Episode Five: How To Wrap Great Gifts

Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road

How To Wrap Great Gifts

My heart surgery was a simple in and out job. Really more like a semi-complicated bank heist though the better plot perspective is a smooth anti-crime rescue caper. Least dramatically it could be seen as a week long drop off at the car dealer service center. A quick crack of the chest popped open the hood on my most major engine. Two snips and a stitch, two inches of ballooned out artery get replaced by a Dacron splice. Five weeks later my sternum halves are fusing together, neatly closed by loops of titanium wire.

Very pretty, theses little bows of titanium wire. I know just how pretty they are. I have seen them. For I have seen what can only be seen by X-Ray: a thread of gift wrap around a gift of the most wonderful kind, the most wonderful gift a man woman or child can get.

And what might that be?

It's called a second chance.
They don't come to everybody and they don't come too often.

Easier than I thought it would be, to lay down the junk and get on board the Second Chance train to Wellville.

Here's a small poem I wrote prior to Operation Chest Crack.
It was put down with a thought in mind as possibly a final piece of work, if things went more like No Chance instead of Second Go Around.

A very short poem, so the pain will be over before you know it.
You'll have a 2nd chance to read something better than this very soon, I guarantee.

"All Who Wander, All Who Doubt"

All who wander are not lost.

All who doubt are not damned.

Those whom we must hear may not shout.

The surprise you seek cannot be planned.

The joy that feeds cannot be canned.

Wounds that bleed these were my brand.

What I should doubt are my old ploys;

Favored white lies, and toxic toys.

These I should lay down and surrender

Before Fate improves by beating me black blue and tender.

Luckily and gratefully yours
From Across Cardiac County Line Road,

James Sullivan