NDEs

Otherwise known ad Near Death Experiences. Death is usually considered a negative thing by many people, the honest truth is we will all experience it sooner or later. Our minds are programmed to believe that we live forever, no one wants to ponder their mortality. I think our minds are correct, we do live forever, just not in the form we are in now. We fear death because for most of us, it is the unknown. All of those "what ifs" come into play. What if there is no afterlife? What if I stand before God and I'm not good enough? What if I go to Hell? What if things aren't like I was taught to believe? What if it's just black nothingness.

I remember standing my by sister's bedside as she was leaving this world, going on to the next one. I held her face just inches from mine. She could barely respond, she was mostly gone already. I talked to her, I said things like "Don't be afraid, it's OK..." and "I wish I could see what you see now, I know it's beautiful...", I know she was afraid, but I hope my words and getting her to focus on me and what I was saying helped her to pass more peacefully. I only hope someone has the presence of mind to do that for me when my times comes.

How to die. I often hear the statement from other people who say they would prefer going to sleep and never waking up again, as opposed to dying in a more traumatic way. As nice as that sounds, the more I think about it (not that I dwell on dying, I probably think about it as much as anyone else does), the more I think I want to be awake and alert when my times comes. I want to know it is about to happen, of course I'd prefer that it wasn't too painful, painless would be the best, but we don't always get our way in life, or death. It may be paramount to birth, it must be at least uncomfortable (if not painful) to be born, to be forced from the only existence you know, a warm, happy place, into a cold, brightly lit world, the world we embrace during our life, then are reluctant to leave.

Let me tell you about my NDE. I don't know exactly how old I was, I must have been around 6 or 7 years old. We lived in California. We enjoyed going to the beach to swim, but didn't like the waves very much, so my parents would take us to a man-made lagoon. It was protected from the brunt of the wave action, perfect for little kids to swim. It was also protected from sharks or other large marine animals.

I didn't know how to swim, but I was fearless, my little sister (not the one mentioned above) would not go into water deeper than ankle depth. My little brother was even more fearless than I was, he was busy diving into a trashcan looking for goodies, that's where my mother was at the time, trying to pull my brother out of the can. My father was in a rubber raft across the lagoon, I could see him. There were lifeguards there, and a lot of people, adults and children, swimming that day.

I knew not to go into the deep water, but while playing, I saw a potato chip wrapper floating on the water. I began to hit it to see how far it would go each time. I was getting into deeper and deeper water. Once the water was up to my chin, I thought I would hit the wrapper one more time then go back to shallow water. On that last swipe, I stepped off of a ledge, there was nothing solid under my feet. I panicked and began to thrash around. I could see my dad across the lagoon and started yelling for him. Of course with all the commotion of all the other swimmers, and the distance, he never heard me.

As I thrashed around, I caused myself to go into deeper and deeper water. I would come up, choking and gasping for air, then I would go under, this went on for what seemed like an eternity. Finally I went under and I knew I would not come back up again. Right at that moment, a peace came over me. A peace like I had never felt before. I completely relaxed, I was no longer afraid. The water was green, I must have only been a foot or so under the surface. I knew everything would be OK. I cannot describe the calm and peace I felt, it was unearthly. I felt no pain or distress as I floated under the water.

Then I felt a hand, a hand, it was pulling me out of the water, my instincts to live kicked back in and I began to struggle. This hand pulled me out of the water long enough for me to get a breath of air, then pushed me away. I was doing everything I could to try to grab this person, which was why they pushed me away, to turn me around so that they could safely pull me to shore.

As soon as my feet could touch bottom, I looked at the person and it was my mom (this was the second time she had saved me from certain death). The funny thins was, she didn't know it was me either, until that moment, she just saw a child in distress and went into action. We waded past the lady who was only a few feet from me the whole time, she watched me drowning and did nothing, my mother had some nasty words for her. We waded past the life guard, he had also been watching, with hands on the sides of the chair, ready to jump in, the reason he didn't was because most of that day, other children had been playing like they were drowning, he just assumed I belonged to that group of kids.

I suffered no ill effects from nearly drowning, I puked a few times after I got on the beach. We went home and as far as I can remember, I don't think we ever went back to that lagoon again. We stuck to swimming pools.

I can say this, I am not afraid of the water, I think if I had been saved while I was still struggling, before the peaceful part, I probably would have had a fear of the water, but since I was pulled out after the peaceful part, I have no fear of drowning. The part up and until the peaceful part sucks, but after that it is quite pleasant.

I have had a couple of other brushes with death, none as close as this one though, I was trapped in a travel trailer while it was on fire, I was in two different situations where I was at the mercy of a crazy person with a weapon, I nearly hung myself (it was a stupid childhood experiment gone wrong, I wasn't trying to commit suicide), I have had 2 different medical situations where I could have died, I have been in one semi-serious car wreck... I have been close to death many times, but I'm still here to talk about it... I'll talk about them more in detail at a later date.