I had a request from a family member to post my father's words after he had his first heart attack. They are long, but very worth reading. They deal with his near death experience.
My Recent Thoughts of Life and Death and Living Again
February 2007
It seemed such a short time ago that I awoke at 5:15 AM with a crushing weight on my back and chest, like the weight of the world had finally landed there and decided to stay. Dec 17, 2005, a few days before Christmas. I was working as a press man , as I had done for so many years. For 24 years I had run my own business. My hope and dream was to build a family business where all of us could enjoy success and company and prosperity and a grand sense of accomplishment. As altruistic as that may sound, it was a great hope. I live on hope. I breath it and thrive on it. It keeps me alive. But, it wasn't to be. Years have taught me that heavy doses of reality can tip the scale. And yet, the business, for the most part, was good to my family. It put a roof over our heads and clothes on our back and food on the table. It was hard, sometimes grueling, depressing work. The long hours, the inks, the solvents, the paper dust. The continual struggle to keep things going, despite the pessimism of others. Despite my fading spirit. It is what I knew and knew well. I was a craftsman and a tradesman. I was skilled and I can still navigate myself around a press fairly well. But, my business grew tired, I grew tired. I worked an arrangement with a fellow owner of a printing business at Alphagraphics, a successful, thriving shop, and went to work for them.
It was trading one thing for another, so many responsibilities were lifted, others were added. I worked hard for the owner there, and he knew it. He counted on me a lot. I worked with another pressman there who at times was incredibly irresponsible. So, I often did his duties and mine. This was the case in December. I was working very long hours, oppressively so. Sometimes 36 hours at a time. Little did I know the toll it would take.
It was Friday, the 16th of December, 2005. Christmas was just a few days away. I was feeling ill at work, like the flu. I left at noon to go home and rest. I was scheduled to play piano at the Roof Restaurant that night. I went home and slept for 3 hours. Upon waking, I felt good enough to get up and go to my second job. I was ok, still a little nauseated, but I would be alright. I played 5 hours that night, feeling tired but I continued on. I drove home and without hesitation, climbed into bed. I was exhausted.
At 5:15 AM, I was awakened by a crushing pain in my chest. I suddenly sat up in the darkened room and then I darted into the bathroom to vomit. Nothing came up. Over and over again, and nothing was there. Sweat poured out of me, my garments soaked with sweat. The pain was something I had never felt. Slowly it dissipated. So much so that I laid back down and started to fall asleep. Julie lay still next to me, snoring softly unaware of my dilemma. I dozed 15 minutes later, the pain returned, only more forcefully, as though to crush me. I moaned, "Oh God something is really wrong. I think I am having a heart attack."
I shook Julie once, then twice, then I pounded on her leg. "Julie, call 911, I think I am having a heart attack". She was half asleep and not quite sure what was going on. I repeated my plea. Upon hearing it a second time, she bounded up and ran to the phone. The only phone working was in her mother's room down the hall. We were having a remodel done in the kitchen, and the main line had been knocked out.
The paramedics arrived quickly and rushed into the house. They were a great group, each one knowing their assignments. One put the portable EKG on me and started the strip. After about a minute, he turned to me and said "I think we're going to the hospital". They put me in an evac chair and out the door I went, down the driveway, into a waiting ambulance.
Once inside, they administered Nitroglycerin as we wended out way to Cottonwood Hospital. My pain was starting to leave me. It seemed odd that they didn't have the sirens on. I guess it was the time of day. I suppose the roads were clear. I drifted in and out of consciousness. I remember waking up in the ER with Julie by my side, holding my hand, attempting to maintain a brave composure.
"Julie," I said quietly, as I pulled her nearer to me, "I need you to hear me, this is important".
"What Bob?" she asked.
"I don't know where this is going," I said. "If something happens, please promise me you will do two things"
"What honey?"
"Please promise me you will seal me to you and that you will look after Phil".
"I promise," she said.
I knew I had scared her. I didn't mean to. I was scared as well. This was unlike any thing that I had ever experienced. Even though it may have appeared that I had a flair for the dramatic, this was no soap opera. It was the most real thing I had ever experienced. After all, those things were important to me. I felt I better state them, and I did.
It seemed just seconds after I had said those things that the most extraordinary things began to happen. How do we know when death is upon us? Does it come with trumpets or earth-shaking deafening sound? No. It comes quietly upon us, like a blanket warm and all encompassing, wrapping us as though our own mother is holding us in her arms.
One second I was lying on the ER Room table. The next, I felt and saw myself beginning to float away. What had been a bustling, noisy hospital room was now hushed. The volume was quickly turning down and the light in the room was getting brighter and brighter.
Far be it for us to cheat death when our time has come, or argue against it our reason it out, but I did all of those things.
As I felt and saw myself floating away, I attempted to hold on to the table beneath me to no avail. Matter had turned to spirit. I could not grasp the table, but my hands passed through it. It was futile. I was not afraid, I was almost gleeful and giddy, the joy I felt was so full, the warmth so penetrating. But, I argued against it. My faculties were extraordinarily sharp.
"No, wait, wait! This can't be happening. Not now, not yet," I thought, my mind alive and racing. While doing so, I continued to float away from the earthly scene. I was going somewhere, but where?
The light was incredibly bright by this time, the quiet so sublime, the warmth and the joy so filling. "How marvelous," I thought. Then, from the light, I heard an extraordinary voice. I saw no one, but I heard it as though the person was right beside me. He asked a perplexing question.
"Do you want to stay, or do you want to go?" I didn't need to know or ask what that meant. I knew what he was asking. Suddenly, all the joy, the sublime feeling of warmth and love, began to leave. I was facing the answer of my mortal lifetime. Like a darkened cloud, a tornado, a conduit of thought funneled through my mind.
I saw my family, torn in grief, my wife beyond emotional repair, my children without a father. I saw all the mistakes and sins and misdeeds, unrepented, deeds undone, a life unfinished. I thought of my music, my testimony, my relationship with others. I came to realize that really, when it came right down to it only two things really mattered. The relationship with my family and my relationship with God. I needed to work on both. I began to sob, sob uncontrollably. My body shaking under the weight of sadness.
"I can't go, I can't, not now." Then it was as though all went dark. All conscious though ceased.
I woke up a day and a half later at LDS hospital. Little did I know at that time, the seriousness of what had transpired. I had had a major heart attack. they had found two blockages in my heart.
The course of the next few days after the heart attack are unclear. I drifted in and out of consciousness, awakening on and off, unable to speak, only to write on a pad of paper my thoughts and desires, my questions and concerns. I had swelled up like a "pond toad" or perhaps like a "blow fish" due to an allergic reaction to a blood thinning medication, Heparin. I gained approximately 75 lbs in about 36 hours, all fluid. They were pumping units of blood into me, and I remember it coming out of me in whatever orifice was available, my eyes, my ears, my nose, my mouth. My throat was bleeding due to a traumatic incident with intubating me. I had gone into a seizure and the metal "horseshoe" device they use ripped into my throat. Along with that, I had aspirated blood and stomach contents into my lungs. I developed aspiration pneumonia. My voice has been permanently affected by the trauma and I am to this day. I can no longer sing like I used to.
Despite all of this, machines plugged into me, catheters in me, butterfly pumps pushing blood through me, I was alive, alive! I had been snatched from the jaws of death and I was allowed to stay, to tarry a bit longer with my family, my wife, my children, my grandchildren. I was truly blessed. I have learned some valuable lessons. Mostly about God's love, His mercy the gift of agency. That He gave a choice. A choice to go on in this mortal probation, to go on living, bot not merely existing, but living with a purpose. He gave me a chance to live again and make a difference. Whatever that would be, however I could do it. It was a gift. I knew it. I knew better than ever that life was precious. But I also knew, that it wouldn't be easy. I was basically returned to this broken body, brought from the brink, needing to start all from scratch. As I lie in my hospital bed, hearing the beeping of the monitors, the dripping of IVs, I thought, "I am too weak to move my pillow under my head. How possibly am I going to walk, to have the strength to go on?"
How easy it would have been to say to myself "This is too hard, this is impossible, I can never do this". And yet, days past, and as they did, slowly I felt strength returning, the prayers of so many offered in my behalf mattered so much, my own faith and prayers, my testimony grew. I often felt the presence of those who had gone before me, especially my Grandfather McCormick. One night as I lay in half sleep, I thought I saw him standing next to me, by my bedside. He was no there to "take me home" but more to reassure me that all would be well, and that the was looking after me. From that minute forward, I promised to do his Temple Work.
About the third day in ICU, a young man by the name of Roger, a recent graduate of Arizona State and a Physical Therapist, showed up at my door. "Mr. Gandy," he chirped "we're going to get you up and walking today".
That is where the journal entry ends. He never really took the time to write more about the experience. What he did write though is incredible to me. I had read it before, but when it was read at the funeral it struck me. It was strange in a way to hear his own words even though he was gone. It was almost as if he were telling us how he had gone, even though it was words of his first heart attack.
Most of my posts will not be of his death. I want to focus more on his life and how he lived it. It is hard that he is gone. I wish with all my heart that he was still here, but I can't bring him back. My only comfort is knowing that his spirit is still very much alive. I know I will see him again. I don't doubt it in any way. I know he can see us and each of his grandchildren. I know he is proud. I am grateful he took the time to express his feelings and that I have his words.
