Editor’s Note: A very good pal with four or five decades of memorable association passed away recently. Information came across the ether yesterday about how long it would take for his time to share the honorable services of the 3rd Infantry Division’s “Old Guard” at Arlington National Cemetery. It is a long time- possibly a year to wait. For him, no problem. For us, a breath of perspective on the actual end of life. It got a lot of us to thinking. This is Marlow’s personal take on it.

– Vic

Author’s Note: A shipmate’s recent death prompted me to dig for this on my laptop.

As its draft-date below shows, I commenced penning it last fall before the plague vaccine announcements. With the numbers of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths then skyrocketing locally and nationwide, the plague had caused me to consider my mortality, the meaning of life, legacy, and my prior near misses with the big blue beyond. It was also during that time when I started penning my thoughts about some fellow scribblers’ bios that I shared awhile back.

I left this piece unfinished to gather dust in my Drafts folder. Since spring sprung, August’s heat continuing to grill us in late September, and the Empire’s recent COVID death rates, new infection rates and hospitalizations doubling our previous 2020 winter highs, it’s time to clean this folder out.

-Marlow

Late October 2020

My Many Deaths

I was 5 going on 6 years old the first time I died. I remember there was white lightening everywhere in my field of vision as I got a full 20-amp shock. My heart missed several beats as I rolled backward several times across the dressing room floor. I cracked my head real hard on the wall and went blank for several seconds. Upon awakening, I spotted and then smelled a carpet fire underneath the electrical outlet as my hairpin experiment had led to a white-hot metal object dropping to the floor and starting a nice fire. I felt myself and everything checked out — alive but with a buzzing in my head and some serious jitterings of the body. But, really, I was back from the dead.

I then crab-crawled over to the carpet bonfire and patted it out with my hand thus allowing me to smell what burning flesh was like.

All these years later, I sometimes think we live through things only to be able to say that it happened. That it wasn’t to somebody else, it was to me. Sometimes we live to beat the odds. I’m not crazy . . . even though some of the more serious adults during my childhood thought I was.

I lived in the same world as everyone else, I just saw more of it, as I’m sure some of you have. What this meant was I’ve seen life after my death, more than once and I’m telling you this because there might be some insight. Sometimes life really begins with the knowledge of death. That it can all end, even when you least want it to. The important thing in life is to believe that while you’re alive, it’s never too late to stop being an idiot.

Sadly, I had to test and occasionally cross the death barrier several more times during the next sixty some odd years. When you die, there’s only one thing you want to happen . . . you wanna crawl back.

The only thing that burns in the afterlife is the part of you that won’t let go of life, your memories, your attachments. Everything else all gets burned away. It’s not a form of divine retribution or punishment. These fires free your soul. So, make your peace and prepare for the BBQ.

​—–

In the intervening years I fell out of trees, off roofs and a 50-foot shale rock cliff into a lake with not much more than my bell repeatedly being rung.

—–

My next dance with death came in France in the 60s, when my un-helmeted skull glanced off the cobblestoned pavement as I launched myself over my motorcycle’s handlebars at ~50 KPH. What likely saved me from permanently crossing over was my hitting on the rebound a peglegged French WW I soldat who had been walking his unlit bike on a darkened, unlit street in Angers. He had been the proximate reason why I had instantly emergency braked the motorbike to avoid running his ass over. After a drugged-out week plus in a French hospital bed I came to in the middle of a night, swearing like a Level 3 French speaking native.

I was starving and had a galactically painful headache due to several skull fractures and missing much of my eyebrows. The night nurse was none too happy with my gutter talk, so I checked myself and profusely apologized, and she found some of the coming day’s fresh French bread and butter to fill my empty stomach. Chewing it was another matter. Only during the post meal period did she explain to me that I hadn’t eaten anything solid since the accident — seulement cafe et potage. After two more weeks in the hospital, I finally passed the EEG go/no-go criteria and was released back into the general population of the town. I found myself incapable of walking thus requiring my relearning to walk (no walker/wheelchair/cane was provided upon discharge) as I crawled about, then later cruised upiright chair to chair to wall to bureau like a 11-month-old toddler. That took six weeks of bumps. falls, slumps. and scrapes.

When I finally met my peglegged poilu months later, he proved to be a garrulous, storytelling, nice, old man of endless ability to drink verres de vin rouge de maison (house red wine).

(WW I (l) and WW II (r) French Army amputees were a common sight on France’s streets during the 1950s and 1960s; mine described above was a single legged, at-the-knee WW I poilu amputee from the northern trenches who was able to ride a bicycle well into his 70s when we met; his peg was a straight dark colored piece of hardwood that looked painful but never kept him from telling funny or sad stories while laughing and imbibing with me atlocal cafes; I miss him and his wife to this day; my grandfather, father and I were his and his countrymen’s allies in arms).

—–

More death-defying incidents occurred over the following years with me and motorcycles being run off the road by unseeing car drivers x 2 or 3 at high speeds, southern lowdown whiskey roadhouse and officer club bedlams of serious intent, as well as looking down the gun barrels sported by young, foolish, unsuccessful thieves and ne’er-do-wells and the use of firearms under the intense influence of ethyl alcohol.

—–

Death #3 came in the early 90s when drowning in a black hole of grief inside the toxic wasteland of self-administered pain killing alcohol. Only a grief support group rescued me from auguring it in along the DC’s beltway into some concrete overpass abutment.

—–

My fourth and final real deal appointment (at least to date) with the Grim Reaper came twenty years later. Its telling must await a future post.

—–

How does the song go?

​Did you ever take a look to see who’s left around
Everyone I thought was cool is six feet underground
They tried to get me lots of times but now they’re coming after you
I got out and I’m here to say baby you can get out too

I’m still alive and well still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kinda hard to tell
But I’m still alive and well
Still alive and well, still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kinda hard to tell
Still alive and well

When I think about the past it only brings me down
Let’s make love in the grass while the sun is shining down
It feels so good yo​ur long hair baby
When you’re way down low
Make me shake make the whole earth quake
So everyone will know
​
Still alive and well I’m still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kinda hard to tell
But I’m still alive and well
Still alive and well, still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kinda hard to tell
But I’m still alive and well (Ow)
​
Still alive and well, still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kinda hard to tell
But I’m still alive and well
Still alive and well you know I’m still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kinda hard to tell
But I’m still alive and well
Still alive and well, still alive and well
I’m alive and well
I wanna tell you baby I’m alive and well
You know I don’t mean maybe
I’m alive and well uh-ooh-ooh
I’m alive and well
I’m still alive and well
​
​
Still Alive and Well copyright Johnny Winter

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