Dear KOM-ers!
We’re so happy to feature a new book giveaway!
Please enjoy this excerpt from “Daylight Saving Time” by David Berner.
There are 2 ways to enter to win a FREE copy:
- Leave a comment below with your email address (so we can contact you)
- Email us at KOMWriting@gmail.com with the Subject: Daylight Saving Time giveaway entry
The winner will be randomly selected on 7/22/24 and announced on our website and social media. *
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When we are young, we think little about growing old. But time soon catches up with us: the first gray hair, a buckling knee, the purchase of reading glasses, or when a heart attack at the age of 56 rattles your world and reminds you that none of us gets out of here alive.
In this meditative and intimate personal narrative on the act of aging, David Berner discovers how to accept and revel in the present, when the days that remain are fewer than those that have passed, and offers a path for celebrating life’s final chapters.
Through the lessons of seasonal change, the natural world, literature and spirituality, Berner gives us a kind of instruction book on the art of growing older, challenging us to accept aging’s transformative powers. As a keen observer of the world, he forms a guiding philosophy on how to discover joy in the time we have left and nourishment in life’s remaining seasons.
Excerpt: Author’s Note
When I was a young man, it never occurred to me that anyone would grow old. Not my parents, my grandparents, and certainly not me. Time’s passing is not a thought for the mind of the innocent. Still, reality catches up with you. Maybe it is when the first gray hair arrives, or when a knee buckles, or with the purchase of a pair of reading glasses, or when you ask the waitress to repeat the dessert choices for a third time, or when you realize how much you hate driving at night, or when the number of pills you take doubles, or when you start going to bed at sunset. Or maybe, more profoundly, when you have a heart attack at the age of 56, the same age as your father’s nearly fatal attack.
With far fewer years in front than behind, I wonder about what it truly means to grow older. Don’t we all wonder? We’ve never passed this way before. Maybe one should consider it an adventure.
When I began writing these words, the hope was to try to understand the journey, the unfolding of a life, to document it in the very moments that it was happening, piece by piece, day to day. To help see it, I chose a period of the year that some call the season of light, the space between the shifting of time, between Standard Time and Daylight Saving. It is a man-made phenomenon, yes, but it is also a remarkable period in the yearly ritual of preserving illumination, the darkest time on our calendars; yet we bravely stretch toward the equinox, toward something brighter, something beyond.
Like aging itself, what ended up on these pages are the small increments of a path that is nearly unnoticeable, so much coming in little surprises and unforeseen awakenings, frightening experiences, moments of celebration and resignation, sorrow, and delight, mixing like the chemicals of a mad scientist. And on a Sunday in late March, a week into a new spring, a wet and heavy snow began to fall, a leftover from a misplaced winter, a season not yet willing to let go.
Prologue
Something was wrong. Still, I kept asking questions, taking notes. I was weak, sweating, my breathing labored. Desperate to sit down. But there was work to be done, a deadline, and so I kept at it.
There had been a shooting overnight in a residential neighborhood on Chicago’s Northside, a part of town where crime of any kind was unusual, and I was talking to those who lived on the street where a man had been shot. My editor called. He wanted something on the story for the top of the hour newscast on the radio station where I had been freelancing. After completing the interviews, I leaned against the outside of my car to write my report on my notepad and edit the recording. Heavy sweat rolled over my temples, and my chest began to cramp and tighten.
I sent the story to my editor and told him I needed to end my day. I was not well.
To drive myself home was my intention, but I could proceed only a few blocks at a time, pulling over to rest my head on the steering wheel. After a deep breath, one taken with alarming difficulty, I turned the car back on the road and knew then that I would not be going home.
In the hospital emergency room, two young doctors stood over me, both half my age. One with a clipboard, the other poking and prodding, listening to my chest through a stethoscope as I lie in bed.
“We think you’re having a heart attack,” he said, smiling. “But you came in at the right time. You’re a poster child for what you’re supposed to do.”
Oddly, the news did not alarm me. Maybe it was the doctor’s unexpected smile. Maybe I didn’t fully understand. Maybe the reality of a heart attack made no sense. It should have. My father suffered one that nearly killed him when he was my age, exactly my age. Fifty-six. When he first had pain in his chest, he dismissed it as simple indigestion caused by eating a breakfast sweet roll too quickly. In hours, he was in an operating room, being prepped for bypass surgery. Someone has a heart attack in the United States every 40 seconds. He had been one of them. And now, I was one of them, too.
As nurses wheeled my bed down the hall to the room where doctors would insert a stent in my heart, I telephoned my then girlfriend, telling her where I was and what was about to happen. I asked her not to worry and to call my sons. Let people know. I wanted them to know.
The surgeon asked if I wanted to watch.
“I can do that?” I asked.
Through the groin, a probe was inserted and snaked through my upper leg to my chest to my heart. On the equipment’s monitor I could see the gray shadow of my pumping muscle and the surgeon’s instrument.
“In a moment, you’re going to feel a lot better,” he said.
With uncanny precision, he cleared the plaque and inserted the stent. I could see it happening, all in shades of grays, as if watching one of the early video games one played from a primitive black-and-white electronic console.
“How’s that feel?” he asked.
Transformed and still alive.
Heart attacks are America’s number-one killer. They happen when blood flow to the heart is suddenly blocked, the heart is denied oxygen, and if not treated quickly, the heart muscle begins to die. With immediate treatment, you may be able to prevent or limit the damage. Most people who have one survive. I was lucky. No damage. I was given no restrictions. Just a few weeks of rest. But what had happened that day would stay with me for a long time.
About a month after surgery, during a follow-up with the doctor, I told him I had been out on my bike.
“Is it bad that I rode 12 miles the other day?” I asked.
“You did, what?”
Maybe a little early to do that, he said, hesitating slightly, seemingly to be sure he was addressing my question in a measured tone. But I felt fine, I told him. Just be careful, he said.
Living was what I was determined to do. Holding on tight to the years that remained was everything. Some would see the heart attack as a wake-up call, a reminder of the human will.
And it was, and it is for many who struggle moving on after a health scare. I didn’t initially find myself in that category. Instead, I carried on a bit too bravely, unknowingly attempting to ignore the fragility of life. What I needed more was phycological healing, the awakening to the clarity of life’s most precious purpose. I was detecting more lines on my face. More gray in the remaining hair. I would now be taking more medication. But I keep climbing the mountain, believing the view must get better with each step. What does one do with what you see from way up here? Do you simply take a photograph, or do you dive into the horizon with everything you’ve got?
I didn’t think there was any real choice.
* By entering this contest, you give consent to Kind Over Matter to use your name for promotional purposes on our website and on all social media.
NOTE: You can pre-order David’s book from CollectiveInk or on Amazon.
