As I Was Saying . . .

“The road ahead will be long and slow, requiring patience and perseverance.”

Those words, which appeared in my May 5 column — “My Heart Attack Has a Nickname” — were the last I wrote, until this column.

At the time, I had hoped that the stent implanted in my left anterior descending artery, the vessel that carries almost half the blood coursing through the body, would be the extent of any surgical intervention.

But the chest pains did not dissipate, so a stress test was ordered. Failing a stress test felt like failing physical education class.

Another procedure determined that, despite the stent functioning as intended, a section of the artery had become even more clogged.

So back into the hospital I went, for a surgeon-controlled coronary artery bypass graft (known by the acronym CABG and referred to as a “cabbage”).

The procedure was described as being “minimally invasive” — if you consider three pencil-sized holes and a four-inch slit cut into your chest minimal — compared with a traditional method that involves cutting through the sternum.

My description of the post-operative pain will be omitted because a child might read this and learn new words.

Now, here I am, more than two months after the April 21 heart attack, back at my desk, taking advantage of a window of energy.

I walk every day, as early in the morning as possible to avoid the heat and humidity. At this point, our neighbors’ two-year-old probably toddles faster, but I hope to eclipse his pace soon.

After today’s constitutional, I came home and napped for two hours. “Lassitude” has become one of my favorite words.

I am eager for the doctors to clear my return to swimming.

I am eating foods that I might not have eaten enough of previously, while avoiding former favorites, including certain Southern fare of the fried persuasion.

I stopped shaving before the June 8 surgery and now display a mangy-looking three-week growth.

It is not lost on me that, considering all of the above, I should be grateful to wake up and see the trees outside my bedroom window and hear the early morning chorus of birds. It should not take a heart attack or surgery to appreciate such things but some of us need the proverbial knock upside our heads.

While I am grateful for the surgeon’s skill and the nurses’ care, I could not get through this ordeal without the succor provided by my wife, who can add this to a tab that I cannot adequately pay.

The weeks that passed without writing a word were the longest pause I have taken in the eight-plus years that I have written freelance, for the AJT and other publications.

For now, I will resume writing this column and here I want to make mention of something that happened while hospitalized.

After visiting with me for a while one night, one of the nurses in the cardiac intensive care unit gave me a fist bump and told me: “Try to find yourself some grace.”

A couple of days later, when she was working on a different floor, she returned to check on me. She left me with another fist bump and again that advice.

I doubt that she knew I am Jewish and would think of “grace” as a Christian concept, an unmerited and unconditional gift of love, mercy, and forgiveness from G-d, for those who accept Jesus as messiah and savior.

But what, I wondered, does Judaism say about grace?

Sefaria, an online library of Jewish texts, offered this: “Grace is inherently divine and is a gift of G-d’s love. By extension, gracefulness, is the act of embracing G-d’s love of our imperfect selves. Grace is something granted to us, not as a reward for our right actions, but whenever we are able to receive G-d’s love – even when we fear we don’t quite deserve it.”

I consulted two rabbis, both of whom pointed me to the Hebrew word chen (pronounced with that guttural “ch”), the root of which can include meaning “favor, mercy, and graciousness.”

I decided to define grace as “living with gratitude and an effort to move through life with a greater sense of ease” (in other words, don’t sweat the small stuff).

One of the rabbis whom I have known for many years concurred with my understanding and suggested that I “recognize what a lucky s-o-b I am.”

Now that’s a definition I can understand.