I honestly don’t know how to tell you this story. If we were having coffee together I would say: So, I almost died the other day. Or: Did I tell you about how a ladder almost took me out on the way to Windsor Junction last week? And it is a story about almost dying. And it is definitely a story about a close encounter with a flying ladder. But if we were in person together I would tell you this story almost wryly, I would tell it to you with a sense of wonder, a sense of: This is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me. I would tell it a bit funny and a bit surface. Because the page is where I meet myself best, I’m writing about it—to share the story, and to unpack it a little for myself, too.
And that’s mainly because something happened the day that ladder almost took me out on the beautiful, winding, two-lane Cobequid Road—something happened that I don’t totally understand yet.
My therapist reframed it from a “near-death experience” to a “life-affirming experience.” My meditation teacher offers it was “an extremely wise moment.” My friend Waub, who was in…
