Last Human Before The Stage

When I was a kid and listening to Doctor Demento broadcasts on Sunday evenings on the radio as I went to sleep, there was a Robert Klein bit where he talked about opening for Ritchie Havens at a rock concert. It's a pretty funny bit, or at least was in the late 70's, and one of the parts that has rattled around my head for lo these many years is the part where he is getting ready to stand behind the curtain and wait for his introduction, and on his way there he walks by the Last Human Being Before The Stage, which he knows because there is a sign saying Last Human Being Before The Stage.

Congratulations, you are the last human beings before the stage.

In 48 hours I will, in theory, be out of surgery and beginning the road to recovery. It is both a long and a short road, but it ends up at the same place I was at a year ago, heathy and happy. This time, I will be looking forward to the potential for a long life as well. Hard to be unhappy about the way this is turning out, even with the surgery.

This is largely a blog that you, the reader, have been invited to because we have a personal relationship of some sort. If I haven't had the opportunity to tell you, thank you for being a part of my life. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but it's been a fantastic life. So far or otherwise. It sure seems like my timing was good for when I was born (heart valve replacement surgery, for example), and it's generally been pretty good when it mattered for everything else. I've had a one in a million experience, and you've been a big part of making it as awesome as it's been. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

As I've come to learn to phrase it, I am about to embark on an endeavor with a statistically higher chance of the end than normal. This isn't to say that I am likely to die, just more likely than usual. So a good time to do things like say thank you, make sure things are where they should be, and relish the things that have worked out.

And, if I don't survive physically, know these two things:

1) Everything turns out like it's supposed to. My mother taught me that, and she was right. She was right about a lot.

2) For most of us, Glen Frey is still singing. It's much more important that he was here than that he's gone. Unless you hate the Eagles, in which case I don't know how we can have a conversation at all!

With that, it's time for me to hand the blog over to Mel, who will be letting people know how the surgery goes and the first couple of days of recovery. I expect I will be able to make my own drug-addled entries, which should be very entertaining for someone, on Friday at the latest. I will try to make weekly updates for the first couple of months.

No matter the outcome, see you on the other side. Now it's time to open the curtain and do the gig.