There are moments in life that cannot be explained neatly.
They can only be remembered with reverence.
For me, one of those moments happened in November of 2020, during the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was on a ventilator, in a coma, fighting COVID and bilateral pneumonia.
I was not aware of time. I was not aware of space. I did not know what was happening around me.
But I believe God brought me somewhere my heart would recognize.
He brought me back to Grandma’s table.
When the Doctors Thought I Would Not Make It
On November 7, 2020, it was determined that I was not going to make it.
A priest was called.
I was given Last Rites and the Apostolic Pardon.
Everything the Church gives a soul preparing to meet God.
Those words are difficult to write, even now. They sound final. They sound like the last page of a story.
But God, in His mercy, was not finished writing.
That night, I was transferred by ambulance to another hospital as a last-chance effort to place me on ECMO.
Even then, ECMO would have given me less than a five percent chance of survival.
It was not a hopeful plan.
It was a last door.
The Ambulance Ride I Do Not Remember
On the rescue squad ride to the other hospital, I coded.
I was gone for five or six minutes.
I do not remember the ambulance. I do not remember the sirens. I do not remember the people working to save my life.
I have no way of knowing the exact timing of what I experienced, because I was in a coma. I did not even know I had coded.
But I believe it was during that time that God placed me somewhere familiar, somewhere safe, somewhere filled with love.
I was back at Grandma’s table.
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The Table Was There
I have no memory of that in the way we normally understand memory.
But something else happened.
I was back at the table.
Grandma’s table.
It was spring. The windows were open. The air moved gently through the house.
From outside, I could hear polka music drifting in from Grandpa’s garage.
Grandma sat across from me.
We had coffee.
And we talked.
Grandpa in the Garage
Through the open window, I could see him.
My Grandpa.
In the backyard garage.
Painting signs like he always did.
A brush in his hand.
Music playing loud enough to make the whole yard feel alive.
Every detail was right.
Every detail was true.
This was not a dream.
This was not confusion.
This was home.
The Child Running Between Worlds
And then there was a child.
A little girl.
A toddler.
Running back and forth between the garage and the kitchen.
Laughing.
Giggling.
Full of life.
At some point, you stop asking questions in moments like that.
You simply receive them.
Until suddenly, you understand.
Her name was Elizabeth.
My daughter.
The daughter we lost at birth two years earlier.
The Place My Heart Recognized
Grandma’s table was always the safest place in the world to me.
As a baby, I was loved there. As a little boy, I was fed there. As a teenager, I was listened to there. As an adult, I still felt like I belonged there.
It was not only a kitchen table.
It was a place of welcome.
A place where love had a chair pulled out and waiting.
And when my body was failing, when machines were breathing for me, when the world around me was full of fear and grief, I believe God brought me back to the place where I knew love most clearly.
Not because the table itself was heaven.
But because, for me, it had always been one of the places where heaven had quietly touched earth.
Mercy at the Edge of Death
I am careful with this story.
I do not pretend to understand everything that happened. I cannot prove the timing. I cannot explain the mystery.
But I can say this: I was dying, and I was not alone.
I had received the prayers of the Church. I had received Last Rites. I had received the Apostolic Pardon.
And then, in a moment I could not control, I was held by mercy.
That mercy did not feel abstract.
It felt personal.
It felt like being brought home.
“You Need to Go Now”
At some point in the conversation with Grandma, everything changed though.
Grandma stood up.
Suddenly.
Directly.
Urgently.
“C,” she said, the name she always called me.
“You need to go now. You’re going to be late for your meeting.”
I protested.
Of course I did.
No one ever wanted to leave that house.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.
But she insisted.
With a firmness I had never heard from her before.
“You need to leave right now.”
And then she said something I will never forget:
“Grandpa and I will take care of Elizabeth until you get back.”
The Walk Away
I stood up.
Walked out the back door.
Down the garden sidewalk.
Past the garage.
Grandpa looked up.
Paintbrush still in his hand.
He waved.
Just like always.
And then—
Everything went black.
Ten Days Later
I woke up ten days later.
Back in a hospital.
Back in a broken body.
Back in a world that had nearly lost me.
The months that followed were brutal.
Rehabilitation.
Weakness.
Learning to do simple things again.
Step by step.
Breath by breath.
But something had changed.
Not just physically.
But fundamentally.
The doctors were stunned.
Recovery didn’t make sense.
Survival didn’t make sense.
By every measurable standard, I should not have been there.
A Table Built by Love
In my earlier reflection, Grandma’s Table, I wrote about how that table was made by Grandpa’s hands.
That matters to me.
Because it means the table was not just where love happened. It was something love built.
Grandpa built it. Grandma filled it. The family gathered around it.
And somehow, when I was at the edge of death, God used tht image, those memories, that place, that love, as a kind of language my soul could still understand.
When I could not speak, God spoke in memory.
When I could not breathe, God breathed mercy.
When I could not find my way, God brought me back to the table.
What Do You Do With a Story Like This?
You can try to explain it.
You can reduce it.
You can dismiss it.
Or you can accept that some experiences don’t fit neatly into clinical categories.
I was given last rites.
I died.
And somewhere in that space between death and life—
I was brought back to a table.
A table built by my Grandpa.
Held together by love.
Filled with presence.
Guarded, somehow, by something beyond explanation.
Why I Believe I Was Sent Back
I still don’t fully know.
But I know this:
I was told to leave.
I was told it wasn’t time.
I was told my daughter was safe.
And I was sent back.
Not randomly.
Not accidentally.
I do not know why I survived when so many others did not.
That is one of the hardest parts of surviving something like this.
Survival is not superiority. It is not proof that one person was loved more than another.
It is mystery.
It is gift.
And gifts are meant to be received with humility.
I believe I was sent back for a reason. Maybe not for something grand or dramatic in the eyes of the world.
Maybe I was sent back to remember. To write. To tell the truth. To love better. To notice grace more carefully.
Maybe I was sent back to say that even at the edge of death, Christ is not absent.
He is there.
Closer than breath.
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The Table Still Remains
Grandma and Grandpa are gone now.
But the table remains.
It sits in my own kitchen today, a little piece of them still with me.
And after everything that happened in November of 2020, I cannot look at it as merely a piece of furniture.
It is a witness.
A witness to family. To memory. To mercy. To the strange and beautiful ways God reaches us.
When I was dying, I believe God took me to the safest place I knew.
And then, in mercy, He sent me back.
Back to breathe.
Back to remember.
Back to the table.
