I've run into Nick, our new trumpet player, several times on deck 5 aft. He goes back there to smoke and enjoy the fresh air...

I was curious to know more about his brush with death, and how his life changed (or perhaps didn't change) after it. Were his values the same? His outlook? Had he reprioritized things?

There are similarities between his experience and mine, but also some differences. For example, he was told well before his operation that his chances for survival were rather slim. But he was also told that his chances for survival without the operation were nil. He had more time to contemplate his probable demise than I had.

With me things just happened – I didn't have time to prepare myself psychologically, or get my 'affairs in order' or anything like that. I didn't have the opportunity to talk with family or friends before going under the knife.

Although I didn't have much time to contemplate my death, the probability of it did occur to me in those moments when I was conscious in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. And even before that, when I first realized something was seriously amiss in my thorax. They weren't morbid thoughts, and I wasn't particularly fearful, even though my future looked dark. I had more or less resigned myself to just letting events unfold, realizing that my life was not mine to save.

A similarity, though, is that neither of us knew if we would 'come back' after losing consciousness before the operation. He just had more time to think about the implications of it.

(To this day I'm still surprised I made it, and I continue to wonder why, knowing only that there must be a reason.)

We then talked about how our lives changed when we did, indeed, return. And the first thing he said was how he now appreciates the 'little things'. That is, what most people consider to be the little things, the unimportant details. If you weren't born with this appreciation, acquiring it seems like a great gift. Suddenly life really is worth living.

He also intends to go ahead and pursue a dream of his. Just to go ahead and do it without regard for whether it will be a success, or what other people may think about it - two things that had stopped him in the past.

I asked him what the dream was.

“To open a floral art gallery,” he said, and looked at me to gauge my reaction. “You didn't laugh. Most people laugh when I tell them.”

It seems he has a passion for floral art of many types, from drawing and painting, to sculpture and glass, and fabric and paper. He mentioned a kind of Japanese graphic floral art that he's particularly fond of, but I can't remember what it's called.

I told him it sounded like a good idea, and that I thought it could succeed as a business.

From his brief description of what it would be like it was not hard to picture a space filled with interesting and beautiful floral art objects, and the play of light among the shapes and colours. A dream worth pursuing, if you ask me.

I did not doubt, as I listened to him talk about it, that it would work for him.

When at last he said he was grateful for what happened to him I knew we had something in common. Perhaps something rare. Where many might bemoan or resent the 'misfortune' of contracting Lyme's disease and having had to endure dangerous and frightening heart surgury, six months of rehabilitation, and an uncertain future, he is grateful.

This is a theme I'd like to return to in later posts...