I Got My Halo

After I buried my wife, I was in a debilitating depression. I had never been depressed before. I would sit in my house without any lights, music, television, or sound. I was holding a 45-Judge revolver in my lap. I really wanted to end my life. I didn’t eat for several days. I could not shake this depression. I was feeling about one-tenth of what my wife must have experienced everyday. Now for the first time in my life, I knew what it felt like to be depressed and lonely. Until now, I didn’t understand why someone couldn’t shake off depression. I kept thinking, what purpose in life do I have now? I do believe it was by the grace of God that Satan was not able to consume me. I’m sure his thoughts were placed in my mind to end it all and stop this hand I’d been dealt. I had no one to turn to. My support system was gone. No one understood what I was going through, or so I thought. I went online several weeks later talking to broken people, trying to find ME again. A lot of women said, yes, let’s hook up. I said no, I’m not interested. I finally met someone who was looking for the same thing as I. My sweet lady, my wife, Darlene, whom I’m married too today. She’d lost her husband several years before I lost Gilda. She understood the loneliness, the pain of losing your best friend, your companion and your lover. No one knows until it happens to them. I was broken. A part of my heart was gone. Everyone can say, I would do this or that. We never really know what we’ll do until it happens to us. My wife mended my broken heart. She understood what it was like to be broken. We can give good advice to someone else about what to do. But when it happens to you, it finally hits home. I’m able to talk about my past marriage as she is able to talk about her’s. After a year, she and I were married. We attended church service as much as we could. I worked sixty to seventy hours a week and I didn’t have much time for God. I wasn’t where I should be with the Lord. I put my personal desires, again, above Christ and others. I had my first wake-up call but I didn’t get the message. I had a second knee replacement, July 5, 2016. Everything was going well, and about three weeks later my knee got infected. My temperature went to 104 degrees in a matter of hours. I believe I almost died that night because I was in and out of consciousness. I gave my soul to the Lord and repented again and again asking him to forgive me. I really believed I was close to dying. I was freezing one minute and burning up the next. Fluid leaked from my leg all night long. The next morning, my wife took me to the ER (emergency room). I was diagnosed with a staph infection and the doctor did emergency surgery. He removed the tissue surrounding the artificial knee, flushed the wound with copious amounts of saline, and left the wound open to heal. For six months I was on a strong antibiotic, Rifampin. I had a tube stuck in my chest for daily injections of medicine. I lost twenty pounds and was sick most of the time while on it. It was my first wake-up call and I didn’t listen to what was being told to me. “You need to turn away from your selfish pride”. Shortly after returning to work after six months, I changed jobs. I went to work at a metal refinery company. I am an Industrial Maintenance Mechanic. I performed preventative, and predictive maintenance of production equipment. I was self-sufficient and full of pride. I believed I was my own destiny which only I could control. I never gave the credit to whom I should have been giving it to all along, Jesus Christ. I believed in the spirit world, God and Satan. But I had too much pride. I remember when I was growing up. I would wait for the bus to stop at our house to pick us up to go to school. I would see this guy driving a green Porsche by my house on the way to work. That day I decided I would drive a Porsche like that. Then and only then, would I be happy. I’m the former owner of a new Porsche. The car was beautiful and very fast. Got lots of attention. Then l got a new Jaguar, and later on a new Nissan 370Z. I thought to myself, “look at me, look at what I have in my possession. I’m sure everyone will admire what I have and I’ll be the envy of the town”. What kind of stupid, envious person had I become? I guess by being poor growing up, it gave me the idea that if you have money, then you’re somebody. No wonder, I didn’t see what was coming. I was too self-absorbed in the world of money and possessions. The more I think about how my life had been, I could’ve been a better father to my children. It was all about me and how much money I could make. I never realized someone had been trying to get my attention all that time. Then it happened. I had a life changing accident.