The Night I Died, Lost My Religion, and Found My Soul

My veins were ice. As my body seized and shuddered uncontrollably, I fought to retain consciousness. Images of the scene around me flickered at the corners of my weary eyes: an empty cot next to me (OD green like everything else); an elbow in a parka; an IV bag; another woman shaking on a cot nearby. I heard cursing and cajoling; tears and laughter; the echo that the crowd of thousands just outside the medical tent created -- even when most of the pilgrims gathered for World Youth day were silent compared with the commotion close at hand. Someone surrounded me with blankets. I could not feel the needle as, in one of my short bursts of clear vision, I watched the IV being inserted into my arm.

 

I thought about where I was and why I was there-- not just at the moment, but why I was alive to begin with. It had been a rough year. It had been a rough life, considering what I had been through in my 13 years. I wondered why I was fighting away the cool blackness so diligently. After all, hadn't I tried to kill myself only a few months before, tired of the constant teasing and torture from my peers, and the lack of support from the adults I held dearest?

 

I looked at that woman I had spied a few cots down from me- a beautiful woman with her terrified loved ones surrounding her. I felt ugly; I was alone. I had come to the Mile High City with a large group of fellow Catholics from Oregon. Failing to rise to the challenge of truly being my friends, of supporting me when I was so cold I could scarcely breathe, they had all left me. I was alone in that bustle of people, fighting for my life against the shuddering ache that is hypothermia.

 

Outside the tent... I listened again to the bustle of youth and their adult escorts, all settling down for the night, dotting the lawn of Cherry Creek Park in anticipation of the Pope John Paul the Second's arrival for mass and a blessing the next morning. I heard the happiness in their voices, and stopped shuddering. I let go.

 

A calming blanket, the blackness surrounded me, and the voices faded. For a moment, there was nothing. Then I heard a whisper, or what I thought to be a whisper, and I felt myself turning to see him sitting beside me: a young man of about 17, dressed in military clothing, looking down at my face. His eyes spoke warmth I had never felt from anyone who had looked at me in my life, the warmth of someone who loved me. I did not know his face, but there was something in him that I recognized as familiar. His green eyes glistened with tears, but not just ordinary tears... The glistening tears of an angel, I thought. They sparkled like diamonds of the finest cut, and along with his radiant soul pouring out so much emotion, I felt those tears move me to touch his face. When my hand drew close, he pulled away, and stood. His hands outstretched as if to embrace me, and then he began to walk away.

 

Without question, I knew that I had to follow. If there was anywhere that I belonged, it was wherever my one true friend wanted to lead me. I rose from the old stained army cot, everything around me in a haze. All the medical personnel and other patients no longer existed. All that WAS was my shining friend, whom I would have followed to the ends of the heavens to keep close to me. He turned toward me again with a smile on his face, a beckoning that said "Yes, follow me," and an aperture of light opened up some yards behind him, turning him into a stark shadow against the power of that beautiful light. I stood stunned for a moment, and then reached for him. I could feel his fingers brushing mine, then halting and moving back. He shook his head and gazed longingly at me, and looked behind me. I turned to look, and saw my body lying on the cot, an empty shell. I saw the medical team rushing around me, and I closed my eyes. I must be dreaming, I thought; this is not happening.

 

Then I felt myself shudder again, harder than before. I felt my veins burning, and heard a few barked orders from one of the doctors. The pain was excruciating. Hoping to hold onto the dream, I kept my eyes closed tight. Once again, I was alone. I started to cry. Then I heard some of the voices more clearly.

 

"She's alive, she's crying."

 

"Someone refill the glucose in that IV NOW."

 

"Leave me alone!" (That voice was my own.)

 

"You're okay honey. We lost you for about a half minute, but you are here with us now, can you hear me?"

 

So I opened my eyes, and said "Yes, I hear you, but where is my friend?"

 

The fatigued nurse shook her head. "No one from your group has come back yet." Her words echoed in my head.

 

"Not my group, him, my friend with the shining tears. I want him back. Where is he?"

 

She simply turned away.

 

The shuddering slowly subsided, but the fatigue was deep. I had to be held up to go to the port-o-potty outside the tent. My legs were so weak that it felt as though they were strapped to lead weights.

 

For all of the next day the fatigue gripped me, and kept me in that stained old Army Cot in the Emergency Medical Unit that had been called in to help with the crowd, many of whom had battled hypothermia as I had. I listened as the crowd outside cheered for Pope John Paul II, and finally, after the mass was over, a few members from my group came to retrieve me.

 

"While you were seeing the Pope," I blurted to the first of my "friends" to arrive, " I was busy recovering from dying and seeing a glimpse of heaven. You missed it."

 

The young girl shook her head and said, "I'm sure you were mistaken."

 

She looked over at the doctor, the one who had saved my life.

 

"She left us for over 40 seconds," he told her, looking at the rest of my group as they filed in. "And she's not the first person I've heard crying on re-entry." The doctor walked away, and the members of my Youth Group hauled me home.

I never attended mass again.

I think of that night often and wonder if the visions I saw were indeed real. I like to think that my friend was, and many times in my life I have said a quiet prayer- not to God, but to him. I beg him to find me again when the time is right, and lead me into that aperture of glistening light.

Copyright Constance Sxxxxxx 2007 All Rights Reserved

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

The "Love" is the same, always; the way we can see it is different, one person to another, one culture to another, one epoch to another; but the experience that transforms our lives is the same. I am so pleased to be acquainted with yours. You have written it with convincing and stinging language. Like you, my experience saved my life in the moment and set my life on the journey that has led to here. Isn't it grand.