10 things to do while having a heart attack:

1. Relax. (Panic depletes your oxygen supply.)
2. Remember life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.
3. Think how surprised all the people who accused you of not having one are going to be.
4. Call up your happiest memory, whether a desert sunset of shimmering turquoise skies shot with flickers of scorched gold, or how much you gypped the IRS out of.
5. Tell the rescue squad how angelic they look even without wings.
6. Be glad you have on clean underwear.
7. Congratulate yourself on convincing the Life Flight helicopter pilot not to cut your Nikita Koloff tee-shirt off.
8. Wish you had paid closer attention when the American Heart Association began preaching the cholesterol gospel.
9. Arrange for a sibling to feed your Siamese cats and to call your supervisor at work conveying profound regrets for unavoidable nonattendence.
10. Pray.

— Virginia Love Long, DUMC patient
Poetry in the Halls project, Cultural Services Program, DUMC

Life is simply a natural creation that has a beginning and an end. So like nature, it is impartial — generous, yet unforgiving. How, then, can we take it personally? “Life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.