Food For The Way is a place for stories about memory, faith, family, suffering, music, immigrant roots, and the things that remain after life has broken open.
I write from the edge of several worlds: the hospital room and the kitchen table, Czech immigrant memory and American family life, old songs and old photographs, grief and grace, death and the strange mercy of being allowed to come back.
If you are new here, this page is the best place to begin.
Why Food For The Way Exists
In November of 2020, during the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was placed on a ventilator in a coma while fighting COVID and bilateral pneumonia. At one point, a priest was called. I received Last Rites and the Apostolic Pardon. During a last-chance ambulance transfer for possible ECMO treatment, I coded and was gone for several minutes.
I did not know any of that while it was happening.
But somewhere in that darkness, I believe God placed me back at my Grandma’s kitchen table — the safest, most loving place I had ever known.
That image has become one of the centerpieces of my writing. Because after nearly dying, I began to understand that the ordinary places we loved most may not have been ordinary at all. They may have been previews of mercy.
“Some stories refuse to die because they are carrying something eternal.”
What You’ll Find Here
This site gathers the stories I keep returning to:
- near-death, coma, ICU, and recovery reflections
- faith after suffering
- Grandma’s kitchen table and family memory
- Czech immigrant roots and South Omaha history
- music, poetry, and old photographs
- grief, hope, beauty, and the mystery of being spared
These are not abstract essays. They are attempts to understand what remains when everything else is stripped away.
Begin With These Reflections
Back at Grandma’s Table
A reflection on the kitchen table my grandfather made, the love my grandmother gave, and why that place still feels like home.
My Near-Death Story
The story of coding during an ambulance transfer, receiving Last Rites, and the strange mercy of returning to life.
The Writer Is the Nation
A reflection on Czech language, immigrant memory, and my great-grandfather Jan Švagera performing in a 1939 South Omaha Czech play.
The Main Story Threads
1. The Coma and the Return
I am writing about what happened not only while I was near death, but after I woke up — when survival itself felt overwhelming, when my body no longer worked, and when I had to learn how to live inside a life I did not recognize.
2. Grandma’s Table
Some places become sacraments of memory. Grandma’s kitchen table was that kind of place for me: safe, ordinary, holy, and filled with the kind of love that still speaks after death.
3. Czech Memory and Family History
My family’s Czech immigrant story continues to unfold through old newspaper clippings, South Omaha theaters, grocery stores, music, photographs, and the realization that language and memory may survive in us longer than we realize.
4. Music, Poetry, and Faith
Many of these reflections move through songs, poems, Scripture, and the strange way beauty helps us say what ordinary language cannot.
Stay Connected to These Stories
Receive reflections on memory, family, faith, suffering, music, and the moments that shape us forever.
Get 7 Reflections from the Edge of DeathA Note to New Readers
This is not a site about easy answers.
It is a place for readers who miss people they love, who carry old family stories, who have suffered deeply, who still believe beauty matters, and who suspect that God may be speaking through memory more often than we realize.
Thank you for being here.
