Do you celebrate the first anniversary of near death, and Open Heart Surgery? I don’t know, truly. It is not something I ever experience or imagined I would experience. Last June I went into the hospital for the first time in my life and on July 1, doctors stopped my heart, put my on life support machines, moved some veins and arteries around, open the pathways to life.

They say recovery takes a year, so I am now officially recovered.  If people ask me how I am, I am not sure what they are talking about. My cardiologists doesn’t even want to see me for another year. We respect one another, but we are not close, I always get the feeling he’s in a rush, and he probably is.  My nurse practitioner is a student in my writing class. She and I are close, we talk easily and honestly to one another.

Today is an emotional day for me, and for Maria. There is the open heart anniversary, and also the sale of the first Bedlam Farm, I go to say goodbye later this morning. It is not my farm any more. Comings and goings, new beginnings. We started talking about last July this morning, Maria told me something of how she felt when she saw me on life support and in the recovery room, how I looked, how it broke her heart to see me.

Today, we are so grateful for one another and for our love. We kept touching and hugging each other and crying all morning. It’s as if all this emotion was waiting for recovery, then began to come out. Sometimes it takes rituals like anniversaries to mark the passages of things. We had almost forgotten about it, yet seeing Maria’s face as she told me how it felt for her, well, it could have broken my heart all over again. I am so lucky to have found this good and loving person.

I did not know how I looked, half machine and half human, gasping for breath, eyes rolling body twitching. I imagine it was much worse for her than for me. And how could she love someone who was such a wreck so much? How could I be so fortunate?

Maria had withheld some of these feelings from me, she was crying this morning, and soon enough, I had withdrawn very deeply into myself. We are going to dinner tonight to celebrate. The surgery changed me and my life. The heart is the center of the human spirit in so many ways, it nourishes all of us. At the open house last year, I could barely walk into the pasture with Red, this year, I was moving about all day, feeling strong and sure.

I need to take a walk all around Bedlam Farm and let it go, it belongs to some good people who love it very much. A miracle unto itself.

And I will walk and walk today. My love of walking has been renewed, I no longer rationalize things with old people talk – a poison for any spirit. Old people talk is a killer, a toxin unto itself.

I feel strong and engaged, the heart fuels the soul. I have work to do. Yesterday, I spent most of the day on the phone with Karl Wolfmueller, an astonishingly dedicated and human and knowledgeable support tech at Apple. By evening, we had saved some of my photos, repaired the damage to my computer, reorganized and rebuilt my photo maintenance program. I still lost 50,000 pictures, but I told him I didn’t really care.  My computer had stopped crashing.

I don’t believe in looking back, a photographer can always take more good photographs. So I want to walk and think and reflect today, internalize all of this feeling. Karl told me he was surprised at my attitude, he said it was positive and forward-looking and he appreciated it. I appreciated his professionalism and concern as well.

I told him I had open heart surgery  last year – we had lots of time to fill between downloads, we had bonded – and open heart surgery, I told him,  taught me to consider what is a crisis and a tragedy and what isn’t. A therapist once told me I had lost perspective, open heart surgery is all about perspective, really. I have a choice, I can see my life as a series of struggle stories and laments, or I can move forward into life, appreciating what I have, living in gratitude and meaning. I reject fear and anger and panic and gloom. The world is what you make of it.

All around me, life is breaking out – puppies, pony’s, blog posts, photographs, friends, love, flowers, books. What is there in all of my life to complain about or regret?

Happy anniversary, heart, and here’s to many more.