Speaker 1: People who died and came back share what they saw
Speaker 1: and felt. I had an experience. I don't ever share
Speaker 1: it because I try not to remember this period in
Speaker 1: my life, and because I hold this memory very sacred.
Speaker 1: This experience left a lasting impression on my life. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, after I drank a bottle of Everclear, followed
Speaker 1: by Bleach, Dreno, Ajax and roughly one fifty plus slash,
Speaker 1: benzodiazepines and anything else I could find. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to fully articulate my experience. It's so hard to
Speaker 1: find the right words for what I went through. There
Speaker 1: was no pain while consuming this concoction. I just felt
Speaker 1: like someone sucked all the air out of my chest
Speaker 1: and there was a bubble stuck in my throat. I
Speaker 1: had a friend that trusted their instinct and called emergency
Speaker 1: services on me. I had passed out and aspirated on
Speaker 1: my vomit, which burned through the carpet and the pad
Speaker 1: down to the subflooring. I remember paramedics pulling my tongue
Speaker 1: out of my mouth and hearing someone say she's not
Speaker 1: going to make it. It felt like I just fell asleep,
Speaker 1: but like the sleep where you know you're asleep. Initially,
Speaker 1: there was nothing. It was darkness. I felt separated from myself,
Speaker 1: like I wasn't in my physical form. It's hard to explain,
Speaker 1: like I was only my spirit without flesh and blood.
Speaker 1: I feel like I was almost teleported or beamed into
Speaker 1: a different dimension or world, and somehow I came to
Speaker 1: be in this beautiful meadow. The meadow was the most
Speaker 1: beautiful scene you could imagine. There was a little stream
Speaker 1: in the distance and a forest beyond it. I remember
Speaker 1: just enjoying this scene, this moment, and the beauty of
Speaker 1: it all. It sounds really fucking corny, but this meadow
Speaker 1: was so incredibly beautiful. All I felt was love and
Speaker 1: appreciation for everything. I also had a feeling that I
Speaker 1: wasn't alone, but it wasn't a bad feeling. I don't
Speaker 1: know how it appeared or where it came from, but
Speaker 1: there was a really beautiful orb that presented itself. Sounds cliche,
Speaker 1: I know this orb to me was love in its
Speaker 1: purest form. The orb was able to communicate with me telepathically.
Speaker 1: The conversation was something along the lines of me acknowledging
Speaker 1: the beauty that surrounded me and feeling like this is
Speaker 1: where I wanted to be. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: given a choice between staying there or going back to
Speaker 1: reality and back to my body. I really wanted to stay,
Speaker 1: but I thought of my siblings and how much damage
Speaker 1: my death would cause them. The moment I thought of
Speaker 1: my siblings, I felt like I was told, you made
Speaker 1: your choice. I felt like I was beamed right back
Speaker 1: to my body, which had been in the ICU in
Speaker 1: a medically induced coma. I really feel like I could
Speaker 1: have stayed. I really wanted to stay, and often feel
Speaker 1: a sort of homesickness and longing for that place. I
Speaker 1: can proudly say I'm glad I didn't stay. I will
Speaker 1: also add that was the last time I attempted to
Speaker 1: end my life. I woke up someplace that I didn't understand.
Speaker 1: It was just like this plane, no structures. It was
Speaker 1: just off to the horizon in every direction, and I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, this is weird. And there was a
Speaker 1: noise kind of like a hum in the background, like
Speaker 1: an irritating hum. I don't know something. Then I saw
Speaker 1: somebody walking up from a long way away. I thought
Speaker 1: I recognized him, but I wasn't sure, and it took
Speaker 1: quite a while for him to start getting up to me.
Speaker 1: And as he was coming, the hum, the noise, the scratchy,
Speaker 1: irritating hum, was getting a little bit louder all the time,
Speaker 1: and I realized that this hum was something unpleasant. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was, and I knew that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to know what it was. Then I recognized
Speaker 1: the person that was coming up with somebody. I knew
Speaker 1: he was my old boss at work that was always
Speaker 1: nice to me and looked out for me that died.
Speaker 1: As he walked by, he said casually, Oh, that's just Stephen,
Speaker 1: He's okay, and the noise went quiet, divided by twenty
Speaker 1: three minutes of work on me. If I did not
Speaker 1: have my heart attack in my clinic, I would not
Speaker 1: be here. I remember talking with one of my friends
Speaker 1: at a job we both had in an e R
Speaker 1: thirty five years ago, just bullshitting in a doorway. We
Speaker 1: looked in the room. There were twelve people in there
Speaker 1: working on me. I looked at him and told him
Speaker 1: I was going to see what was going on with
Speaker 1: the poor bastard in the bed. I walked around, everyone
Speaker 1: saw my mom and grandma, both deceased, sitting in front
Speaker 1: of the bed. As I walked around, I got to
Speaker 1: the other still of the bed, saw it was me.
Speaker 1: When a shit, guess I need to go back, leaned
Speaker 1: towards myself, had this very realistic dream and woke up
Speaker 1: a week later, thought I was in sixth grade for
Speaker 1: the next week, then slowly gained my bearings three years
Speaker 1: l eight or ninety eight percent rehabbed. They told my
Speaker 1: wife I was supposed to be a vegetable. I had
Speaker 1: a positive experience. But my favorite nd story is told
Speaker 1: on an episode of the podcast euphemat episode ten Lives.
Speaker 1: He's not religious, He's describing disconnection and consciousness in a
Speaker 1: fascinating and frightening way. As for me, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: of my age, but while a very young kid, I
Speaker 1: drowned in an apartment pool. There's a docuseries on Prime
Speaker 1: Death and Back a woman describes her experience drowning as
Speaker 1: a child. What she says is the closest I've ever
Speaker 1: heard to my own. I've never heard someone else talk
Speaker 1: about the light from below when they were drowning, but
Speaker 1: that's how it was for me too. I don't remember
Speaker 1: seeing my body, as she says, but I went from
Speaker 1: blackness to dark blues and progressively brighter light. I experienced
Speaker 1: an energetic warmth and comfort and unconditional love. Brilliant gold
Speaker 1: than white replaced the blue. I was met by a
Speaker 1: sense of an ethereal awareness, but my memory ends there.
Speaker 1: Apart from being revived, since love was as of then
Speaker 1: an unfamiliar experience in life. Returning came with very conflicting emotions.
Speaker 1: It wasn't too long after that when I impulsively attempted
Speaker 1: to jump out of a moving vehicle and off a
Speaker 1: cliff as a kid, with no sense of potential consequences,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go back to the peace in
Speaker 1: the other existence. I'm thankful to know that we go
Speaker 1: to a place of greater connection. The decades since and
Speaker 1: a few good trips have shown me that were never
Speaker 1: really separated from anything, despite the density between, we just
Speaker 1: shift our awareness and the weight we feel inside becomes light.
Speaker 1: I had a rather strange near death experience because I
Speaker 1: felt things in place of my son. Note that I
Speaker 1: don't believe in life after death or spirits at all,
Speaker 1: but I am convinced that the brain is an absolutely
Speaker 1: fascinating organ capable of very powerful dreams. At the maternity ward.
Speaker 1: My son, who was only a few days old, was
Speaker 1: very ill that night. I entrusted him to the midwives.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel strong enough to watch over him. I
Speaker 1: wanted to sleep a little. During the night, I felt
Speaker 1: an intense cold, so intense that I could only shake
Speaker 1: very heart, much more than a normal shiver from cold.
Speaker 1: I couldn't call for help or move. I was paralyzed.
Speaker 1: In fact, I thought death is coming for my son.
Speaker 1: If I let it pass, it will take him. I
Speaker 1: fought as hard as I could to stop the sensation.
Speaker 1: I really felt like I had fallen into a frozen lake.
Speaker 1: Then it passed and I fell back asleep. Some time later,
Speaker 1: a pediatrician woke me up to tell me that my
Speaker 1: son was in critical condition and that they had been
Speaker 1: trying to save him since the middle of the night
Speaker 1: without understanding what was happening. His body was giving up.
Speaker 1: He was transferred to the hospital. The emergency doctor told
Speaker 1: me later that she thought she wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: save him, and that he held on beyond all expectations.
Speaker 1: I also saw him in critical condition, and I still
Speaker 1: wonder how he could endure that. Apart from the harrowing situation.
Speaker 1: The episode that night made me think a lot. Did
Speaker 1: I hear something to inspire the dream? My room was
Speaker 1: across from the pediatrician's room. Anyway, I've never found any
Speaker 1: other testimonies like this. I died in my shower when
Speaker 1: I was in my early twenties while my ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: was in there with me. He reported. I collapsed, was
Speaker 1: not breathing, and was blue slash gray. He reported it
Speaker 1: was quite a while that I was gone to myself
Speaker 1: and the paramedics no pulse. What I remember is floating
Speaker 1: down a black tunnel with a large square light at
Speaker 1: the very far end of it. As I floated closer,
Speaker 1: I could see silhouettes of people on both sides of me.
Speaker 1: No facial features like eyes or faces, no voices, just
Speaker 1: dark silhouettes staring at me. While I floated past the
Speaker 1: closer I get to this light, I see it's a
Speaker 1: square window, and it's a gorgeous sunny day. On the
Speaker 1: opposite side of it, tall grass blowing around from the breeze,
Speaker 1: clear bluish skies with clouds. It was beautiful. But the
Speaker 1: closer I got I could see my dog that passed
Speaker 1: away running down the hill, stopping to look, and seeing me,
Speaker 1: he trotted closer to the window. As I was now
Speaker 1: at the end of this tunnel, it felt like all
Speaker 1: I had to do was climb over and into this
Speaker 1: gorgeous scenery, and I intended to do so. But he
Speaker 1: came up to me, tilted his head at me, and
Speaker 1: all I heard was not now. And that's when I
Speaker 1: was flying backwards through the tunnel, flying past the dark silhouettes,
Speaker 1: faster and faster, until I flew back into my body,
Speaker 1: leaned forward, and heavily vomited the contents of my stomach
Speaker 1: in the bath tub while my axe was blinking in bewilderment.
Speaker 1: He had called nine one one, and I was so
Speaker 1: weak while he tried to get me out of the
Speaker 1: tub to put clothes on. The entire time, apparently I
Speaker 1: was muttering my dog's name, asking where he was. My
Speaker 1: ex said, he's been gone for a long time. To
Speaker 1: this day, I know my dog, who was always considered
Speaker 1: my sole dog by family and friends, is the reason
Speaker 1: I didn't cross the barrier. It wasn't my time. But
Speaker 1: I still think about the gorgeous meadow from time to time,
Speaker 1: how peaceful and serene it seemed. The feeling it invoked death,
Speaker 1: seemed peaceful. I'm agnostic with my fair share of paranormal experiences,
Speaker 1: but this one still makes me think of all the
Speaker 1: possibilities of what's on the other side. I can share
Speaker 1: my experience. I was giving birth and it was going wrong.
Speaker 1: I was bleeding out and my baby was showing severe
Speaker 1: signs of fetal distress. I thought I was on a boat.
Speaker 1: It was on a quiet lake, and I was drifting
Speaker 1: further and further out into the silvery white. I could
Speaker 1: hear voices off in the distance, but only just It
Speaker 1: was very, very peaceful, and I was just drifting away
Speaker 1: until I heard my sister's voice saying, we're doing a cesarean.
Speaker 1: I didn't care and had no sense of it at all.
Speaker 1: Apparently the room was crowded full of people rushing about,
Speaker 1: but I honestly thought it was just me and my
Speaker 1: sister there. There was a happy outcome, my beautiful girl
Speaker 1: and I survived. But I have often thought since that
Speaker 1: I really hoped that all the women who died in
Speaker 1: childbirth back in the day, and there were so many,
Speaker 1: had an experience like mine. They just kept drifting off
Speaker 1: into the silver, calm and content not so much that
Speaker 1: I died, but I had a near death experience. When
Speaker 1: I was nineteen years old, I bought myself a motorcycle.
Speaker 1: I had been riding for about six months and felt
Speaker 1: pretty calm on it. This confidence is what almost killed
Speaker 1: me that day. It was a sunny day in September
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, and I had just gotten out
Speaker 1: of my college class around three pm. I put on
Speaker 1: my helmet, my gloves, and my backpack, and I thought
Speaker 1: to myself that I needed a haircut and started making
Speaker 1: my way towards the location, keeping in mind that getting
Speaker 1: on the freeway was going to be the quickest way there.
Speaker 1: Once I got on the freeway, it was pretty congested,
Speaker 1: but I decided I could zoom by the cars and
Speaker 1: get there in no time. As I saw my exit
Speaker 1: approaching and saw I could possibly pass by the car
Speaker 1: in front of me, I sped up and passed the
Speaker 1: car at a high rate of speed, making the exit.
Speaker 1: Thinking I could maneuver easily around the curved corner that
Speaker 1: was about to come, I pressed on my brakes and
Speaker 1: my motorcycle went into a high speed wobble. At this point,
Speaker 1: I got thrown off the bike and vaguely remember falling off.
Speaker 1: I must have hit my head pretty hard because I
Speaker 1: blacked out. When I came to I was sliding on
Speaker 1: my back, still at a high rate of speed on
Speaker 1: the freeway exit. This next part seemed like a movie,
Speaker 1: but everything around me seemed to be in slow motion.
Speaker 1: As I was sliding, I was passing cars left and right,
Speaker 1: and all I could hear was screeching from their tires.
Speaker 1: Once my body got more momentum, I rolled several times
Speaker 1: until I came to a complete stop. To my left
Speaker 1: there was just dirt and grass, and to my right
Speaker 1: were the cars on the freeway. As I lay on
Speaker 1: the asphalt looking at my injuries, something in me made
Speaker 1: me look left. As I did, I saw this blond lady,
Speaker 1: blue eyes, all white business attire walking toward me in
Speaker 1: the dirt slash grass area. Keep in mind there wasn't
Speaker 1: a car anywhere near her. It was just barren land.
Speaker 1: As she comes up to me, she asks me, were
Speaker 1: you the one that called? I start telling her that
Speaker 1: how could I have called? I was just involved in
Speaker 1: an accident. She then repeated again, were you the one
Speaker 1: that called? Before I could answer her, I heard a
Speaker 1: door slam and a man yelling are you all right?
Speaker 1: As I turned to my right to tell him I
Speaker 1: was okay, I quickly looked back to my left and
Speaker 1: that lady was gone. I only lasted three hours in
Speaker 1: the hospital with no broken bones, just roade rash. I
Speaker 1: believe that if I had told that lady that I
Speaker 1: did call, I would have died right there on that freeway.
Speaker 1: Not sure if this counts, but I died three times
Speaker 1: as a baby. I was born at one pound and
Speaker 1: nine ounces and my heart was just well, not winning
Speaker 1: any races. I spent my first four months in an
Speaker 1: incubator at the Ronald McDonald House, and I'd flatlined randomly
Speaker 1: out of the blue just to keep things interesting. At
Speaker 1: the hospital, the doctors had to resuscitate me like I
Speaker 1: was a broken phone on one percent. So yeah, just
Speaker 1: the perks of being an infant sized potato. People loved
Speaker 1: to ask did you see God? Did you see the light?
Speaker 1: Was there a tunnel? And my answer is always no.
Speaker 1: I was a literal baby for crying out loud. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know I was alive, let alone what heaven was.
Speaker 1: My whole existence was basically just me existing in a
Speaker 1: warm plastic box. Trying not to die. Heaven didn't make
Speaker 1: the cut on the Things to think about when you're
Speaker 1: one pound list. I didn't even know I had fingers
Speaker 1: until I was like three. So yeah, no great spiritual awakening,
Speaker 1: just a really bad heart and a lot of resuscitations. Yep.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, just a few days before Thanksgiving, I
Speaker 1: had a late night workout of my office Jim. Afterward,
Speaker 1: I decided to use the sauna and take a cold
Speaker 1: shower as usual to wake myself up before heading to
Speaker 1: my dad's cabin for a discussion. However, the moment I
Speaker 1: stepped into the sauna, I felt dizzy and fainted. As
Speaker 1: I fell, it felt like I was free falling at
Speaker 1: thousands of miles per hour. In that moment, my life
Speaker 1: flashed before my eyes and I became an observer of
Speaker 1: my past. I recalled several childhood accidents, including a near
Speaker 1: miss with boiling milk on the stove where I had
Speaker 1: tipped a pan and burned my left hand. I had
Speaker 1: to go to the hospital and spend hours alone until
Speaker 1: my mom arrived. Another memory was of falling down twenty
Speaker 1: four steep concrete stairs where I could clearly see my
Speaker 1: older sibling pushing me when I was just four or five.
Speaker 1: Although I never went to the hospital for that incident,
Speaker 1: I still bear scars from it. The smell of bring
Speaker 1: flowers from that hill remains vivid in my memory. During
Speaker 1: this experience in the sauna, I felt intense pain on
Speaker 1: the right side of my face, neck, shoulder, and hand
Speaker 1: as I instinctively protected myself. I had fallen near the
Speaker 1: steam pipe and the heater was set high. In that moment,
Speaker 1: I was ready to let go of life, but then
Speaker 1: I saw the faces of my beautiful wife and our
Speaker 1: six year old daughter. It sparked a fierce determination to
Speaker 1: fight and escape the sauna. I'm not sure how long
Speaker 1: I was unconscious, but when I came to, I had
Speaker 1: lost skin on the right side of my head, ear, neck, shoulder,
Speaker 1: and arm. I went into shock, but still planned to
Speaker 1: make the trip to the cabin. Feeling no pain. For
Speaker 1: three days, I resisted going to the hospital, still processing
Speaker 1: my childhood memories and feeling a desire to end at all. Eventually,
Speaker 1: after my wife's insistence, I went to the hospital. The
Speaker 1: experience of having the nurse scrub my wounds was unpleasant,
Speaker 1: but I didn't remember the pain It felt like reliving
Speaker 1: past trauma in a way that led to a cathartic release.
Speaker 1: My life changed drastically after the accident. I went from
Speaker 1: running a successful construction business earning three point five million
Speaker 1: dollars a year with over twenty employees, to staying home
Speaker 1: for two years, focusing on my health and spending time
Speaker 1: with my family. While I was physically present, I often
Speaker 1: felt emotionally distant. My family became my motivation to keep
Speaker 1: going even as I struggled with deep depression and isolation.
Speaker 1: Reflecting on my childhood trauma, I now understand that I
Speaker 1: had been sexually abused before those accidents, which I had
Speaker 1: suppressed for so long. This trauma affected my ability to
Speaker 1: connect with others, and I didn't engage in any relationships
Speaker 1: until I met my wife at age twenty. She is
Speaker 1: the only woman in my life. I watched friends share
Speaker 1: stories of their childhood abuse and their struggles with sexual desires,
Speaker 1: and I realized I might have followed a similar path
Speaker 1: if not for my experiences. In a way, life is
Speaker 1: unfolding as it should in the aftermath of the accident.
Speaker 1: I used marijuana as a crutch for a while, but
Speaker 1: I eventually moved past that. I found joy in doing
Speaker 1: labor work again, tapping into a suppressed part of myself. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: I had to write with my left hand while my
Speaker 1: right arm was bandaged, and now my left handed writing
Speaker 1: is beautiful, a stark contrast to my previous handwriting. This
Speaker 1: experience has brought me closer to spirituality and a belief
Speaker 1: in the afterlife and karma. I now believe that I
Speaker 1: don't need anything in life, as desire can be a sin.
Speaker 1: I understand that this mindset is essential to avoid being
Speaker 1: reincarnated and to find peace in my next life, whatever
Speaker 1: that may be. I feel complete and ready to leave
Speaker 1: this world without the need to relive this earthly existence.
Speaker 1: Each day is a gift from God, and I wake
Speaker 1: up prepared for whatever challenges the day may bring. I
Speaker 1: live now for my family and serve them wholeheartedly to
Speaker 1: the best of my ability. This was forty years ago,
Speaker 1: but we were poor, like dirt poor, no car, no money,
Speaker 1: extended family, all living in a tiny house. Poor. When
Speaker 1: I was ten, my kidneys exploded, water weight ballooned up
Speaker 1: like I ate the wrong piece of Wanka candy, and
Speaker 1: I had to be rushed to the hospital in the
Speaker 1: city an our car ride that we didn't have. I
Speaker 1: basically rolled around the back of a cargo until we
Speaker 1: got there. I spent weeks in the hospital, and my
Speaker 1: mother basically gave them permission to experiment on me new treatments,
Speaker 1: et cetera, in lieu of payments they probably knew they
Speaker 1: weren't ever going to get. This turned out to be good,
Speaker 1: because the treatment they gave me then is now the
Speaker 1: sop for my particular flavor of kidney explosion. But I
Speaker 1: spent weeks in the hospital, often going several days without
Speaker 1: a visitor or family member present because we were poor.
Speaker 1: No one had cars or money, and they couldn't take
Speaker 1: time from work. About three days in, I went into
Speaker 1: failure and had to be resuscitated. Now, obviously, at ten
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was dying, and I didn't find
Speaker 1: out until I was like fifteen or sixteen what happened.
Speaker 1: But this is what I remember. It was like I
Speaker 1: was standing to the side of myself. A dozen doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses rushed into the room, lifted me into a
Speaker 1: sitting position from lying, hooked me up to a million things,
Speaker 1: and it was chaos. I wasn't scared, just confused and
Speaker 1: trying to be good like a kid would. It was
Speaker 1: scary and frightening, and no one was talking to me,
Speaker 1: just around me as they flipped me or and did
Speaker 1: doctor stuff. Just when I felt myself about to cry,
Speaker 1: I noticed a woman in the doorway to my room.
Speaker 1: She was dressed in the adult sized version of the
Speaker 1: gown that I wore, and she was smiling. She was pretty,
Speaker 1: early thirties, with shoulder length brown curly hair, and she waved.
Speaker 1: I waved back. She smiled and told me that I
Speaker 1: was going to be okay, not to worry. The doctors
Speaker 1: were going to help, and if I wanted to, I
Speaker 1: should close my eyes and rest. She was an adult,
Speaker 1: so I did. When I woke up, I was alone
Speaker 1: in the room and a day had passed and my
Speaker 1: family was there. I couldn't talk with everything on my face,
Speaker 1: but when I finally could, I told them everything. They
Speaker 1: chalked it up to me being in toxic shock, confused, scared,
Speaker 1: and dreaming. But I kept asking about the woman because
Speaker 1: she felt like a mother, warm, soothing, calm, everything a
Speaker 1: motherly figure should be. But I got told that I
Speaker 1: was dreaming or it was another patient because of how
Speaker 1: she was dressed, so I chalked it up to that
Speaker 1: as a child. But another patient just hanging out in
Speaker 1: the doorway as I died and a dozen medical professionals
Speaker 1: buzzed around the room never made sense. Why could I
Speaker 1: hear her but not the doctors. Why did she never
Speaker 1: look at them, only me? Why would they let her
Speaker 1: stand there and watch? Then I found out that I
Speaker 1: had to be resuscitated that day, and it kind of clicked,
Speaker 1: and I had a million questions. Was it toxicity in
Speaker 1: the blood? Possibly? Was it a dream I did wake
Speaker 1: up a day later. Was it the body shutting everything
Speaker 1: off to give me a peaceful death that is what happens.
Speaker 1: Was it a kind but nosy patient who wanted to
Speaker 1: calm a dying scared kid could be Was it the
Speaker 1: ghost of a former patient? I can't say, but I
Speaker 1: do believe in spirits, ghosts, et cetera, and have seen
Speaker 1: things I can't explain or people I couldn't find. But
Speaker 1: I can still see her face even forty years later.
Speaker 1: I don't remember being brought back to life. I just
Speaker 1: remember feeling really at peace, knowing that I couldn't get
Speaker 1: to the air that I needed, and that I had
Speaker 1: no options left. I was really quite calm about it.
Speaker 1: I took a big breath of water and watch everything
Speaker 1: fade away. No panic, no struggle, just peacefulness. Everything faded
Speaker 1: to black, and that was pretty much it. I drowned
Speaker 1: when I was just about four years old. My mother
Speaker 1: found me floating in my grandparents pool, face down. She
Speaker 1: jumped in, dragged me out, checked for pulse, and started CPR.
Speaker 1: She was a nurse. I had no pulse and was
Speaker 1: turning blue. The only really bad thing that occurred was
Speaker 1: that my sternam broke while CPR was being administered, which
Speaker 1: is common when small children received CPR. So two days
Speaker 1: before my seventeenth birthday, my sister overdosed and killed herself.
Speaker 1: I was distraught, as anyone would be, and struggling to sleep.
Speaker 1: I had a bunk bed and slept on the bottom bunk.
Speaker 1: The first night of her suicide, I was emotional and restless,
Speaker 1: and I rolled over and looked at my chair and
Speaker 1: she was there. She was sitting on my chair with
Speaker 1: her head down, hair in front of her face, arms
Speaker 1: splayed on the arm rest, wearing some sort of gown.
Speaker 1: I froze and stared at her until the sun rose,
Speaker 1: and once the light made it into my room, poof
Speaker 1: she was going on. I don't know how to describe it.
Speaker 1: She just wasn't there anymore. I would have recognized her anywhere,
Speaker 1: so I was sure it was her. The next night,
Speaker 1: I slept on the top bunk, but I was scared
Speaker 1: and struggling to sleep. As I was still struggling to sleep,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure she wasn't in the
Speaker 1: chair again. So I peeked over the bed and she
Speaker 1: wasn't in the chair. She was splay out on the ground,
Speaker 1: hair in front of her face again looking up in
Speaker 1: the same gown. I watched her again until the sun rose,
Speaker 1: and just like that, she was gone. I don't know
Speaker 1: why she would just disappear. I blinked and she was gone.
Speaker 1: The third night, I was lying on the top bunk
Speaker 1: and too scared to look over the railing again to
Speaker 1: see if she was there, so I tried to sleep
Speaker 1: and finally did. My dream was strange, though I was
Speaker 1: in a doctor's office from the nineties. There were two
Speaker 1: rows of blue cushioned seats in the middle, with some
Speaker 1: on the opposite wall and some on the wall I
Speaker 1: was against. They had the round wooden arm rests and feet.
Speaker 1: The walls were white and plain and bare. There was
Speaker 1: only one door near the far right corner of the
Speaker 1: wall that was blue, that had a small window in
Speaker 1: it that shone the brightest, whitest light I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: There was a receptionist desk right next to it with
Speaker 1: the large glass windows that also had the same light
Speaker 1: shining through. But no one was there, just light. I
Speaker 1: looked across the room and saw a man sitting in
Speaker 1: a chair across the room. He hadn't been there before.
Speaker 1: He was wearing a medical gown, the one with the
Speaker 1: little blue and red triangle shapes. His head was shaved,
Speaker 1: but not bald. He was looking at the door. He
Speaker 1: slowly turned to look at me, and his irises were gold,
Speaker 1: not like shining brightly video game or cartoon gold, just
Speaker 1: normal iris brightness, but gold. He tilted his head like
Speaker 1: he was curious about me, and he said, pizza pressure,
Speaker 1: Why aren't you breathing with the calmest voice. I immediately
Speaker 1: took the biggest, deepest breath of my life and woke up.
Speaker 1: I guess I had stopped breathing in my sleep at
Speaker 1: some point. I'll never forget him, or the room or
Speaker 1: my sister those nights. I never saw my sister again
Speaker 1: after that. About fourteen years ago, I was in Mexico
Speaker 1: with my family, the first time all four of us
Speaker 1: had gone on a vacation together. On Christmas Day, my
Speaker 1: cousin comes and wakes me up and asks if I
Speaker 1: want to go up on the mountains with her ATVs.
Speaker 1: My family owns this local shop where they deliver water
Speaker 1: jugs milk cartons had set her up to the folks
Speaker 1: who live up there for an added fee. My mom
Speaker 1: was like, don't get on that. Foolishly, I said, I'm
Speaker 1: on vacation, first time on a manual ATV, so I
Speaker 1: took the ride up to get used to it. Long
Speaker 1: story short. On the way down, thought I was good,
Speaker 1: and my cousin said, let's race. Of course, I said, LFG.
Speaker 1: I accidentally geared up instead of down and ended up
Speaker 1: doing a wheelly of sorts off the cliff and fell
Speaker 1: about forty to fifty feet, broke my wrist, a bone
Speaker 1: popped out so my wrist thumb was actually touching my forearm,
Speaker 1: broke my elbow, and ultimately the ATV rolled onto my neck.
Speaker 1: I was in a coma for just under two weeks.
Speaker 1: But here's the strange part. I remember all of it everything.
Speaker 1: The best way to describe it is I was in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of my body, but watching it from the outside.
Speaker 1: I guess. When we get to the hospital, all I
Speaker 1: can see is the back of my family's heads and
Speaker 1: see my body on the hospital beds. There was this
Speaker 1: one guy who had been in a horse accident racing
Speaker 1: and fucked up his knees from the fall. When I
Speaker 1: came back, I asked my mom how the guy's surgery went,
Speaker 1: and she was shocked that I knew about that. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I died for sure, but I passed
Speaker 1: out while driving sober for an unknown reason. The last
Speaker 1: thing I remember is my head hitting the driver's side
Speaker 1: door window and screaming. Can still hear the scream. Then
Speaker 1: everything was black, and I heard a voice asking me
Speaker 1: if I wanted to stay or go, and in line
Speaker 1: with my personality, I kept responding in my head, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. It kept asking and I
Speaker 1: said stay. Woke up car fresh out of the ditch
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the road, ditch almost in
Speaker 1: line with the middle of the rear bumper car straddling
Speaker 1: it headlights on, in front of a large rock. Got
Speaker 1: out and checked the ditch, all torn up, about six
Speaker 1: to eight feet deep, with tire marks and ruts, not
Speaker 1: one dent or mud caked running board or will well.
Speaker 1: It was wild. I didn't tell anyone for a week.
Speaker 1: When I finally again on par with my ADHD decision making,
Speaker 1: LOLL decided to take my sister to the ditch so
Speaker 1: she could be a witness to the aftermath of whatever happened.
Speaker 1: I've only told about three people this story, and it
Speaker 1: was twenty years ago. So there I was sitting in
Speaker 1: the hospital waiting room. I was with my then fiance,
Speaker 1: her referred to as H. I was scheduled to get
Speaker 1: an MRI from my back due to a work injury.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there filling out paperwork. Next thing I know,
Speaker 1: H is shaking me and saying, wake up. I feel
Speaker 1: really nauseous, and we're both confused about how I just
Speaker 1: fell asleep. H was saying she was shaking me for
Speaker 1: a while. I asked the person at the counter for
Speaker 1: a sick bag because I feel like I'm going to vomit.
Speaker 1: The country people say, I can't do an MRI if
Speaker 1: I'm feeling sick. I'm upset but can't do anything. H says,
Speaker 1: no way, are we riding my moto home? Call Pops.
Speaker 1: He brings his truck and takes my bike head out
Speaker 1: of town to my friend. He will be called t one.
Speaker 1: Some people are swimming. I'm still dizzy, so I opt
Speaker 1: to just sit inside. I h D One and a
Speaker 1: few others are talking about earlier at the hospital. He
Speaker 1: is saying, how I just slumped over, like I fell
Speaker 1: asleep in a chair. T One goes pointing at me
Speaker 1: sort of like that. Because it happened again again. I
Speaker 1: wake up being violently shaken again. Ask for a trash
Speaker 1: can mention. I want to go home. T One flat
Speaker 1: out says no, She's taking you to the hospital. Something
Speaker 1: isn't right. Herp dirp over to the local er, get
Speaker 1: checked in, wait and get put in a room. La
Speaker 1: la lie in my head because I'm bored. Then I
Speaker 1: feel at this time I'm about to pass out right
Speaker 1: Then a nurse walks by. The Last thing I remember
Speaker 1: is I try to call out hey with a weak
Speaker 1: attempt at an arm wave to get her attention. Next
Speaker 1: thing I know I'm lying flat on the bed, hospital
Speaker 1: gown pulled open, big electric pads on my chest. The
Speaker 1: first thing I think is you're about to get FNZ apped.
Speaker 1: So I tell her I'm awake. I'm awake. They just
Speaker 1: look at me and deadpan say your heart stopping. The
Speaker 1: doctor will be in shortly. While waiting, I pass out
Speaker 1: die one more time, but I'm awake. As the nurses
Speaker 1: come in. This time, I'm hooked up to monitors and
Speaker 1: they say it was twelve seconds with no beat. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's not good. It was the shortest, So to this
Speaker 1: day I wonder what the longest was. It had to
Speaker 1: be over thirty seconds. It seems short but forever long
Speaker 1: at the same time. So the dr comes in and
Speaker 1: just says, mister l you're getting a pacemaker. I ask
Speaker 1: if we're going to talk options first. He's all, no,
Speaker 1: we will install a temporary one right now, and then
Speaker 1: you will have surgery tomorrow. Every time I passed out,
Speaker 1: it was just like falling asleep and not dreaming conscious
Speaker 1: one second, then not then awake again. I always joked
Speaker 1: about my bad luck, but I can't in this situation.
Speaker 1: My heart auto restarted, not once, but four times. This
Speaker 1: was about twelve years ago. New pacemaker installed just last year.
Speaker 1: See one just the other weekend, while helping run a
Speaker 1: moto dirt bike race, said an older dude was riding
Speaker 1: towards him. Then the throttle cut and the dude and
Speaker 1: the bike just fell over. The dude didn't brace for
Speaker 1: the fall, just sitting upright and he and the bike
Speaker 1: fell over. CPR by a few people four I think,
Speaker 1: he said, over an hour. The ambulance is over four
Speaker 1: hours away. They are in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 1: The dude never came back. His heart stopped and he died.
Speaker 1: I told T one that being around two people when
Speaker 1: their heart just stopped as a coincidence. But if it
Speaker 1: happens a third, I'm going to start asking questions. I
Speaker 1: found out months after I got my pacemaker that h
Speaker 1: refused to let one of my good friends in to
Speaker 1: visit me. T two slash f because of jealousy. He
Speaker 1: is rightfully so. Now my ex wife, I was hospitalized
Speaker 1: with acute pancreatitis, undiagnosed diabetes and drinking. I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital one hundred and fifty four days due to
Speaker 1: the swelling of my pancreas. My diaphragm was pushed up
Speaker 1: into my lungs, causing respiratory distress. Two weeks in I
Speaker 1: went into respiratory arrest. It was a dark, cloudy morning
Speaker 1: when it happened. I remember the nurse coming in and
Speaker 1: hitting the cold button, and then everything went gray and
Speaker 1: then black. Next thing I know, I am back in
Speaker 1: my room, but it was bright, like some one opened
Speaker 1: the curtains on a bright sunny morning. I heard footsteps
Speaker 1: clicking down the tile floor of the hospital, stop and
Speaker 1: enter my room. It was my grandmother that had passed
Speaker 1: away twenty eight years before. She was wearing the dress
Speaker 1: we buried her in, but she was how she looked
Speaker 1: when she was in her forties, and not the old
Speaker 1: woman I knew. She touched my forehead and said, your
Speaker 1: parents can't be here, so I will stay with you.
Speaker 1: My you're burning up. She went and soaked a cloth
Speaker 1: in cold water and placed it on my forehead. My
Speaker 1: other grandmother and my father had both passed away in
Speaker 1: the previous ten years, and I asked if they were there.
Speaker 1: She said, yes, but they can't be here right now.
Speaker 1: She was a staunch Irish Catholic lady and asked, have
Speaker 1: you made your confession. I told her I was truly
Speaker 1: sorry to any one I hurt during my life. My
Speaker 1: wife and I had a stillborn baby a few years before,
Speaker 1: and I asked if she was there. She said yes,
Speaker 1: and that she was beautiful and happy. I asked her
Speaker 1: if I was dead, and she said, I can't answer
Speaker 1: that now. We talked for what seemed like a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, like we were catching up from the last
Speaker 1: time we were together. In the end, she stood up
Speaker 1: and said, you are going to be fine, and it's
Speaker 1: supper time and I have to go back to my family.
Speaker 1: I then heard her shoes clicking on the floor as
Speaker 1: she left. The footsteps stopped and I heard John, you
Speaker 1: have to breathe. It was the er resuscitation specialist urging
Speaker 1: me to come back and start breathing. I didn't tell
Speaker 1: anyone about this for about six months. I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1: One night, lying in bed with my wife, I was
Speaker 1: unusually agitated. My wife wouldn't let it go until I
Speaker 1: told her what was bothering me. All she said was,
Speaker 1: you were with your grandmother. I firmly believe when you
Speaker 1: die and pass to the other life, a loved one
Speaker 1: who passed before you will come find you and guide
Speaker 1: you across. You can believe it or not. At first
Speaker 1: I didn't either. I brought back for me. It was
Speaker 1: my life that was saved. I was a child drowning
Speaker 1: in a swimming pool. To keep it brief, I experienced
Speaker 1: a lot of what I can to read after I
Speaker 1: grew up. I was too young to have ever heard
Speaker 1: of nds. This was the late sixties early seventies elementary school.
Speaker 1: A friend's house in her outdoor pool, and her grandmother
Speaker 1: had gone inside to answer a phone call. I couldn't
Speaker 1: swim and somehow ended up in the deep end, where
Speaker 1: I lost my grip on the side of the pool.
Speaker 1: I went under and stayed thrashing around, holding my breath,
Speaker 1: feeling like i'd burst. At one point I floated up
Speaker 1: out of my body and saw my body struggling in
Speaker 1: the water down below under me. I was so high
Speaker 1: over the trees I could see downtown building some distance away.
Speaker 1: I had a life review where I felt all the
Speaker 1: feelings of anyone I'd ever impacted, whether sadness, anger, or whatever.
Speaker 1: Everything was shown to me in a film strip in
Speaker 1: front of my eyes that moved right to left, one
Speaker 1: thing after another, only I was made to feel how
Speaker 1: I'd made others feel by my words or actions. Eventually
Speaker 1: I was in a tunnel, fastly moving up. It was iridescent,
Speaker 1: mainly white, but also made of all colors, and it
Speaker 1: seemed to go on forever. I got to the top,
Speaker 1: where it was blindingly bright. There was a presence that
Speaker 1: said I had to decide to live or die. I
Speaker 1: was taking too long to decide, and it said to hurry.
Speaker 1: I think it may have given me a time limit.
Speaker 1: I decided to live. Then immediately whatever this was had
Speaker 1: me move downward again real fast, and this is where
Speaker 1: I got scared I was going to fall. I remember
Speaker 1: trying to grab at the sides of this tunnel to
Speaker 1: see if I could slow my fall, but I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I just slipped down faster and further. The next thing
Speaker 1: I knew, my friend's grandmother had me by the scruff
Speaker 1: of my neck, pulling me up out of the water,
Speaker 1: then put me on the side of the pool on
Speaker 1: the cement. I lay there. She'd put me on the ground,
Speaker 1: so I was facing the pool, and the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought was, I will never go in water again.
Speaker 1: Lots of after effects from the experience I won't go into.
Speaker 1: If I had to guess now over half a century later,
Speaker 1: it's because something wanted to show me there was hope ahead,
Speaker 1: and that the abuse, which was so bad I wanted
Speaker 1: to die at such a young age, wasn't the end
Speaker 1: all and be all of life. If I had to
Speaker 1: do it all again, I'd not have come back, no way.
Speaker 1: It was all non judgmental about whatever I'd made people
Speaker 1: feel in my short life life. It was all loving,
Speaker 1: not a negative, malignant bone in whatever presence this was
Speaker 1: I'd faced. What survives memory two is the very very
Speaker 1: short fuse or distance between life and death. It's such
Speaker 1: a thin veil if we only knew how thin, and
Speaker 1: that fear is the main human condition, but ultimately there's
Speaker 1: absolutely zero reason for all that fear as an emotion
Speaker 1: each of us carries around. Drowned in the center of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, I was diving off our sailboat on a
Speaker 1: calm day, holding my breath, and when I rose to
Speaker 1: take a breath, I inhaled water from a wave. It
Speaker 1: had grown choppy. Suddenly, while I was below, passed out
Speaker 1: floated for a bit before I'm told they realized there
Speaker 1: was a problem que dramatics of yelling my name, slapping
Speaker 1: me on the back see et cetera. I woke up laughing.
Speaker 1: I remember not so much a tunnel as much as
Speaker 1: broad blackness everywhere except directly in front of me, which
Speaker 1: was bright yellow light. I moved maybe three steps forward,
Speaker 1: stepping forward into the light, and I was met with
Speaker 1: a crowd of people, none of whom I recognized, All
Speaker 1: turned away from me and focused on one person, one
Speaker 1: man in their presence. It felt very communal, like a
Speaker 1: family picnic when you're a child. I felt slash knew
Speaker 1: that even though I didn't recognize them, these people loved me,
Speaker 1: and they noticed me then and welcomed me happily, greeting
Speaker 1: me as if they knew me. And the man in
Speaker 1: their midst turned toward me and moved through the crowd
Speaker 1: to get to me and stretched out his hands to me,
Speaker 1: and I knew that while the others loved me, this
Speaker 1: man was in love with me. And then, just before
Speaker 1: I leapt into his arms, I heard my name being
Speaker 1: called from elsewhere above and all around loudly, and I
Speaker 1: recognized the voice of one of my friends who I
Speaker 1: was swimming with, and I was yanked back to my body.
Speaker 1: It definitely felt like back to my body, like I
Speaker 1: was arriving to a new place, which was my body,
Speaker 1: and I opened my eyes. I felt a flash of
Speaker 1: irritation at being pulled away, but they tell me I
Speaker 1: woke up laughing. I still love the water. I've only
Speaker 1: been truly unconscious once, and that was from accidentally taking
Speaker 1: two blood pressure pills. I got up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night to take a PI felt nauseous, and
Speaker 1: my last thought was I'm going to puke. What the fuck?
Speaker 1: Then I woke up with my wife patting my face.
Speaker 1: I was out for only about half a minute. On
Speaker 1: the way down, I apparently hit the countertop, but didn't
Speaker 1: feel a thing. I was simply not there. And this
Speaker 1: is different from both sleep and medical anesthesia. I was
Speaker 1: in oblivion for what could have been a few seconds
Speaker 1: or a few trillion years. It would make no difference whatsoever,
Speaker 1: because there was no meed there to experience anything in
Speaker 1: any way. When I came to, I felt like I
Speaker 1: was somehow reborn. I thought this was the oddest thing
Speaker 1: because it was the closest thing to a religious experience
Speaker 1: I've ever had. My father has an implanted pacemaker slash defibrillator.
Speaker 1: He had it for over a decade before it finally activated.
Speaker 1: He was sitting around with his brother and sisters having
Speaker 1: a wonderful evening when they say he simply went blank
Speaker 1: in the middle of a sentence. Then his arms lifted
Speaker 1: slightly three x until they were almost directly over his head,
Speaker 1: and he came back to life. He had died and
Speaker 1: the defibrillator brought him back. He mentioned the exact same
Speaker 1: feeling of being red, and I understood that to be
Speaker 1: the same thing that happened to me. So it's literally oblivion.
Speaker 1: Where you are, we are not. Where we are, you
Speaker 1: are not. It's that simple, and it gives me immense
Speaker 1: peace to know that when my time to live is over,
Speaker 1: however my end might come, there is a promise of
Speaker 1: truly being gone and not eternal suffering of hell fire
Speaker 1: as promised by the LCMS church I grew up in.
Speaker 1: I understand this might horrify some people, but for me
Speaker 1: it came as a huge relief to have touched death.