This is the story of the “Lost Sheep”, as it were. Let me explain this. I was born 77 years ago in Miami and at that time my mother had me baptized as a catholic. I didn’t have much of an experience growing up as a catholic. We only went to church on Easter Sundays up to the age of about 11.
A friend of my mother's was Catholic and convinced her that I should get more involved in the church and I did. I entered a Catholic school from 5th grade to 12th grade. However, for me personally, I felt that it was way too much structured religious education in that it was centered on grooming children to become nuns and priests, and I had no inclination to enter the priesthood.
On December 24th, 1961 during the Christmas break of my senior year, an auto accident happened that nearly killed me. Some of the events during those first few weeks/months of a long recovery period, for me anyway, were that of those events ended up turning me away from my faith and the catholic church, but somehow never from God.
The remarkable recovery from that accident could not have been without the help of God. I know this now but at that time I had put God/Church on hold in my life. Youth and bodybuilding were on my side no doubt in the healing process. However, when you’re so close to death that you could actually see yourself about to cross over from within a foggy haze, and the feeling of floating near the ceiling looking back at yourself in your hospital room, there was something very haunting going on. When the EMTs brought me into the hospital, I remembered a nurse in the emergency room talking to my parents on the day of the accident telling them to get to the hospital as quickly as possible as I was probably not going to recover from this accident. I was in and out mostly as the intense pain kept me quiet..or it was finally the pain shot that I kept asking for.
I’m not sure if it was an out-of-body experience that I felt later that first night as everything seemed as though I was in a deep fog, or perhaps it could have been the drugs, or it was my pulling out a tube from my nose. I didn't realize it went down into my stomach. I thought that it was only in my nose and it was burning and bothering me. Once I started to remove that tube there was no going back. Freaked out the on-duty nurse for sure.
A few days later, as I was told, I woke up to see a priest standing over me giving me the Last Rights. I told the priest that I really didn’t think I needed that, but the priest said to be calm my son; just then I passed out again. I felt myself floating from the ceiling and it felt like I was in a blue/gray fog. A few days later I had another similar experience…only this time there were doctors and nurses all around my bed and I could hear the doctor yell “Clear”. I saw my body jump violently off the bed. I had flatlined as a result of too much Demerol, a very strong painkiller that was used to keep me nearly comatose. This was New Year's Eve. A young nurse came in to give me the Demerol shot as her shift was ending, and before she was able to withdraw the needle I went into convolutions. She was supposed to get on a flight to New York to be with her boyfriend for New Year's. This was when all of the doctors and nurses came in with the crash cart to bring me back to life. This was also the second or third time during that first week that I saw myself nearly cross over the "Big Threshold". Once again, I felt myself floating near the ceiling and watching this event unfold in front of me through a gray/blue haze. This is now getting very Real and Erie, and it was freaking me out. This was not the common thing you hear people talk about going down a dark tunnel to a bright light and someone or something is telling you to go back. But let me tell you that seeing yourself lying in bed from above is very strange.
All of the doctors, especially the neurosurgeon and the orthopedic surgeon were very concerned with the amount of lower lumbar spine damage. They did not want me awake or to move around at all. There were over 23 broken bones and a few fractures, a severe hematoma on my left hip, and numerous internal soft tissue damage with internal organs shifted out of place. I guess the major concern was that 3 of my lumbar vertebrae and my spinal cord were severely shifted laterally and twisted. There were 20 broken bones in just the lower back which could have easily resulted in total paralysis from the waist down. Another miracle from heaven?? I guess I had my guardian angel working overtime the first week.
So to fast forward a bit, during the second week when the Demerol was stopped, and I was able to talk to the orthopedic surgeon, I was told that I probably wouldn’t be able to walk for at least 12 months…if I were to walk again at all. The second week I went into surgery for repair work on my right femur, which was completely broken in three places. Thankfully my orthopedic surgeon didn’t like using metal plates and screws. He chose instead to use heavy weights to pull the leg and the muscles and push the bones back into place using a fluoroscope, a continuous X-ray machine. The leg was in a weird splint with a steel pin through my knee with an overhead traction bar. What the orthopedic surgeon didn’t tell me was that I would be still strapped down to that wooden board.. the same board that was used when they scraped me up off the ground at the crash site. This was needed to keep me in-mobilized until the leg bones healed and then the doctors would be able to figure out what they were going to do about the broken back. This was initially to take about 8 weeks...I was healed enough in 4 weeks.
So the day came to go into surgery for the lower back. I was not told what the doctors were going to do to me. I woke up to see that I was now an albino turtle. There was a cast from my left leg at the knee up to my chest and back down to my right toe with a wooden bar between the knees to keep everything in place. After a week or so they sent me home to heal with X-rays taken every 2 weeks. The doctors were totally amazed at how quickly I was healing. I went back to the hospital to have the cast removed and measured for a leg and brace. I sat up in bed for the first time in two and a half months. The braces came and we suited up and with crutches and two large orderlies took my first step since the accident. After a few days of pogoing up and down the halls of the hospital, I was released to go home a few days before Easter... some 8 months earlier than what the doctors had initially told me. The orthopedic surgeon told me that had I had been a medium build person, I would have never lived through that accident. I guess that at 5ft. 9 inches and 210 lbs with legs like a raging bull, the chest of an elephant, and arms like small trees is what brought me through this, and the kind hand of God. This was His plan, not mine... I was just along for the ride.
Speaking of the crash site, when I was told what happened in that crash by the guys I was hunting with, that this was surely a miracle that happened that morning. That crash should have killed me outright from the impact alone. Had I not been of a large bone-structured body, played football, and all of the skin/scuba diving that I had done before, I would have/should have died that morning. To give some perspective of how horrific that crash was, the battery of the car that ran into the back of the car that I was getting out of was found in the middle of the highway some 300 feet from the site of the impact of that crash. Yep! That driver that caused this crash never knew my car was there…no brake squalling…no warning, just "BANG"! Had I heard brakes squalling, I maybe could have jumped out of the way. There were no glass windows left in either car. I was hit from the back as I was getting out of the car that I had hitchhiked in to get gas for our car. That impact, which was from the car I was getting out of, initially threw me backward into a tree and out ahead of that car. I felt the sensation of flying through the air and landed on the sloping canal bank facing back towards the highway. I looked up to see the entire underside of the car coming down on top of me. I remembered trying to roll out of the way. That car must have come down on top of me and spun me around 180 degrees. I watched that same car take 2 bounces and then fly threw the air and go violently into the water. I remember seeing the guy come up to the surface. When I tried to raise up on my elbows I felt tremendous pain in my lower back. I didn’t even know that my leg was underneath me. My hunting buddies came over and kept me down and calm. I passed out and woke up when I was being loaded into the ambulance. Another perspective of this crash was where the 2 vehicles had collided, the force was such that the frames of both vehicles dug a large hole through the asphalt and down below the road base... about 10 inches deep x 12 inches wide and 13 feet long. I was the worst of the 6 people in that crash and I don’t remember much of the long ride to the hospital some 75 miles away. You know, I have been told that God assigns each of us at the moment of conception, a guardian angel to watch over us until our death. I wasn’t going to let my guardian angel off that easy on this day. He or she was needed to work overtime... and they have done just that.
So my conversation with the orthopedic surgeon whet like ??... well, I won’t elaborate on my words but I did say to him that there was no way in hell that I was not going to walk again for at least a year. My orthopedic surgeon was totally amassed that my rehabilitation/healing process healed so quickly that it only took me less than 4 months. I was walking 3 days before Easter. Another miracle? Kinda reminds me of another miracle that happened nearly 2,000 years ago at about this same time.
So life moved forward and I was accepted by the draft board for military service in 1966. I was injured in basic training and subsequently honorably released from military duties that same year. I eventually got married and had a son in 1970. I never ever regretted either of those two blessed events, but I did regret not having been married in a Catholic Church, and I regretted never having my son baptized at birth, something I need to work on before I leave this life.
Fast forward again, after 49 years with my wife and my best friend in life, she was diagnosed in 2015 with stage four lung cancer and passed away in 2016. I found myself alone, and if it were not for our dog Suzie, who we adopted as a runaway from our local animal shelter, I would probably not be here today writing this story. Suzie was my little rock and the glue that held me together. I lost Suzie two years later to the same lung cancer, in the same right lung as my wife. I eventually had to let her cross over that Rainbow Bridge, which was every bit as devastating as the loss of my wife. How can our pets mean that much to us? So now I was nearly alone again. We had a cat and he too died of cancer a year later. You find yourself having no one or animal to talk to and believe me when I say we do talk to our animals. There is comfort in doing so. They give us comfort and joy that is never-ending.
I kept asking God…why not me?... why my wife?... she had more to give than I. What do you want me to do…just give me a sign and I will do it… or just let me go. So now 3 years later, in October of 2019, I made the decision to return to my faith and the Catholic Church. I had 4 Catholic churches in my general location and did a web search on all of them. After reading over the various priests' bios, I felt a very strong connection to one priest in particular at St. Charles Borromeo. I tried to set up an appointment to sit down with him to discuss my life’s events and how to return to my catholic faith. I was to leave on a camping trip in my 24-foot camping trailer in just a few days. However, since that strong connection was felt with that particular priest, I only wanted to sit down with him. I had sent him an email about the reason why I wanted to sit down with him and signed the email as “The Lost Sheep”, which is how this story began. His calendar was full and I was unable to see him until after I returned from my trip. I hadn’t sensed an urgency to go to confession until after I had left on this trip and the more I drove, that urgency became more real. I had over 60 years of sins to confess and I became very concerned that “what if”…I were to die in yet another auto accident. I again tried to find a church and a priest along the route of my trip but came up empty. This trip had taken me up through the Florida Panhandle, north to northern Alabama then east to northern Georgia, and eventually back south to home. I tried to read up and did many web searches about being able to confess directly to God and receive the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. It was an unusual circumstance but from what I found in my web searches was that it was acceptable as long as I saw a priest as soon as possible. With the number of auto accidents (5) that I had been in, I needed to do something quickly, as I had 2 days of steady driving to get back home. I did not want to go out in a blaze of non-glory in yet another auto accident without having gone to confession and receiving the Holy Eucharist.
After returning back home I went to the next Sunday Mass at St. Charles. As soon as I entered that (my) church and saw the interior architecture I knew immediately that this was going to be home and that I had to find a way to get permission to capture what I had seen into a panoramic image. I wanted to have a large print on canvas made and give it to my chosen priest. That event took place in June of the following year. I have met many very pleasant people over the years but none as much so as when I came home to St. Charles Borromeo and I feel very blessed for this new but obviously shorter chapter in my Life’s Events. The image below is a 180-degree panoramic sweep that was made from 14 separate vertical images, that when stitched together in Photoshop and with a few corrections yielded an image file capable of a ten-foot-long print. This image was printed six feet long by 2 feet high. This small photo below does no justice to what is hanging on a wall.
Over the last 46 years, I have been considered by many to be a very good nature and wildlife photographer. However, since the loss of my wife, I have lost my thirst for photography and my recent images on my last road trip showed that lack of the talent that I once had. I have tried numerous times to go out and photograph but my usual talents were missing in the images that I came back with.
I have managed 2 positive milestones in my life, both of which I am very proud of since the passing of my wife, whom I miss very much. The first was finding my way back to God, my Faith, and the Catholic Church, and the second was successfully making the St. Charles Church’s interior photo at Christmas and giving the print to my priest. This print is displayed in the administrative offices. My next milestone is to perhaps someday reshoot this same interior image as a non-seasonal theme and have another canvas print made for me. That one is hopefully still in the making.
So … the “Lost Sheep” is now known as “The Found Old Goat”, and that title will follow me to my final resting place with my wife by my side once again.
“The Old Goat Photographer”
Glorify God with your life
J. Michael
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