22.10.21
Dear friends,
on Thursday, October 22nd, 2015 (afternoon Toronto time) I was reborn. On the baggage carousel at the Toronto airport, I suffered a cardiac arrest and was dead. A…
Miranda Garner, an Air Canada Rouge stewardess, who was standing next to me because she had been waiting at that baggage carousel for some time for her suitcase from Italy, took a defibrillator off the wall and brought me back to life. I woke up again in the ambulance – and learned of my miraculous rescue.
That was 6 years ago now, which I was allowed to live on until now.
Yes, it doesn’t take much: sometimes it’s a dream, an encounter, a cue, sometimes it’s „just“ a sudden cardiac arrest with a first awakening in an ambulance – and already you see things differently for the rest of your life or perceive them for the first time at all. All the big and small things that you had rushed past until that moment, stressed or unperceptive.
It is completely different, the life in your second chance – and this is still true after 6 years.
It gets a new „life form“, a different, new „experience form“, to breathe, to live anew. It doesn’t take much: just „taking the first steps again“ when you learn to walk again in the rehab you chose for yourself. The clouds in the sky in the parking lot of your hotel. Friends who care about you. And most of all, consciously holding Miranda, your lifesaver, for the first time. This is not much and yet it is infinitely much. And this is true the few times again and again when it was possible.
Then follows in the next year 2016 another life: the sale of the own company GUS Group, the own beloved startup. A form of purging!
And now healthwise: since 6 years every day a walk of at least 3km, an overall sustainable weight reduction to now 69 ,5 kg, but „thanks to almost 2 years Covid / pandemic now again a new restlessness, only do things that followed the AHA mandate or now follow the 2 / or 3 D rule, the partner and you-self for the sake of still mostly another life in self-chosen physical isolation , friends, travel, beloved restaurants so down that you almost even begin not to miss it all any more.
I never stop to thank our dearest friends Jasmin and Gerd (our neighbors), who take care of us physically and mentally.
Yes! and I will not forget, I can not forget why and who was „involved“ at that time.
Therefore, thanks again to all who stood by me at that time: Miranda, the guardian angel; Dr. Shafquat Ahmed, the gifted surgeon , who made me fit again in a four-hour surgery; Peter and Kori Seifert, new friends who took care of me during the six weeks of rehab; Mark Miller, an important Canadian friend, without whom I would not have survived the first night in the emergency room of the airport; Stephan Michel my counselor and friend for care and commitment before in the first days, taking care of Gisela – my wife – during the trip and the first days,
and especially Gisela, my wife, who always stood by me during the first six weeks of rehab and patiently guided me back into the new life, and whose survival in this current pandemic I am still very worried about now….
Yes, and for the (temporary) conclusion…
I simply follow Erich Maria Remarque, who once said: „The miracle, if you once experienced it, is never perfect. Only the memory makes it so…“
Yes, dear friends, there they were again – some memories of my „personal miracle“… and now the hope for one or some more miracles for all of us, when I think for example of a conceivable amicable end of the pandemic, or the possibility of a government formation with a team / a federal government capable / ready for courage, creativity, public spirit and responsibility – so more miracles enough, maybe still , that the environment recovers.
Let’s wait.
Incidentally, you dear ones let it also go well with all of you.