The last first time of everything

In 2012 I said to one of my two sons-in-law, “I think I bought the last suit I’ll ever buy.” He looked at me sideways and said, “That’s morbid, you better not say that to your wife and daughters.” That was shortly after my third heart attack. I began to think of each of my daily routines as the last one of its kind. I also worried I might not survive a fourth heart attack.

Why this attack prompted my bleak premonition is still a mystery. After all, I had come through a quadruple bypass in 1996 and two other heart attacks afterwards. Yet this third one, probably the least physiologically damaging and luckiest one, kept gnawing at me.

Why the luckiest? That Sunday I had felt ill during our visit to The Discovery Museum in Bridgeport. My daughter insisted on driving me to St. Vincent’s Hospital. I had my heart attack there while my family and the medical staff looked on. The next day an intern said to me, “I’ve heard of stories like this. People saved by being rushed to hospitals before the actual heart attack. It was your guardian angel working.”

Several weeks after being discharged from the hospital I reluctantly bought the pinstriped gray suit. It was then I began experiencing the “last time syndrome.” Heart attacks often change people’s outlook and behavior. That third one may have altered mine for a few months.

For instance, I have long been tidiness challenged. No desk of mine or bedroom would ever be photographed for a Good Housekeeping magazine article. That is unless it was a photo entry in a most cluttered living space contest.

Then it was as if a bolt of fastidiousness struck me. Now I would leave my closet, night table and dresser in pristine orderliness. My reasoning simple. Some nights I felt out of sorts and thought I might not wake up the following morning. That would have been unfair to my wife, blessed with an unbelievable neatness penchant, for which I am grateful. I felt guilty thinking she might have to deal with my mess when she woke up and I did not.

Moreover, no longer on business trips would my hotel rooms look like disaster areas. It had not bothered me leaving drippy toothpaste tubes on desks or newspapers scattered throughout the rooms. All that stopped.

Overnight I became meticulous about my living space. Pants were hung. Toothpaste tubes, newspapers and every other movable personal item were placed in their rightful spots. Now it mattered that the hotel staff might need to break into my room on a morning that I did not wake up. I did not want anyone saying, this guy must have been a “sloppychondriac.”

Within a few months I

My fourth heart attack in June of 2013 was followed by a risky procedure that gave me hope of extending my life. So far it has.

returned to “my personal normal.” I went back to my untidy ways. That experience gave me an idea for an article to be called The Last Time of Everything. As a writer I keep adding titles to a list of possible future essays or mini-memoirs about incidents in my life. As I am generally a positive person writing about a negative topic, such as The Last Time of Everything would have been challenging.

In October of 2014 I knew I would never write an article with that title. Why? The Atlantic magazine ran a piece called “Why I hope to Die at 75,” well written and well thought out. The author said his premise drove his family crazy. As it did me. It reminded me of a Star Trek episode of a culture on another planet where individuals freely had their lives ended at a certain age.

I have since read that Atlantic piece a few times to remind me of why I want to live to the limits my natural life takes me to. My fourth heart attack in June of 2013 was followed by a risky procedure that gave me hope of extending my life. So far it has.

Last year I tried on that gray pinstriped suit. My wife said, “The pants are too baggy. Donate all your old suits to Goodwill and get yourself two new ones.” Which I did two weeks later.

On Sunday, July 15, 2018 in the early afternoon I returned from an extended business trip. Two of my three grandsons, ages 6 and almost 5 came over. They wanted to play Wiffle ball with me.

I had played individually with each of them. But not with the two together. As they swung bats, tossed balls and then ran after them, I thought to myself, “This is the first time of everything.”