In The Blink Of An Eye

No one knows where it ends, how it may come tumbling down
But I’m here with you now, I’m with you now
“The Light” — Sara Bareilles

This is the time of year when everyone starts thinking about New Year’s resolutions and what they’re going to give up or change about themselves or their personal circumstances over the coming 12 months. I’m usually a part of that group, too, but not this year. This year I don’t give a damn about resolutions. This year all I care about is living life to the fullest—because I almost didn’t make it to 2020. What I’m about to say is going to sound insanely dramatic, but I assure you, it’s not. My hands are literally shaking as I write this but here goes: I thought I was going to die on Sunday.

It happened in the middle of my son’s 4^th birthday party—his Superman party—in the lull between dinner and dessert. We were all sitting around the table chatting, laughing, drinking—my husband, my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, my in-laws, my close family and friends. The kids were amusing themselves in the basement. And my husband had just scattered roasted chestnuts around the table for all of us to nosh on. Chestnuts we had inadvertently overcooked earlier in the day. Chestnuts that I had eaten hundreds of times before. Thinking nothing of it, I grabbed one, peeled it as best I could (it was hard to peel because it was so dry), and popped it in my mouth. I don’t even remember swallowing. One minute I was chewing a chestnut and the next minute something was very, very wrong. I suddenly felt it lodge in my throat and in the blink of an eye I couldn’t breathe. I tried clearing my throat, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried taking a drink of water and then another and then another, but it wouldn’t budge. What happened next is so surreal. I only remember bits and pieces—certain faces, certain sounds. Here’s what I can tell you for sure:

I rose from my chair flapping my arms and struggling to breathe. I repeatedly tried to take in air, but the only sound that emerged was a silent sort of rasping. My efforts were futile; nothing was working. Nothing. I couldn’t move any air, not even a single breath. Fear overcame me. I remember scanning the crowd for my husband, quickly finding him, and doing everything I could think of to tell him what was wrong. I imagine I looked like a raving lunatic to everyone who was witnessing this but it’s impossible to convey how terrified I was in that moment. I watched my husband jump out of his chair and rush over, asking if I was choking. (That sounds so silly—it was obvious to me that I was choking—but I later learned that people thought I was having an allergic reaction to something.)

I don’t know how I managed to tell him yes, but I did. Because the next thing I know he’s behind me, driving his double-handed fist into my chest and giving me the Heimlich. But it didn’t work. No matter what he did, I still couldn’t pass any air. All I could do was stand there waving my arms and making that horrible rasping sound. I began to feel lightheaded and I couldn’t really see or hear anything anymore. I remember only a sea of faces before me (but no one in particular) and silence. A deafening silence. But then I heard my daughter cry out and my husband barking an order at someone, anyone to get my baby girl out of there so she couldn’t see what was happening. And that was the moment—hearing the waver in my husband’s voice as he told someone to take my little girl away. That’s when it hit me like a bolt of lightning and one thought began replaying in my mind: This is the day I’m going to die. This is the day I’m going to die. Dec. 29, 2019. It was like a mantra in my head. And then a million other thoughts followed:

• Shouldn’t someone call 911? When should someone call 911?
• There’s no way my body will last without oxygen while we all sit and wait for an ambulance.
• How do people survive this if they aren’t with someone who knows what to do?
• This is the day I’m going to die.
• What if I don’t survive this? What if Nick can’t save me?
• I’m not going to survive this.
• This is no joke—I’m legit choking, and this is how I’m going to die. At the age of 41. Right here in the middle of my kitchen at my son’s 4^th birthday party.
• How are my babies going to survive without their momma? What’s going to happen to them if I’m not here?
• How can it be that I’m only going to know my children through their 5th and 4th birthdays?
• This is the day I’m going to die.

You wouldn’t think this jumble of thoughts would even enter your mind at a time like this, but you go into a sort of sensory and emotional overdrive. In those precious moments, the cliché “my whole life passed before my eyes” suddenly and startlingly became my reality. I’ve never experienced anything like that before so it’s difficult to convey how serious the situation was to anyone watching from the outside. (Based on conversations I’ve been having with family and friends who were there, though, apparently what happened has had a profound effect on them.)

Anyway, through all of this, my husband just kept at the Heimlich, over and over. And after what seemed an eternity (but in reality, was only a few minutes) I felt the piece of chestnut loosen and dislodge and I was able to cough and then, finally, to breathe again. I felt so weak I couldn’t even stand anymore. I sank down onto the closest chair and it took all my strength and resolve not to burst into tears. I cannot begin to tell you how much that moment shook me to the core. The closest I’ve ever been to feeling that scared was the day my daughter turned blue and stopped breathing in the ER when she was one month old. But that was a whole other type of fear.

I guess I rattled everyone, though, because as soon as I was out of the woods, several of my family and friends came to hug me. My poor baby girl wouldn’t leave my side. She kept coming over to wrap her arms around me and reassure herself that I was OK, that mommy wasn’t leaving her. The thought of that just breaks my heart. My husband, too, is still hugging me in remembrance of that moment. He told me afterward that he realized how touch-and-go the situation was after the first Heimlich didn’t work and he heard our daughter start crying. He said that’s when it clicked for him that this sh** was real. He said his knees turned to jelly and his mind went into emergency medic mode, scrambling to remember the procedure for when a choking person goes limp and falls unconscious. Apparently, he started praying “please don’t go limp, please don’t go limp, please don’t go limp.” I didn’t know it at the time, obviously, but he told me that my skin had turned gray and that I was on the verge of turning blue when he finally dislodged the piece of chestnut. Every time I think about that—how close I came—it scares the sh** out of me.

I can’t even write this post without shaking—or crying. I guess I’m still trying to process what happened. It’s been lurking in the back of my mind the past few days. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and it’s there, waiting to pull me down and drown me in fear and anxiety. It’s there when I eat now, too. I can’t take a bite of food without wondering if it’s going to happen again, to the point where I’m mostly eating only soft foods. I’ve even been spitting out certain things that I’m afraid won’t go down easily, even after chewing them into oblivion. Irrational, but understandable I suppose. I refuse to live in fear, though, and I don’t want this to become my Bogeyman, which is why I’m forcing myself to relive that moment—terrifying as it was—to face it, digest it, and find some closure on it. Because it’s only when we face our traumas, our anxieties, our fears that we are truly free of them.

I’ve been trying to figure out why this happened, too. Was it a wake-up call to remind me (or all of us) that life is fleeting and that I need to stop taking every moment for granted? Is God teaching me some sort of life lesson because I stress and complain a lot about some of the circumstances in which I find myself, both as a woman and as a mom? Maybe He’s trying to tell me that I worry about the wrong things. Or that I need to stop sweating the small stuff and focus on what’s truly important. Like family and friends and love. Or maybe it’s simply about giving me a second chance to view my life from a different (read: positive) perspective and make changes accordingly. I guess I’ll never really know.

What I do know is that whatever His motivation, it worked like a charm. Because what happened this past weekend changed something deep inside of me. It gave me a new lease on life. Suddenly everything seems a little brighter and happier, and the things that used to feel so daunting and depressing now seem so small and insignificant. I know that probably sounds like another “cliché” to an outsider reading this, but not from where I’m standing. For me, those few minutes on Sunday put my life into such perspective and … I guess I’m having a hard time putting it into words. The best I can do is this: My life could have ended in the blink of an eye on Sunday. That situation could just as easily have gone the other way and I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life worrying and stressing and feeling depressed about a whole slew of nonsense. And yet I wasn’t thinking about any of that stuff Sunday afternoon. When I thought my number was up, only three things mattered to me: my husband, my daughter, and my son. All I kept thinking was how much they need me and that my time with them couldn’t possibly be over at this point in our amazingly short journey together. They are the air that I breathe, and I am so damn lucky and blessed enough to have this second chance to tell—and show—them how much I love them.

So, I guess in a way I do care about resolutions after all. Because that’s going to be my life resolution for 2020 … and all the years after that.

I’m going to end this post with one final thought, which I realized while writing it. My husband, my wonderful, amazing partner in everything, saved my life on Sunday. He literally saved my life. If it hadn’t been for him, I probably wouldn’t be here right now, and I am so beyond grateful to him for that. But that got me thinking about something he says to our children whenever they feel scared or nervous or anxious or lonely. He tells them to pray to God and ask Him to send down His guardian angels to protect them in their moment of need. And it dawned on me that when I was scared and searching for my own miracle, I strangely didn’t look to God for anything. I didn’t pray to Him and I didn’t ask Him for a thing. I simply looked for my husband, who’s about as close to an angel as you can get in this big beautiful world.

And I thank God every day for sending him to me.