I didn't die last night

I was tired yesterday, a combination of cozy fatigue after a long bike ride Saturday, sinus adjustments to another change in the weather, and no real urgency in anything on my to-do list. I felt disengaged from the world. I was a spectator at the farmer's market, though I'd gone there seeking the energy of people. 

It wasn't a bad day, just an odd one. But I wasn't fully present in my life, and I couldn't quite picture today or the rest of the week to come. That sort of feeling always makes me superstitious about whether I have a future. So when I discovered that my resting pulse was only 52, I thought about how difficult it had been to breathe deeply all day, and I concluded that my heart might be in trouble. 

My usual resting pulse is 60 and has been for years, long before I had open-heart surgery. 52 isn't far from that, and it's common for people who are very fit or athletic to have resting pulse rates lower than 60. I don't think of myself in that category, but I hadn't had any troubling symptoms. (The inability to breathe deeply felt more like needing to do yoga than anything else; today my resting pulse rate is 58.) Ordinarily I'd have noted the rate and gone on.

However, it was midnight when I took my pulse, after a day of disengagement, and in the dark of night, it's easy to jump to conclusions that look silly during the day. As I lay down to sleep, I thought it very likely that I would die before morning. 

Cats clearly don't equate sleeping with dying. (Nor do they
respect others' needs for sleep!) Sandy also never worried
about dying in her sleep, even when I was paranoid about
her seizures back in 2004. I played the role of the cat then,
waking her frequently due to my fears and hypervigilance.

I rarely think about dying when I go to bed at night. Only when I have a serious respiratory illness or fear I have a concussion does it usually occur to me. Last night, it didn't seem a melodramatic thought at all. It seemed appropriate, poetic. And, unexpectedly, I didn't want it. I want Sandy here; I don't want to join her. I haven't redone my legal documents yet and my mind quickly started cataloging all the ways in which I'd be leaving a mess for those who had to deal with my estate. I was concerned about the cats, as I didn't think anyone would know about my death until Tuesday evening. 

I was surprised by the strength of my will to live. The over-attention to physical symptoms is a classic sign of depression. But this desire to see the next day? That's a sign in the other direction. As I fell asleep, I asked Sandy to keep an eye on me and not to let me join her just yet.

Obviously, I woke up this morning. I don't feel refreshed, but that's largely due to a couple of obnoxious felines who kept me awake from 6:30 on in some misguided effort to get fed. I'd turned out the light at 12:40, so I was desperate for more sleep. I didn't get much. I finally gave in and rose at just about 9:00, and after eating their breakfast and running around the house a little more, they settled in on the bed by 10 and slept until 1:45. Sigh. I clearly should have just fed them at 6:30 and crawled back into bed. But I didn't. And I'm tired. And I have no good way of knowing if it's just sleep deprivation paired with sinus issues or if there is something wrong. I don't expect to die tonight, though. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow, and I can envision that all too clearly. And I have an echo scheduled for May 30, so if there is any reason for concern, we'll see it then.

As I drifted off last night, I thought about a line from an essay by Diane Ackerman in the book The Inevitable, which is a collection of works by contemporary authors about death. Ackerman said, "We all died last night, as we do every night. Waking is always a resurrection after what might have been death." At the time I read that, I thought it absurd: I don't think of death as related to sleep, but then I have always slept very lightly. This morning, though, the first words out of my mouth were, "So, I guess I didn't die last night."