Last year about this time I wrote about something a friend told me I had to do. Normally, when someone tells me I must do something it is more than enough reason for me to simply not do it. But when a friend says something of importance, we are all best to take it under advisement. And I’m glad I did.

Here’s what my friend said to me: “You’ll never get another chance to write about your second anniversary in being alive after open-heart surgery. So, you should write about it.”

Given society’s penchant for making some things more important than others, I would have to say as those things go, second anniversaries fall under “not very important” for any event. And to be honest, that’s where I was with that anniversary related to my heart. I honestly don’t really know how (although here I am trying again) to put it into words, as most days I don’t even realize I had open-heart surgery in the same way many readers were surprised to learn Craig Hall actually has a heart.

I don’t know how to describe it. The whole event makes literally no sense to me. Especially when I go to the doctors and they tell me everything is going great. That, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt if I lost a few pounds. I mean, that part hurts a little more than the off-and-on aches I still get. But as many have said over the centuries, “Life goes on.” As does mine. And I suppose I have more than a speck of personal chagrin related to it.

And it’s more so for some reason as I come to my third anniversary of surviving open-heart surgery on June 30 of this year. Maybe that’s because this year my doc simply stated something along the lines of having a little ache here and there is a good tradeoff for someone who almost died three years ago. That one hit me.

Fact is, I should have died three years ago. I didn’t. Again, much to the chagrin of more than a few folks. I keep saying it, because I know it; I have the messages saved. As another matter of fact, some of these folks don’t care when I die, just that I do, having missed my chance in 2023. I have those saved as well.

But reflecting in my sixties is way different than reflecting in my forties, looking back at my teens and twenties and thirties, when I really should have died given the “adventures of Craigy.” Heck, I gave those years of my life plenty of opportunity to remove my opportunity of life. But those are the stories of (personal) lore, or chagrin, as I look back on things experienced and all life throws at you.

I guess what I’m rambling about is how my one-year anniversary differed from my two-year anniversary to today’s three-year anniversary, especially when I look at the reality I almost never experienced any of them. Cause being dead would have prevented it. Then again, rambling might be just as good a description of my life and the column word of the day simply because rambling about chagrin is much more fun than having chagrin on what I’m rambling about – although I do have that feeling after pressing send on many an occasion.

Like today. But I digress.

So, here are the differences on my “heart-aversaries.”

Year One. Literally happy to be alive after such a whirlwind. I mean, making an appointment and telling the doc I “just don’t feel right,” and then the blood test came back and I got the call to go to the ER “STAT,” and before you know it, I’m split down the sternum to get some new and right leg-replacement parts so the engine keeps humming. Yet, the only emotion I had was one of being happy (but not gratitude?) to be alive.

Year Two. It was more a feeling of none of this really happened. The biggest problem I had a year ago was feeling my Tell-Tale Heart beating out of the wall of my chest every time I went to bed. Yes, it is a “side effect” of one of the meds I’m on for life, but like Poe’s character, it was pretty much driving me insane along with the achiness side effects. Other than those, my life was as normal as pre-heart surgery. Even with the changes at the paper, I was running things as I had in the past decade from work to home to everything in life.

But like the brain I-gor grabbed from the morgue, that life was “Abby Normal.”

Year Three? I have most of the heartbeats under control now, except for the occasional flare-ups of PVCs I’ll have until the day I do die. Yes, I realize I joke about death all too casually, but what else does one do when one faces it; this time not in some “I’m never gonna die” youthful years? Oh, I still fear it a little bit, but not like I used to. After all, it’s the road we all will travel. I’m just on a much happier detour after my “recalculating” in the summer of 2023.

Back to this year’s anniversary. This is the year of, “Why am I here?” Probably the question I should have asked while I was cheating death all those decades ago. But if we’re all honest, there are very few who ask that when they should. All part of God’s humor and timing, I suppose. After all, He’s the one you gotta ask. If you’re only asking yourself, you’ve not only missed the point of life, but you also have the wrong God. Which leads to the other reason we never ask on time.

We don’t want to know the answer.

Well, like it or not, if you ask the real God (you know, the one of the Holy Bible), He will give you the honest, truthful answer. Honestly, I’m not sure how much I like the one He keeps giving me. How else can anyone explain why God at that exact moment put a doctor’s appointment in my life to get me to the ER (after I avoided it for over a week) and into the hands of the surgeons, so that I’m alive today to not only battle the changes of Fourth and Fifth streets, but also be around for the lunacy that is Tina Peters having her sentence commuted by Jared Polis, if not to put sunlight on the insanity of the folks running our city and state, along with my favorite, fun reminders of the crazy that is Washington D.C., all to my chagrin?

The key? Doing all this “no one puts a candle under a basket” stuff and staying in business at the same time, because none of these folks, left or right, want anyone to know what they are up to. Because that’s my unique talent: getting the same quality letters from the left and the right when it comes to the evil that exists in folks who have the belief they were put on this Earth to rule over the masses. Just so they know, I think they’re asking the wrong god, “Why am I here?”

Which is why I’ll keep writing about why they’re not. Year Four might be a doozy.

In Truth and freedom.

Craig Hall is owner and publisher of The Business Times. Reach him at 424-5133 or publisher@thebusinesstimes.com