He nearly died several times.

His wife had to call 911 because she found him barely breathing, drooling, and unresponsive on the saggy living room couch, his white undershirt tight against his swollen belly. Paramedics arrived and tested his nonexistent reflexes.

Next, doctors at the hospital worked for hours to stabilize him, shaking their heads and isolating his wife in a private waiting room as they worked. They placed him on a ventilator and asked his wife if he had a living will. She shook her head.

She was prepared to bury him, but the next morning, her husband sprang up in bed and—pointing vigorously at his ventilator tube—mimed its removal.

Doctors removed the tube from his mouth, deeming it a miracle. After a week in the hospital, where he was kept on oxygen 24/7, he was released to a rehabilitation center (nursing home), where he was given occupational and physical therapy and kept on oxygen day and night. He learned the difference between refillable portable oxygen tanks and compressors that plug into the wall, drawing oxygen from the air around us like the machines deep-sea divers use. He learned that chapstick is highly combustible around oxygen. His wife always wore chapstick, so no kissing.

While in the nursing home, he was struck on the head by a falling light fixture, raising an ugly bump on his skull before shattering on the floor and slashing his legs.

“It’s a miracle you survived that,” a nurse commented. “With your low platelet count, you could’ve bled to death. If the doctor had been here, I’m sure a CAT Scan would’ve been ordered.”

But the doctor never appeared in the nursing home, and after a week of bad food, he was sent home.

On the day he was sent home, they gave him a portable oxygen tank with a few hours of breathable air to tide him over until the home delivery service brought his long-term supply. His wife left him alone to run some necessary errands. As she drove home, her phone rang and he told her that the oxygen supplier had never arrived.

“I hate to complain,” he said, “but this oxygen tank is red-lining and I think I’m almost out of air.” His wife floored the gas in her car and raced to the nursing home, demanding an oxygen machine for her husband.

The nursing home social worker tried calling the oxygen supply company and was placed on hold for 25 minutes. Eventually, he found a compressor and loaded it into the wife’s car. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “They’re usually reliable.”

The wife got the compressor home just as her husband’s tank wheezed its last gasp, and the day was saved, as well as the husband.

“You know,” the wife asked the husband, “you’ve had some near-death experiences lately, and I was wondering if you saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel—I mean Heaven’s gate. Did anyone ask you to go toward the light?”

“No,” the husband said, savoring decent food at home, reassured by the regular clunk of his new oxygen compressor.

Crunching green grapes, bratwurst, and a dish of blaze-yellow pineapple—he’d had some odd food cravings, perhaps because of the lingering aftertaste of chemically-plastic tubes—he realized the wife had to make extra trips to the supermarket.

“I did have a strange dream while I was in the hospital on the ventilator,” he said. “I was in a big white room, and someone was asking me questions.”

“Saint Peter,” his wife said.

The husband chewed his bratwurst carefully as he was now overcautious about choking. “It wasn’t Saint Peter. It was a woman, and she looked like my third-grade teacher. She gave me a spelling test.”

“You’re kidding,” the wife laughed. “Did you pass?”

“They weren’t hard words.” He swallowed pineapple and sour grape together and grimaced. “I was always good at spelling.”

“What were some of the words?”

“I don’t remember,” he said, but as he overchewed his sausage, some of the words drifted back to him. It was hazy, but…

“If I died, would you miss me?” he suddenly asked his wife.

She leaned over and kissed his purplish hand, the fragile skin bruised by blood tests and IVs. “If I wanted to get rid of you, I‘ve had a few opportunities lately that I didn’t take. I admit I have selfish reasons for keeping you around… I don’t want to be alone—not at my age. But I never hesitated to think of that before I called 911. I chose to keep you alive, and that’s a good test of love, isn’t it?”

He thought of times he’d ignored his wife, or wished she were prettier, and felt ashamed. They hadn’t shared a bed in years, and now he must sleep sitting up, connected to a breathing machine. The plastic tubing in his nose was becoming part of his existence. Like wearing glasses, he rationalized. Nothing, really.

Those damn spelling words. He shook his head. A nurse told him that intubation damages short-term memory. He could remember things he regretted in the past, but not those damn spelling words.

Honesty? Priorities? Reconnect?

Every time one of the words came back to him, it slipped away again like a helium balloon disappearing through the ceiling. Damn. He must’ve been making faces with the effort of hanging onto the words, because his wife told him to relax and remember his blood pressure.

“Thank you for dinner,” he said. She looked surprisingly grateful. Did he neglect to thank her for things in the past? He couldn’t remember.

Coiling his oxygen hose around his arm, he practiced the paced breathing he’d learned in rehab.

Words do matter, he thought, and science and medicine. But love is what keeps you tied to the ground.

I can’t complain.