David writing. Yes, David. I left the hospital on Saturday mid-day, having been walking without a walker up and down halls, and with the walker a bit. And eating, and having those bizarre tubes-in-chest removed. 

So that was Jan 11. My "silence" here since then has been a celebration of being in our own bed, our house, our dog, our refrigerator, our floors and ceiling. And having spent such loving real time with Anya, Anat, Avram in last hospital hours and then home. And having imbibed the love and energy, so sustained so non-stop from Dayle.  

Going back a few days, overlapping with the CaringBrige journal entries made during the surgery post-surgery hours/days. First thing I said, when I 'awoke' was, "Am I alive?" I wasn't quite conscious that, if I was in Olam-ha-ba (the World to Come), it was unlikely I'd be in a bed with Dayle, kids around, and machines. But the question was serious.
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And the question really meant, like Jacob waking from his vision-dream, an awareness that Yes, God is in THIS place. God is in every place where any of us is, at any moment.

I spent a couple days so absorbed in my immediate environment, noticing all of it, that nothing else mattered. A focus, virtually of an epiphany sort, that there's a higher or deeper importance which envelops, which encompasses, all the rest.

Prayer works. I don't know about you, but for me, awareness of your prayers, has been deeply moving. Before surgery, as I was wheeled to the operating room, and in recovering. Truly. Not said just-for-form.  I wondered in the few days before surgery whether or when I'd get panicked and scared and freaked out about what was about to happen. Instead, I was supremely calm, with love-people around me, or just being wheeled down the hall to the OR. All was well.

A couple verses from Psalms --- calligraphed one by Anya for me, and one by an artist we know whom Dayle had lovingly commissioned --- were on my lips as I disappeared from consciousness to healing. 

Blessed is God who creates all, sustains all, and gives us all Breath. 

Bless you all.

Thus ends, likely ends, the Caring Bridge updates.

Monday January 13.