I had my very first surgery recently. Nothing major, but it meant being "put under", anesthesized, something of which I had an unacknowledged fear, the penultimate loss of control. Stripped of my clothes and worse, my glasses for a significant myopia, I was introduced to the man who would knock me out, minutes before it was to happen. "Hello Doctor" I said, unable to make out the contours of his face. "Trust me?" he asked. I don't think I had time to answer as I was being wheeled from my waiting space in this outpatient mini-hospital into the place where my neck would be quite literally slit on the left side to take out an infected salivary gland and a foreign calcium object that had grown nearby. I saw three circular lights, as yet not ablaze. And then, I awoke, someone wiping blood off my nose and calling my name, shadowy figures hovering and mumbling in the near distance. I did not remember being shut off, but I was switched on again and it was powerful. I don't know if I actually did, but I have this idea that I thought about a scene in Robocop just then. He had been damaged and being man and hardware; he was shut down. Then from his point of view, a semi-computer, he registers, click, click, click, information coming in, words like "functioning" crawling on his visual screen, flash, flash, flash. That was my view, without the instructions in my visual field to tell me I was back "on". Nothing gradual. Not there. Then there. And, unlike Robocop, I was crying. My life was returned to me. Control was nearly mine again.
But this hour or two hour period of being shut off got me thinking about the ultimate fear, death, the big, the final sleep. In that room, during my surgery, time had passed. For me, there was before and after, but literally no middle. Not even dreaming good or bad. Nothingness. What if I had not awakened? Then what? Some people think that there is no what then. Nothing more than nothingness. And I certainly can't dispute them in any concrete way. I have fallen back on my faith that despite what I did not see or hear or feel in that two hours plus pause of my consciousness, when the true end comes, I'll pass through the cloud of unknowing. But, even when my faith falters, I like the idea of Pascal's Wager. That God, and the Someone after, exists because it is the best bet and I have got nothing to lose by believing it. If I am wrong, there is an eternity of nothingness and I won't be there to worry or complain. If I am right, and there is a community of saints, wow, won't that be grand? Think of the people I'll get to see again, as God smiles and His Eyes and mine meet?
But for now, I am glad that I'm back "on" in this life. But, I am a little less afraid and maybe a bit more willing to let go of the control I never had in the first place.
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