"We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to." - Graham Greene

I suspect most of us have had near death experiences – probably more than we are aware of.  In this post I don’t want to talk about the near death experiences that we anticipate, e.g. a major operation, -  but rather some event that life throws at us unanticipated.

My first near death experience I don’t remember but have been told about it.  I was born in the home of my mother’s aunt, Eunice.  A doctor was in attendance and Eunice acted as a practical nurse, but my birth was difficult.  I was born with my umbilical cord around my throat and was unresponsive at delivery.  My mother had post delivery hemorrhaging and the doctor couldn’t care for us both so laid me aside.  However my great-aunt Eunice picked me up, massaged me, and did something magical.  I coughed, spit, and started crying  (I’ve been crying ever since – perhaps silently).  The doctor was quite surprised and I survived.

The second time I survived a near death experience – that I know of - was in college.  I had to work my way through college and had a job as a co-op.  I helped with various research projects that the college was involved in.  One of these projects was the testing of missile warheads.  In order to provide some credibility to the purported effectiveness of a warhead, the test often used parts of obsolete aircraft mounted close to the warhead when it was detonated on the test stand so the resulting damage could be evaluated.

So one day, I was helping remove a wing from an old bomber.  The fuel tanks in the wing had supposedly been emptied and flushed.  I crawled into the wing with my supervisor who had the necessary torches, etc, to cut the spar caps. As I crawled, I saw beneath the plane’s wing, lying on the ground, a screwdriver.  We had been catching hell for losing tools, so I climbed back out of the wing, picked up the screwdriver and carried it to the truck.  When I reached the truck, the whole wing exploded.  My boss was blown 45 feet against a crane holding up the wing and was unconscious.  His welding helmet had collapsed against his face and he was drowning in his own blood.  He had used the torch to cut into a fuel tank that still had fuel.  My co-worker and I did what we could and he survived.  But what if I had not seen that screwdriver?  What cosmic force caused me to worry about the loss of a screwdriver?

My last event was when I was driving and approached a major 4 lane highway from a small side street during rush hour.  I stepped on the brake only to have it go all the way to the floor with no resistance at all.  I should’ve grabbed the hand brake, but I didn’t.  I steered the car to an embankment, which only resulted in flipping the car onto its roof and I went across the highway on my roof.  There were a lot of 18 wheelers on that road.  But I went all of the way across unmolested, hit the ditch on the other side which flipped the car back onto its wheels.  It wasn’t until I thought about the incident that I realized how lucky I was.

I’m convinced I’ve lived so I could write this blog.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch