A Near Death Experience: Brought to Life
It wasn't all bright lights and flashes of good memories. It wasn't like a Robin Williams movie with blurry moments and feel-good emotions washing over me. No one greeted me, I didn't feel much of anything, come to think of it, I guess you can't even call it a 'real' near death experience.
A real near death experience, NDE as the 'regs' call it, requires a medical professional to pronounce you clinically dead. You have to be on a gurney, with something beeping - and then not beeping - for a long enough time that your brain is deprived of oxygen and your pulse ceases to exist. Long enough to be declared by another person's blood-red vocal chords, 'yep, they're dead'.
Or maybe they have to say, "the time is 3:14"
"they've passed,"
"clinically, they are deceased."
I'm not sure if it matters how, when, in what dialect 'it' is said or if someone opens a window afterwards, mutters prayers before or places coins on your eyes during - that it happens any easier or brighter. In my case, death was a lot like living, kind of shitty.
I was playing outside with my childhood best-friend and I was alluring her with my ability to slide the heavy ice around the pool with the fishing net. The circular, frozen cap of ice would shift under my weight and begin to spin faster as I shoved the metal pole, bug net up, into the ice. 'Faster, faster,' and now not paying attention. The gently shaved ice in one particular spot gave way; statistics was giving me a lesson in luck and probability. I fell through in a perfect way, with a perfect angle, from the perfectly carved weak spot, and dove under the ice. My coveted white faux fur coat was now a death trap, soaking up every gallon of murky old pool water and anchoring me down. Gravity, the water filling my lungs, the gentle pulls downward, like lying into your bed at night were an overwhelming force. To try and swim, to bang against the ice from underneath, to see silhouettes of the mosquito and Helga-mite larvae swimming against the bubbles of your final gasps, surely those fuckers were inside every orface - and drowning seemed so simple. Staying alive, feeling my fingers, pushing out the horrific thoughts of how my dad would find me in his homemade family pool... it was exhausting.
Then it went black. Cold, still, sharp, stinging, no voices of advice or glows of someone to guide me. It was a vacant, pressing darkness pushing from all around. It was how I imagined space must feel when our bodies depressurize and we really do become star stuff. I was in a panic.
The next thing I could remember was being stripped down into the bathtub in my basement. I was no longer trapped by my cheap Kmart fur coat or my heavy rain boots and my eyes weren't looking at cracks in the underside of ice. I was home, in a bath of hot water, people crying, my body naked and cold - hot - cold, unsure and couching up bugs. Dripping pool water from my mouth, down into my bath water had worms. I panicked.
The day didn't bring clarity or guidance, but then again I didn't have someone declare me clinically dead either.
More stories here.
A real near death experience, NDE as the 'regs' call it, requires a medical professional to pronounce you clinically dead. You have to be on a gurney, with something beeping - and then not beeping - for a long enough time that your brain is deprived of oxygen and your pulse ceases to exist. Long enough to be declared by another person's blood-red vocal chords, 'yep, they're dead'.
Or maybe they have to say, "the time is 3:14"
"they've passed,"
"clinically, they are deceased."
I'm not sure if it matters how, when, in what dialect 'it' is said or if someone opens a window afterwards, mutters prayers before or places coins on your eyes during - that it happens any easier or brighter. In my case, death was a lot like living, kind of shitty.
I was playing outside with my childhood best-friend and I was alluring her with my ability to slide the heavy ice around the pool with the fishing net. The circular, frozen cap of ice would shift under my weight and begin to spin faster as I shoved the metal pole, bug net up, into the ice. 'Faster, faster,' and now not paying attention. The gently shaved ice in one particular spot gave way; statistics was giving me a lesson in luck and probability. I fell through in a perfect way, with a perfect angle, from the perfectly carved weak spot, and dove under the ice. My coveted white faux fur coat was now a death trap, soaking up every gallon of murky old pool water and anchoring me down. Gravity, the water filling my lungs, the gentle pulls downward, like lying into your bed at night were an overwhelming force. To try and swim, to bang against the ice from underneath, to see silhouettes of the mosquito and Helga-mite larvae swimming against the bubbles of your final gasps, surely those fuckers were inside every orface - and drowning seemed so simple. Staying alive, feeling my fingers, pushing out the horrific thoughts of how my dad would find me in his homemade family pool... it was exhausting.
Then it went black. Cold, still, sharp, stinging, no voices of advice or glows of someone to guide me. It was a vacant, pressing darkness pushing from all around. It was how I imagined space must feel when our bodies depressurize and we really do become star stuff. I was in a panic.
The next thing I could remember was being stripped down into the bathtub in my basement. I was no longer trapped by my cheap Kmart fur coat or my heavy rain boots and my eyes weren't looking at cracks in the underside of ice. I was home, in a bath of hot water, people crying, my body naked and cold - hot - cold, unsure and couching up bugs. Dripping pool water from my mouth, down into my bath water had worms. I panicked.
The day didn't bring clarity or guidance, but then again I didn't have someone declare me clinically dead either.
More stories here.
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