Here's what happened...

Hmm,
Not much. In fact, looking back, I realize that I was knocked unconscious and that if I hadn't woke up, then that would have been it I suppose. Because it was lights out, and then it was lights back on. Then the suffering really kicked in.

The first thing I remember was the face-down almost fetal position I was in and the realization that my ribs were broken... and that I couldn't breathe well. Then the sudden realization that my collarbone, but for the thickness of my skin, was broken and jutting jaggedly out, but not through, my skin.

Then I remember Jaime asking me--yeah, I almost, in my biggest failure as a man and father, killed him too--"Are you all right?"
And me saying, for the first time ever to my little boy, "No. I'm not. Get help."

The boy had to continue on a trail he had never been down before in his life, in the woods, alone, to get me help and he did. This 10 year old boy was my hero. That hardly ever happens for me...

And while he was gone I tried to sit up, did so, and figured out that I had broken my neck and pulled all the muscles and ligaments that hold my head on straight so that I couldn't sit up without holding my now lumpy head in my hands...like The Thinker.

And gasping there, waiting for Jaime et al, I knew I was fucked.

When the other menfolk gathered around me to see the damage and ask, "Are you all right?" repeatedly, I told them my diagnosis, but like all men everywhere in the world, their, and my first instinct, was to get me on my feet. They dragged me up, and I willingly tried as well knowing if one can walk, one can make it. Well, my head rolled back and kinda lolled around uncontrollably as I stood and I jerked my hand out of Lowell's or Tay's hands and sat down again.

I knew I was fucked. I knew I needed real help. And I knew I needed to get out of there to a hospital. By now, also, real honest to god, broken bone pain started to set in as well. Real pain, not the fleeting wisp as when you stub your toe or hit your thumb with a hammer, but a serious, droning ache from all over that consumed every thought I had.

Well almost. I summoned a towel to wrap around my neck twice with a few twists at the end to immobilize my wobbly head. I got Tay and Lowell to pick me up and scoot me into the passenger side of my truck that I'd summoned as well. And then Tay drove my truck--did I mention we were so deep into the Virginia mountains that no one had a cellphone signal--out to a spot on the road that an ambulance could actually make it to.

Of course by then, in an attempt to salvage my manhood, we made the decision to drive to Martinsville, Va. ourselves with Lisa at the wheel. And that's what we did. After that, it was all pain. When we got to the hospital they came out with a wheel chair. By then I had stiffened up so badly that there was no way I could unball myself and get out of the truck--not to mention I had a broken neck. Sadly, when I got the help I really needed, I was strapped down to a back board and remained so for about 10 hours.

At this hospital, I got my first CT Scan ever! Really cool to see later--I have copies! But before I got a long ambulance ride back to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital (the worst fucking place in the world) we got treated to one of the funniest things that happened that day.

Now, for some reason, they had to email the CT Scan to another country for a "real" radiologist to examine, and we ended up waiting for hours for this ethereal doctor to check out my x-rays and get back to "my" doctor with the results. My doctor must have been blind or something.

Anyway, And the ER doctor who was "helping" me must have been in the hospital's international x-ray command center that was just a few yards down the hall when the results came because we heard him shout, "Oh my God! he's got a broken neck!" Also, we heard commotion as he loudly shared this information with anyone he could find...but the funny as hell thing was when he walked into my cubicle and calmly said, "Mr. Mothershead, it appears you have fractured your spine at C2 and there's not much we can do for you here..."

The whole time I was thinking...no shit.

So, nothing spiritual happened, no bright lights, no choirs, no life flashing before my eyes. All of which reinforced my feeling that there's nothing after this life, just as there was nothing before it. And I'm stoic. "Only by being prepared for your death can you ever truly live," is what Christopher Moore put in his book A Dirty job and I have done so since about the time I was eight years old.

I mean, like I've written before, It won't take ALS or cancer to "teach" me how to live. It makes me sick when i read or hear when folks say, "I didn't know how to live..." or "I didn't know what was precious..." until they're faced with death. My whole life I've known it's just down the road...

No, near death doesn't mean anything to me, just that I cheated it again...life changers are smaller, louder, and poop in their pants for their first two years.