I Got Soul, but I’m Not a Soldier

21 grams

First, This article is about death and souls and such. I am very candid and blunt about death. Death is not something that has to be whispered about, hell the Victorians did photo shoots with their dead.

But, if this will offend you, and it might some people. This is your notice. If you think it might…skip it and go on and read an article some dude wrote about women because one probably ghosted him on Tinder.

Okay. Warning Done.

Go.

21 grams is what the soul of a human apparently weighs. 21 grams. Can the essence of what makes you human, human, have mass? I fully believe the soul exists. I have seen it. With my own eyes. I was however was missing the scales. As a paramedic, I was a reaper of sorts. Like I have to be there to make sure the person went in at least the right direction.

Exit Stage Left, Mr Jones.

My experience with an actual soul ended my career. It was my last call ever. He was 16. MVA, or motor vehicle accident. He was not drunk. He was wearing his seatbelt, airbags deployed. His drunk friend did survive. God really does love babies and drunks. This young man was bringing his friend home from a party. The passenger, also 16/17 years old, was responsible to call his friend to come pick his drunk ass up. Bravo for that, my love. You did the right thing, I promise, do not ever feel guilty, darling. You did not cause your friend’s death. That 100-year-old oak tree did.

From the POV of the paramedic, a car accident is in all honestly a crapshoot. I have witnessed people, uninjured, wandering around a car in several pieces, six feet up a tree. People that ten minutes prior to me getting out of my ambulance were in that car, or what was left of it. If it was after 2am, the person is 8 out of 10, no…it is 9.5 out of 10, is intoxicated. The .5 are people like the kid. I have also been the reaper of sorts at one where the car, being struck from behind, with very limited damage. Hit just right. Cous Contra Cous. Newton probably didn’t even think of that when he came up with his pesky laws. F=ma, or the second law, when there is a change in motion, the car suddenly stopping, the momentum of a body, the person, is equal in both magnitude and direction of the force imposed on it. Car stops, the head and neck are snapped back as the same rate of speed the vehicle was going, causing and/or both cervical spine injury or a coup contra coup brain injury. The brain is mushy, well not mushy, more like silicone. It can hold a shape, obviously, but still can get jolted and go back to the original state. Throw it against something, it will hold up better than jello. So, here is your silicone brain, neck whips, head goes back, so because of the wiggle room inside the skull, a hard object, the brain hits the back of the skull, then when head swings back, brain hits the front. This illustrates the First Law, simply put an object in motion will stay in motion unless something stops it. Brain hits the skull. The First law, pretty much is what keeps people like me in business. It’s never the fall, it’s the sudden stop at the end. I could probably make a case for the third also. But, I think you get the picture. Car gets struck, not even very hard really, but just right. Law One and Two= Reaper. So, I’m telling you, wear your seatbelt, but if it's your time, darling, it’s your time.

Exit Stage Left

Now, here comes the question. Are you this casual, almost morbidly humorous about death all the time. The answer is yes. I am. I do not fear her, I have seen her, met her, even spoken to her too many times to know that she is a stickler for timing. Second question, how have I spoken to her. No. I am not fucking crazy. She is not a person, hallucination, or something I created. She just is. It has been proven the last sense to go is hearing. I always, every single time, spoke to my dying patient. I explained everything I was doing from electrodes to IV to breathing tube (that one, it was always always an apology. Because I cannot, nor want to know what having a person look you in the eye and shove something through your vocal cords, dead or not is like) Not one of my patients died alone. I was always there, in their ear, making sure that even if death is waiting, I was going to be there the whole scary fucking ass time. Because I am absolutely positive, that though she is not to be feared, she is fucking scary. I always imagined her looking like Helena Bonham Carter, enchanting and beautiful, but slightly wicked. Anyway, back to what I was saying. Which was, 21 grams.

If the soul has mass, 21 grams, of it, does everyone have the same amount? Is everyone born with 21 grams, then what about the people we deem soulless? Psychopaths, narcissists, etc. Or can you have say, 29 grams, which I guess would be the opposite, your Empaths. Or does this weight change thought one’s life?

For me, it’s seems fluid thing, like The Ether in the Thor movie (yes, I put a Marvel reference in this article). It ebbs and flows in and out as needed. It’s the only way, I can see, how I was able to do my job as a medic and not go completely mad, just slightly. It’s the only way to explain how a medic does what a medic does. How else can you explain the pure joy of delivering a healthy baby or being able to sit with a 14-year-old and calmly explain that her heart is going too fast, I am going to have to give her a drug, that hits a reset button. Yes, turn it off and then turn it back on again works on the human heart too. Think about it… it's all electric impulses. One cardiac cell zaps the next and so on. It is the only organ that can still work without the action of the brain. It takes the heart 3–4 more minutes to stop after the brain. Because to it, the brain shot that last electric impulse down the spinal cord to the heart, so it doesn’t know to stop yet. There is still electricity there. So, there you have it, you can reset the heart and that is why. It’s a machine. Getting off topic, it happens. Then the next call is something made of screaming demonic nightmares and I had to turn off everything so I don’t react, I focus on what needs to be done, do my job, and then go eat. Explain it. Because I can’t. How with one patient you have to show compassion, empathy and care for them, explaining everything you are doing, calmly even if they are having the Mother of All Heart Attacks and you are absolutely screaming inside and the very next call turn all that shit off, shut all the lights out because you are now looking at a dead 12-year-old with a bullet wound in his head.

If the soul gives you, you. And you have to turn you off, do you still have 21 grams? Is it like a dimmer light switch, can you hang on a sec, I need to turn this soul down a bit? Or more, Here hold this, I have some shit to do and this is just going to weigh me down

Recently, I quite literally went back, in my mind to a call. I’d say the 2nd worst call I ever went on. That night a neighbors house went up in flames. Fire, the smell, the sounds, all of it will cause a dissuasive reaction. Because the 2nd worst call of my life as a paramedic was a huge fire that killed 9 Charleston Firefighters. So, I smelled it and was right back on savannah highway trying not to to lose it. I sat on my bed and went through 22 states of panic in about 45 seconds. Before that, for many many many years, I very rarely showed real emotion. I hid behind a diagnosis, a smile, an excuse. My heart has been cut open and sewn back together so many times, I have constant chest pain with EKG changes. I am telling no lies. I asked for too much and gave too little. Now, I am feeling everything, pain, anger, happinesss. I am trying to deal with them, feel them as they come. Sometimes though they come all at once, time. That little chest pain needs a Xanax to make it stop.

My sister said once, “Something is very wrong with Brennan”

A Gullah Root Doctor told me “You have a darkness in you, girl”

In the beginning of this article, I said I have seen it. I have watched it leave the body of a 16-year-old, who I was centimeters from, about to intubate him, and he left. I felt it. People will tell you things, try and convince you that was nothing. I had therapists tell me that was in my head, it was so traumatic that you had to make something up so you could deal.

No. It was very much real.

To close this, I believe that 16-year-old took some of my 21 grams. He needed it, or knew I needed him to… I don’t know for what. To make it so I didn’t feel everything, maybe? I think it was a kindness. Some may know, I was diagnosed with PTSD and Bipolar I. That was 2008. He was 2013, July 23. 0400EST. My worst years were to come. I had not had them yet. Now, something has shifted. Traumatic events tend to do that. There is this other shift. Optimism.

I hurt someone very close very badly, after this trauma too. I do not remember what it was because I was taking Diluidid, my former drug of choice, like they were tic tacs. We do not speak. It’s killing me. He couldn’t care less. My therapist said, my therapist who is a former Homicide DETECTIVE, not COP and is from “Castro’s Cuba” told me first thing. “He is dead to you, no longer exists, Poof. Gone. If he wants to talk to you he will. But, to you. Memories. Even with this, even with the fact I am in the same place physically, I am mentally in a different place, maybe not better, but different, even with absolutely nobody in this world that cares, I am optimistic. I think this is because that 16-year-old, gave me back what he took and there is a reason I think this, but this is not the place, I just know I have 21 grams again.