Beginning Year Two of My Second Life

One year ago this minute I was a little over two hours away from the beginning of the end of my life. I didn't know it, had no idea it was coming, but that is the way life is. You never know what it has in store for you. In a little over two hours, a year ago, it had a heart attack waiting for me. Ten or fifteen years ago it might have killed me; one of my arteries was 100% blocked, but due to the miracle that is the modern cath lab, it didn't kill me. Only it did. It killed who I was; it killed the life I was living.

As I lay on the table in the cath lab and the miracle workers opened my blocked artery from the inside of the artery, there was that moment when I felt my heart jump in my chest and I didn't know if I had just died. And in that moment the regrets of my life, things I had never admitted to myself, flooded over me. And though I didn't physically die, the person I was, the life I was living, did die.

Within three weeks I would leave my wife and lose the respect of my son. I left the big house on the hill and wonderful neighborhood. I left the neighbors I called friends. But it wasn't all bad.

I found a new/old love; a woman who loves and respects me like I really don't deserve. I found a simpler life, of less things but richer moments. I found my new life.

And now in just a few hours, the first year of that new, second life will have been lived and the second year will begin. This first year has been a year of transitions and not everything from the old life has reached its completion, but they all soon will.

The world is not quite my oyster, not yet, but it has the possibility of being that and that is a beautiful thing.

Here's to new beginnings.