Blessings

Greetings all! It's yet another week, another IndieInk, another chance to get challenged and spend the next few days reading awesome pieces from you IndieInkers!

This week my challenge is from Sir, you can find the response to his challenge: HERE. I challenged My Plaid Pants, you can find her response: HERE.

If you've read my previous challenge responses you'll know I love me some good old fiction. This week, as

per Sir's challenge I'm putting fiction to one side. The specifics to Sir's challenge are at the end of this post.

Also, killing two birds with one stone, I’m taking a prompt given to me by Destina Somerville (a Facebook friend of mine) and mixing it with IndieInk. Hopefully I’m able to please both Destina and Sir in one fell swoop.

Details of what Destina prompted are at the end of the post as well.

Ok here goes ...

Pic from: qwikstep.eu

Jim Rohn once said: “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

I lack interest in being motivated to be in the situations that form the basis of what I’m about to tell you, or the inclination to make them a habit, yet there are some things that are out of my hands.

Twenty one years ago I was this adventurous kid from the south east of London. School would be out for summer and I’d be the first knucklehead riding his bike down steep hills with no brakes or throwing myself downhill, all; my way of practicing to be a stuntman when I got older.

I had two older brothers and being the youngest I was often the focus of various physical experiments, like; how far can you bend an elbow in the other direction before it breaks or nope this isn’t high enough to jump off, go higher! Yep, those were the good old days when I would hit something and bounce off, up, or over without much damage.

I was into kung fu films back then. I thought I was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for the longest time or at least a standard ninja. Dad used to lay out newspapers on the floor and get me to walk on them without making a sound. It was hard but I cracked it one afternoon and tapped him on the back when he’d failed to turn around not hearing me coming. I was so good at moving silently on regular surfaces after that, it became quite annoying for anyone visiting the house, as:

1.      I was really good at hiding in plain sight and ...

2.      ... you never heard me coming,

3.      I would step/crawl out of a hiding place, unnoticed, and be in the middle of the room (don’t ask).

One evening my brother (the slightly older one, not the oldest) was play fighting with me after watching a really good Jackie Chan movie. Following the movie was the original version of The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe (yeah, I’m that old). We carried on with our screams of “Kee yah” “Hiiieeeyaah” for much of the evening, my oldest brother looking on rolling his eyes occasionally.

It all stopped rather abruptly.

I jumped in the air and did my impression of a Moon Kick (if you’ve ever played Street-Fighter as the Guile character you’d know how awesome that looks). Well, mine didn’t pan out so well. I ended up landing on my head. Straight on my head.

Dazed and disorientated my brothers helped me onto the sofa where I sat slumped to one side unable to get a grip on the given situation.

Knowing that something was really wrong, my brothers called my parents from upstairs who promptly called an ambulance. I only know this because I was told this. What I remember was; feeling like I was laid on a moving bed, something with wheels, feeling blasts of cool air then hearing voices and a loud piercing noise.

My heart stopped that evening en-route to hospital for several minutes. The paramedics fought to bring me back and won eventually.

I woke up two days later, groggy, mostly naked and sore. I chalked that up as something I didn’t need to do, ever again.

That was the closest I’ve been to the brilliant white glow, which isn’t actually brilliant or white. I didn’t see anything; I didn’t float above myself, have a brief conversation with Attila the Hun or discover the cure for cancer only to forget when I woke up. I was just cold and it was dark, kinda like sleeping outside and not dreaming all night.

That was the first and hopefully the last time the universe would play marbles with my destiny.

Nooope!

Fast forward to March 14^th 2011.

Now, as some people who are reading this already know as I’ve blogged about my brother (you know, the one that loved kung fu as much as I did) passing away that Monday evening. It was the kind of shock to the system that knocks the wind out of you, dusts you off then does it again for good measure.

My granny passed away in 2009 to cancer, my brother to lupus and multi-organ failure.

The whole evening I sat with him after getting to the ICU. He was still warm, I held him – tried to pass my body heat and keep him warm for as long as I could. I failed as much as I succeeded and before long the reality of what was happening began to sink in.

He lived thrived the way he wanted, which wasn’t always great but he was happiest when he accomplished something his body told or forced him not to do. He was one of those guys that pushed the envelope, got kicked in the nuts by life and counter attacked with a massive SCREW YOU and did what he was warned not to do anyway! He was a flippin’ hero.

I’ve watched as I got stronger over the years and he got weaker, sicker. We would joke about having a fight and who would win. He thought he could take me, I guess he wouldn’t have given up if he’d tried though.

As tough as I thought I was I would still break every now and then.

The last few months of 2010 I developed a hernia. It went undiagnosed for quite some time and when I finally got under the knife; my hernia had become three, two inguinal, one umbilical. I got cut two weeks after my brother died, but during the op I began to aspirate and couldn’t breathe independently. I had fluid on my lungs and the surgeons managed to stabilise and finish up. This gave my mum a terrible scare. In her mind she was trying to bury one son and now, nearly lose another.

I woke up with tubes down my nose and throat, hooked to monitors with a belly the size of a beach ball. My brothers funeral was the same week I was in hospital, so it became a race to get better. I left the ICU and made it to a regular ward with 24 hours to spare. I left the hospital on that Friday morning in April and went straight to the church. I didn't know which pain was worse and by then I didn't really care, I just needed to be there. I got through the day on a cocktail of willpower and brief moments alone, pausing to regain my composure.

I must be touched by some rare cosmic luck, blessed, or not done here yet because that’s twice now; two separate occasions where I’ve been spared.

Without evoking wrath upon myself I’ll say ... two people very close to me have been taken and I’m still here. The reasons are unclear, but when those reasons present themselves I’m sure I’ll find the capacity to understand why. For now I’m here, left with memories and photos, echoes of their voices in my head and a list of things I need to do to make them proud.

This is a culmination of Sir prompting me to: “Write about a time when you refused to let circumstances beyond your control get the best of you.” And Destina giving me a word via Facebook: Blessings.

“Just a note to any INKERS reading this – this will be my last entry into the II-challenge for a few weeks. I’ve already spoken to Maren about it (because that’s the polite thing to do) and she was like: “That’s cool, come back when you’re ready.” Probably not the exact words she used but something to that effect.

“I love the Indie Ink Challenge and although I’ve only been involved for three weeks it’s been the most exciting and creative three weeks I’ve had in the longest time. Thank you all for being AWESOME, sharing your stories, poems and truth. As with some of my blogs I’ll leave you with a song ...”