When he heard the medical people say they were about to pull the plug on him, Joe stuck out his tongue

He told me the story over a late lunch at Sam and Lee's yesterday, where I did not even recognize him when I first stepped into the restaurant. Joe has always been slender, but the man I saw sitting at the table was more slender and a bit gaunt. Joe's hair had almost always been long but this man had short hair. I was puzzled when he waved and smiled at me, but I looked close and then recognized him. I returned his wave and smile, accepted his invitation and joined him at his table.

At this time last year I did not expect to ever see Joe again. I heard he had been medevaced to Anchorage after suffering a bad stroke, that his heart had stopped beating, he had been paralyzed on one side and was not expected to live. Joe now told me how, on his 11th "comatose" day in the hospital, he heard those attending him discussing the steps they were about to take to unplug him – something they planned to do very shortly. To their understanding, he was brain dead, but Joe heard them. He understood them. He coughed, or did something a brain dead man was not expected to do, something that surprised those about to pull the plug on him. One told Joe that if he could hear them to try to stick out his tongue. He stuck out his tongue. They did not pull the plug.

Nearly a year later, Joe came home to Barrow, where many people had been praying for him. He saw that Pepe's North of the Border Mexican Restaurant, the world-famous establishment founded and run by his mother, the legendary Fran Tate, where he had been employed at the time of his stroke, stood waiting for him. He was tired and soon went to bed in his house, where a window looked out onto Pepe's.

When he awoke in the morning, Joe looked out that window and was surprised to see the Wells Fargo Bank building. He had never been able to see this building from his house before. Then he realized Pepe's was not there to block the view. Five hours after Joe had returned home, the famous restaurant had caught fire and burned to the ground. Joe had been given doctor's orders not to go to work for awhile after he returned home, but he thought he would go help his mother with the less physically demanding tasks of running Pepe's. "I didn't go to work." Joe told me. Joe told me he suffered at least 45 strokes but I could see they did nothing to take away his sense of humor or his clarity of thought. He told me many stories about his ordeal and he told them well.

Sitting in the booth behind Joe is Glenda Lord and her daughter Thea of Kaktovik. They had planned to fly home yesterday but the big storm had flooded the Barter Island runway. "Flooding! In November!" Glenda mused.

Text added at 9:43 AM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 53 and counting.