

So, he got someone to smuggle in a carton of Camel Cigarettes and said to people he was going to reinflate his lungs with these very strong cigarettes which he did.

Then he had someone smuggle into the hospital his pistol and got up and walked out of there. This really happened near Elk City at the nearest hospital likely in the 1960s.

So, at 44 I didn't have health insurance and had what they called a panic attack mimicking a heart attack where I couldn't walk or talk for about an hour. So, I crawled into the bathroom where we had a big clawfoot bathtub which I crawled into so I might not die and filled it with warm water. My 4 years old daughter comforted me with words then before i could get my wife then after an hour to two to take me to the nearest hospital. by then I could begin to talk and walk again and not be shaking. However, I realized then there actually was something wrong with my heart and tried to find a Heart Specialist without Health insurance. NOPE! it wasn't going to happen.

And I thought to myself: "Am I going to die because I don't have health insurance? This is a likely outcome for most people in the U.S. in my predicament then.

So, by 45 or 46 I found a way to pay for full health insurance so when I got a heart virus in 1998 that everyone else that I knew of with one like this died in California in 1998 and 1999 I had health insurance and this helped save my life between 1998 and 1999 even though I was forced to retire or die then starting in fall of 1998.

Luckily, God provided for my financial well being somehow so I'm still okay today all these years later in 2025.

However, it is also true that I prayed for the Leisure to Practice (which means time to pray) basically which I was given through almost dying by God.

So, when you ask God for something "the Lord Moves in mysterious ways!"

By God's Grace 

Surviving

I think the hardest things for me to deal with in life have been public school and employers. Both sort of made life miserable for me most of the time.

But, good came from difficult employers in that it made me really want to start my own businesses so I did. And as bad as school was (except for a few teachers here and there along the way) I always loved learning even though I hated school. I just wanted to learn whatever I wanted to learn that day not what teachers wanted to teach me necessarily. And a lot of bad employers from age 10 to 20 to 28 led me to start my own business at 28 when I was qualified to do that and to continue either buying or starting my own businesses after that ongoing from ages 28 onwards. And in addition to this as bad as grade school (and especially junior high school was) High School wasn't as bad because I actually liked studying French and learning to speak Parisian French without an American Accent. (even though I cannot understand French people because they just talk so fast I cannot figure out what they are saying.

So, eventually I went to college and I found I loved college no matter what I was studying. The problem became for me that I wasn't good at finishing night classes. So, unless I was taking a day class I usually didn't finish the class. So, I wound up getting jobs after 3 pm to 9 or 10 pm so I could take day classes so I could pass those classes.

Then I wanted to be a psychologist but then my live in girlfriend got pregnant and I knew I couldn't hold onto her and my son in my life if I was also going to college so I went to work to support us instead at age 26 when she was pregnant with my son and pretty much kept working from then on or starting my own businesses always after that.

So, I guess what I'm saying here is often the things you hate the most often lead to unusual things you might not expect.

So, remember always to be an opportunist and to be adaptable. Because " Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans". Always!

Surviving

There have been many times in life (especially when I was younger than 30) that I had absolutely nothing to keep me alive but the sheer strength of my will and whatever I had learned about enough to survive whatever came in my life. After I was 30 I made generally better decisions (but not always). The main reason I made better decisions after 30 was what I had already survived and the fact that I didn't smoke or drink or do drugs. I found that "like my father" I preferred to have my brain working so I could make better decisions ongoing. Even though this can be quite painful to have to face different aspects of life like when you are in physical or mental pain or when parents or friends die or are injured or when your children might be injured temporarily or your mate might be injured or sick. But generally, even though you have to take the pain full on if you believe in God it helps a lot to lessen the pain of life so often you can persevere through almost anything if you have faith in something bigger than yourself taking care of you and your family. So, often when I would go to sleep and something serious was going on in my life I would say to God, "Please God! If it is your will let me die tonight." I would release my soul out of my body to God and I would wake up renewed and reborn in the morning. It was always like dying and even if things weren't better in the morning at least I had a new and renewed way of looking at absolutely everything when I woke up the next morning!

Surviving

My wife said to me today, "I think you may be the most intuitively tuned in person I have ever met in my entire life." But as she said it there was a note of sympathy in her voice, as if this wasn't something she wished for herself. In some ways I don't think anyone chooses to be like me. Not really. Because it can be really painful. However, I learned over the years that it saves lives to be like I am so that is why I didn't just give it up and die or become an alcoholic like some people do. Instead I realized that I was sort of like the historical Shaman that helped keep his or her tribe alive instead of dying. So, just like a minister or priest, it is knowing that what you are doing is difficult but necessary for the survival of those around you and to some degree for mankind in general. So, not giving up is very important. Is everyone and everyone important in the overall scheme of things? I believe God thinks so or people wouldn't be alive at all. However, then people have to appreciate being alive enough to make choices that keep them alive. If they don't do this they are often gone by age 25 or 30. Some young people say, "Life is just too hard!"

You are right! Life is too hard. So, you have to take an interest in your life enough to discover a way to survive it. It might be that the choices everyone made in your family or in your friends' families aren't  going to work for you. But, if you really want to survive you can't give up until you have tried enough things to know you gave it your best. Where there's a will there's a way! If you don't ever give up you really can't ever permanently fail. So, don't give up. But, remember everything you are experiencing is teaching you something important. Don't forget to learn whatever that is or else you might not survive to find a life you can actually stand to live for the rest of your life.

Surviving

A storm like this teaches us all survival skills more than anything else. I think people who have been through and survived incredible experiences and who have been amazed by the fact that they survived something difficult or terrible become better at surviving whatever comes next. There is a saying, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger". To some degree this is true. It isn't worrying about a problem that is the most difficult, it is actually surviving the problem no matter what we might think or say about it or even do about it. My father used to say, "a miss is as good as a mile". What this meant was if you were walking along a street and a car almost hit you and missed you by even 1/4 inch you were okay and the attitude was, 'A miss is as good as a mile'. In other words if you survived "don't sweat the small stuff". Things can be replaced but not your life or the lives of your loved ones. If you have each other and no one died things can be replaced but losing a loved one you cannot replace that ever. So, be grateful for everyone that survived this. Next time, we might not be as lucky. So, be grateful while we can. "Life is for the Living!"

Surviving

I watched Marley and Me on DVD with my family tonight. At the end of Marley's life it took me to losing one of our dogs a few years ago before we replaced her with a female Corgi puppy. My 13 year old was crying because she said she wanted to be there when we had our Maggie Mae (Jack russel and corgi mix) put to sleep.) Our dog sitter forgot to bring in our two dogs after dark when we were gone and Maggie Mae got into it with a raccoon and had to be put to sleep because of kidney failure within the next month.

I told my daughter when Maggie Mae's friend(my dog) passes away I told her she can be there if we have to put him to sleep sometime in the future. (He's about 9 or 10 years old now).

However, the issue that came up for me was not dogs. It was losing my mother. The hell of my experience with her the last ten years of her life basically tore me a new one.

My wife's father also passed in this last year but that was more bearable simply because he had all his faculties until the end. However, my mother started slipping away mentally starting in 1999 when I took her to Scotland, England and Europe. She was 80 then. At the time I didn't know what "transfer trauma" was. It is caused by moving someone whose mental faculties are slipping even though you aren't aware of what is happening to a new or different location than they have been before.

My mother in 1999 was okay once I took her to Scotland where her parents grew up near Glascow. However, when I flew with her and my daughter to Germany to rent a motor home and meet my then 25 year old son and his friend in Munich she didn't leave the motor home even once as we drove and camped through Germany, Austria, Switzerland and northern Italy. Then when we flew from Munich back to London she stayed in her basement hotel room even when we could have gotten a better one and wouldn't leave it and only watched TV for about 4 days.

When we returned through San Francisco Airport to our home on the California Coast I was pretty angry at my mother for being so incredibly difficult because I didn't realize that the cause was early senile dementia.

I could go on at how it got worse and worse until she had to be institutionalized in a senile dementia alzheimer's facility after she almost burned down her apartment but I won't.

The important thing since she has passed on now is that I find a way to cope with the last 10 years. It stripped from my all the wonderful memories of my mother completely away from me and left me feeling completely emotionally raped by life in regard to all my positive memories of my mother.

Some of you might say to me that I should think of what this did to her. However, she was no longer mentally or emotionally the person who raised me. She was the same body that raised me but not the same person. She was about 50 or more different personalities that slowly regressed from about age 18 down to age 1 and then she died from senile dementia at age 89. The doctor said her heart and body were so strong she would have lived to 100 otherwise. What killed my mother was hardening of the arteries of the brain(senile dementia)

This was the first person close to me that I have lost from this ailment. My father died in 1985 from Bone cancer after having Prostate, bladder and kidney cancer first. He lived 1 year after having his prostate, bladder and one kidney removed. However, I have had 24 years to get used to him dying.

They say when someone has senile dementia or Alzheimers you have no closure until your loved one dies. But from my experience one has the experience of dying 100s of times while watching ones loved one become a stranger.

In other countries often the relative that takes care of this person goes crazy or dies with the relative or commits suicide with the relative. I did not have this option as I had to think about my wife and young daughter and my grown children and I had to let go of my mother into an senile dementia and alzheimer's facility as she became a danger to herself and others after setting her stove on fire for 24 hours and instead of putting it out sitting at her kitchen table and praying for the flames not to burn her up. Luckily the large plastic bowl she put on her stove dripped liquid flaming plastic down the side of the stove only and didn't set the floor or anything else on fire. My son came home and realized she had to be institutionalized after this incident. (She had been warned by my son and I never to use the stove only the microwave because she wasn't together enough to use a stove safely).

Looking back I have to look at it all as medical triage. We saved the part of our family that could be saved and had to let my mother go. I often wish there had been another way for her. I often idealize about the eskimo idea of old people simply getting on an iceberg and drifting out to sea. However, in reality this is mostly only romantic kinds of stuff, unless one just buys a cabin in the woods and takes enough risks to walk into a snow storm one day and not come back. Though I often think of this as an outcome for me one day I know I will do whatever it takes to make sure my children are well taken care of as long as I can. At that point whatever I do is my own business.