The day I was dying

I had not taken the proper precautions for my demise because I thought I was going to the supermarket afterwards. (See Friday's "Watchful prayer.") But in the clinic at 9 a.m. the doctor looked pensive over my EKG, and then left the room and returned with a second doctor, which I knew couldn't be good. They sat me down and told me I had "dodged a few bullets," and admitted me immediately, wheelchair and all.

By 3 p.m., outfitted in a heart monitor, I had seen a parade of seven different doctors through my room. By 4 p.m., the seven filed in together, like the last scene of a Shakespeare play where all the characters are reassembled for the moral of the story. The man I took to be the top of the pecking order spoke, while the rest were looking like chastened toddlers and said not a word. In 15 minutes I was walking out of the hospital in my street clothes (no wheelchair ride).

Steve Jobs told an auditorium of fresh-faced Stanford University grads that in 2004 he lived one whole day with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer that was proved false by an evening biopsy. But it was enough; his life was changed forever. The announcement of my own death had been premature. But one day death will make another house call, and it won't be the wrong address. My day in the hospital was a reprieve.

This morning Spider and I walked in the park and let the sparking beauty wash over us, early red splashes of autumn from God's palette. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. … Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all. …" (Ecclesiastes 3:1; 11:7,8)