Well, Chief, July tried to kill me. Three times.

The first time it was cancer.

I lay those twenty July days of terror at the feet of Erica Podgorni as it was in the immediate wake of her failure to take me up on my offer, that I was convinced I had pancreatic cancer, which, not for nothing, is what killed my dad when he was my age.

The tumor’s malignant presence was sudden and acute and overwhelming, and I was sure this meant that the cancer was in its final stage, already metastasized. (I will also candidly admit that I briefly considered whether Erica had gotten her hands on a voodoo doll.)

For close to three weeks, all I was doing was thinking about how dead I was going to be in four to six months. Every waking second became a meditation on death. I went on a five-day water/black coffee/black tea fast.

Near-death experiences, whether physical or metaphysical, bring into sharp focus what matters. In July, I spoke many of my deepest truths to my children; my relationship with Rob deepened, something I’d not considered possible.

Anyone who’s come that close to the edge and spent some time with their mortality will tell you: it is a terrible and frightening experience to move through but once on the other side, the view’s different.

It was from this new (survivor?) vantage point that July came back and tried to kill me again.

I was in the woods, photographing a recently destroyed paper wasps’ nest, and the newly homeless wasps decided to attack me, perhaps believing that I’d been the one to ruin the home that they’d painstakingly taken all spring and most of the summer to build.

In my panicked attempt to defend myself, I threw my cellphone at them as I fell to the ground, and with at least an angry dozen wasps on me, I’m stung (or bitten, I’m not sure which) many times—more times than I’ve ever been stung (or bitten) at once.

Scrambling to my feet and swatting wasps away from the dog, I started to run away. (Thankfully, downhill.) Of course, the wasps are super mad now, and they fly after me. After four or five hundred feet of sprinting downhill, I’ve managed to lose them, and I stop and notice that I’m having the same sort of reaction to the wasps’ stings/bites as I have when I’ve been stung by bees, to whom I’m allergic and for which I’ve been prescribed an EpiPen, which is—at home: way on the other side of Oak Hill.

My first thought: do a quick Google search: “paper wasps sting or bite?” (Of course, my cellphone’s up the hill with the wasps.)

Next, the heat from the stings began to spread quickly across my skin and the sites themselves were beginning to swell and harden. And I think, “I’ll be dead before I reach my cellphone, and even if I made it back there, it’s being guarded by a swarm of vengeful, homeless wasps.”

So, I wait with my dog in the quiet of the woods to see if I’m going to stop breathing.

Unlike the prolonged, day-after-day dread that settled in my body when Erica disappointingly refused my offer (thereby requiring me to begin putting together my Complaint for Defamation, something I’d really, really wanted to avoid), the sensation I had—as my limbs began numbing up—was stunningly peaceful. My only concern was whether the dog would be able to find her way home alone.

Some time passes and when I know I’m not going into anaphylaxis shock, I hike back up the long hill I’d run down, tie the dog to a tree, and make a wide, flanking arc, approaching the wasps from behind to recover my cellphone, a task I managed quickly enough to avoid any further wasp interactions.

The last time July tried to kill me was in a motor vehicle accident, where I drove my husband’s car into the back of a Mazda because I slipped into a moment of paralytic shock, which, I think, might point to my having a touch of PTSD thanks to you, Chief.

Here’s what happened: I was driving home from an early morning trip to the grocery store and saw—for the very first time—Littleton Police Department’s brand-new, blacked-out, K-9, pick-up-truck cruiser. The thing looked like it belonged on a movie screen in some post-apocalyptic world with its matte finish and crash bar.

As I drove past the imposing truck—parked and idling in the Indian Hill driveway—I could hardly believe that my small town had decided that we needed a tactical, semi-militaristic vehicle (better suited for theaters of war or PSYOP campaigns) to patrol our town of ten thousand.

When the thought—“what the actual fuck?”—crossed my mind, I remembered that I was driving a car and when I looked back to the road, there was that Mazda—like eight feet away. I jammed on the brakes, but the forward momentum was too much.

It took the police officer inside that blacked-out truck/cruiser several long minutes to arrive “on scene” despite being only thirty feet away. Why? Because that officer decided to drive to the scene and needed to wait for the two cars behind me to get out of his way, which they of course were having a hard time doing because there was this two-car car accident blocking the road in front of them and, in the other lane, it was bumper-to-bumper morning traffic going in the other direction.

By the time LPD’s Brian Casey showed up, I was walking around, stunned, bruised, but not seriously hurt. I’d already spoken to the other driver and confirmed he was fine (only minimal damage was done to his bumper) and had already called home to ask Rob to come get me. When Casey spoke to me, he said, “Accident’s happen. So long as you’re not hurt, that’s all that matters.” My reply to him was “I was looking at you when this happened.” He repeated his so-long-as-you’re-not-hurt platitude as if he hadn’t heard what I’d just said.

July tried to kill me three times.

July failed, setting me on a course toward August and everything after,
Jkb