IGM I'm back

Inter-Galactic Memo

To: All personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: I’m back . . . .
12-19-09


I’m back. Back from the brink, back from almost being an ex-human, at best a Zombie and at worst some nameless corpse lying in St James Infirmary.
Having read my daughters less-than-respectful announcement  concerning my recent run of bad luck, I wish to set the record straight.
I was in fact kidnapped, and whisked to the Planet Zorg where I was tortured by mean Zorgians who ride T-Rex’s bare-back—that’s how mean they are.
The Zorgians, having coalesced into doctors, nurses and relatives, will be getting theirs. That’s all I have to say about that.
A quick update will have to suffice for the moment since being conscious for more than a 5 minute stretch brings on bouts of coughing violent enough to have created the word “lunger.”
It was the worst and best experience I have ever had. The worst because I almost died, and the best because I didn’t.
I am learning about muscles I didn’t know I had, all of which I apparently abused during my enforced incarceration. I am learning what “weak as a kitten” means. Our kitten, Frankie, routinely beats me not only at fly-batting now, but chess and Monopoly as well.
I believe I am learning the things this experience is meant to be teaching me. This is good and bad news for some of you. Good in that I am still teachable, bad in that I will be coming to some of your houses to pass along messages from the other side.
I am going to keep a journal for the next 6 months or so, and then maybe write a book, which I will call The Heart Attack. So keep those coupons if you prayed for me; they can be redeemed for a free copy.
One quick anecdote. (I was in a coma for about five days, so this comes from my daughter, Jessica.)
At some point—which she counts as blessed because it was the first time I looked up and recognized anyone—I asked her if she had any idea how many people were praying for me. She told me no, how many?
“About a hundred million,” I apparently answered. I laughed with everyone else when she told us the story, but now that I’ve had time to think about it, I believe my estimate was correct. I felt them. All my ancestors were helping, and all the people on this side as well.
There is a wonderful funeral scene in The Thirteenth Warrior where a woman is chanting her husband’s death.
“Lo, there do I see my Father,” she intones as she is raised above the waiting bier.
“Lo, there do I see my Mother.”
“Lo, there do I see my brothers and my sisters and the line of my people back to the beginning. They call to me, and bid me join them in Valhalla.”
That’s what it felt like to have the powers of Heaven called down and my spirit told to stay, it was not my time. Like it was all of them.