M426 Dead Men Might Not Die

It was Saturday night September 12^, 2015 at 9:00 pm, my brother who I have not seen for ten years because he was homeless, sleeping in cardboard boxes and in the bushes, felt weak and his friend told him we had better go to the hospital, you are turning white.  Sitting in the emergency room waiting room my brother went lifeless from a massive heart attack.  The emergency room staff had came out, shook the lifeless body, and announced a code blue.  My brother had died in the emergency waiting room.

Within seconds, the staff had the paddles of life attached to a defibulation machine across his chest.  The first attempt to revive his heart failed, resetting for the second try, the monitor still flat lined, a second shock was applied with no result.  On the third attempt, his heart was restarted.

As soon as he was stabilized in the emergency room he was transported by a helicopter to a hospital better equipped to help heart attack victims were on a Saturday night at eleven PM one of the countries is leading cardiologists was in the hospital.

The story that I am about to tell is not for everyone because it is true.

After returning from a conference in Las Vegas Brother Ron was sick with the flu and had been for the past seven days.  My body started to ache and my internal temperature started to rise.

The same night my brother died, before I went to bed, wanting to sleep, I took a dose of flu medicine. I will never forget checking my watch, it was nine o’clock exactly because the medicine was supposed to work for four hours and I wanted to time it. 

Brother Ron normally does not dream and usually only gets a few hours sleep a night.  It seemed like right after I went to sleep I had a dream.  I tried to wake up, but was unable to break the dream until about four in the morning.

Most everyone already knows I am a surfer, in my dream for some reason I was up north looking for waves.  I stopped in an area that I was unfamiliar with and the only place to park was in a local residential area across from the main highway. I went to park my van and I found a spot that was tucked away on a cul-de-sac. I wanted to look at the surf before I took my board out to go in the water so I started walking toward the ocean.

As I was walking away from my van, I looked up the side of a sandy hill and saw my old sensei Hondo walking down the hill.

Hondo was one of the few men I have ever respected. Hondo was a humble man who was one of the most feared men in Vietnam; he was a Colonel and a South Vietnamese Army paratrooper.  I met Hondo in an Aikido dojo in Orange County.  He was also a Catholic Christian.

In my dream, I thought it was unusual that I would see him walking down the side of that hill because he had died two years earlier.

I went to his funeral where there were hundreds of men he served with along with his family and friends.  The large church was overflowing with people who loved and respected him.

Nonetheless, I was happy to see Hondo who had always liked me for some reason.  I asked him if he wanted me to teach him to surf, he agreed so we walked towards the ocean.  Upon getting to the ocean, we notice that the ocean was rough and the waves were big so we decided to walk a little further down the beach.

We walked for a long time and decided to go in the water.  The waves were still big and there was lots of debris coming into shore, nothing like I have ever seen before.

In my dream, we were almost hit by something so big it looked like a house floating in the water.  We got out of the water and started walking down the shore again. This time we were walking in and out of doorways and hallways, the doors were wooden and the hallways were painted dark flat colors in need of repainting and repair. A long time had passed so we decided to turn around and go back.  Walking back, the same way we came in and out of the doors and down the hallways.  People in the hallways were asking me how the waves were in Trestles.

Trestles is a surf spot in San Diego County, way down south in San Onofre State Beach, not up north and I couldn’t figure out why they were asked me about Trestles.  Trestles is a spot, with several breaks one is named Church, the surf spot is named after the Trestles Bridge, an old wooden bridge that surfers walk under to get to the surf.

Thinking back, I had my last board shaped and made in San Onofre by a world famous shaper who died of cancer a few years ago.

When I got back to the sand hill, where I found Hondo, Hondo asked me if I wanted to go see his house.  I agreed and walked up the hill to a little house with an attached garage the garage door was open.

I walked in Hondo’s garage and there were four men over six foot tall who had no shirts on or sleeveless shirts, there were bullet wounds all over their flesh.  I saw the scabs and scars from the bullet and knife entry and exit wounds left on their flesh.  Hondo had vanished as fast as he appeared and there I was, these were some of the toughest men that I had ever met.

They didn’t want to embarrass me because I consider myself tough, but next to these guys, I was a little old man. One of them asked me to work on his truck. They had compassion on me and did not want to embarrass me because of my apparent lack of martial skills.

It was getting late so I asked them if they would give me a ride to my van.  After driving back to the spot where I thought I parked I couldn’t find my van, we looked  the rest of my dream searching for that van that I could never did find and I finally woke up.

I was the only one alive in my whole dream.

I got up about 4:00 o’clock in the morning and I noticed my phone had a message in it.  It was from a person my brother knew on Facebook.  In the message, she asked me to give her a call that it was an emergency regarding Ed.

The time the message was sent was Saturday at about 11:14 p.m.  I did not want to disturb her so I sent her a text message asking about my brother.  Facebook was my only source of contact I had with my brother.  If it had not been for Facebook I would have never known anything, because my brother was homeless in the streets of Homealand.

The weird part of this is that my brother told me later that he went to the hospital at 9:00 pm.

About 11:30 the next day, Sunday, Ed’s Facebook friend called me. She told me that my brother has blue lined or technically died in the hospital last night but the staff was able to revive him. She gave me the name of a hospital.   I tried to call the hospital she left him in and the hospital operator told me that they had no record of him and did not admit him to the hospital. I called my daughter who is a nurse and she was able to ask the right questions, finding him in a Riverside hospital alive.

My wife and I immediately went down to see him. This part gets weird.  Upon arriving to the hospital, signing in and going up to the room in intensive care I found my brother’s room with the shades drawn right across from the nurses’ station in intensive care.  I thought I got there too late and that he had another heart attack and died.

When I went into the room to see my brother one last time before I left. There he was sitting up in bed starting to cry and said to me,” Ronnie I am so lonely”, He was overjoyed to see me we talked for a long time and I noticed how well he was for someone who had surgery less than 3 hours ago major surgery, and was bleeding to death. I noticed how white he seemed and with a black permanent ink mark on his right foot like one, they put on cadavers in the morgue.  He kept holding on to me saying,” I love you Ronnie”. I felt his strength in his hands not like someone who just got out of surgery but like someone who has super strength. He did not seem to be in pain at all and I have seen people who had similar operations and were not able to move for three to four weeks after the surgery. It was surreal like I was talking to a dead man.

The nurse was going to take him down for testing so after about three or four hours we decided to leave. When I got home I realized that all the men in my

Dream was dead except for me and I was lost.  Hondo found me in the dream went into hell with those four guys and brought my brother out for me to see before one last time.

Looking through my prideful eyes I see myself as the mediator, I see myself as the one who can help others. However, truly I need the help because truly I am lost.  I humbly ask that God forgive me for being lost, as I forgive myself. May God give me the strength and the courage to flee from the devil in order that I may find my way on the narrow path.

“And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And Cain said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?  “

But who has this world’s goods, and see his brother have need, and shut up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelled the love of God in him?

My brother’s death allowed me to realize my own awareness of being lost.

Moreover, yes I am my brother’s keeper, thanks be to God for reminding me.