The Long Wait

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
-Emily Dickinson

I encountered a man at a bus stop the other day. He ignited a conversation out of thin air and a desire to address somebody. The fellow's stories revolved mostly around his wife, a pleasant lady who was next to him in a wheelchair, and a job he had held long ago. We and other huddled passengers shivered together in the bus shelter as the wind whipped in, invaded our bones and appeared to slow down the hands on the clock tower that rose out of the rooftops and out of the November shadows.
To nobody in particular, the fellow told that he had, in his lifetime, been declared dead on three occasions. During the most recent experience- a duration of five minutes- his wife was informed of the tragedy.
This man had been dismissed from the world by the resigned wave of a doctor's hand. Momentarily he had been waved back in, by reason of a phenomenal alteration in his status, to tell later his meandering tales to random strangers, of which not one uttered another comment about the chill or the interminable wait for the bus.