TO BOLDLY GO... A LOOK AT DEATH AND DYING

Photo: "Noah in the Tunnel"
By Skitch

THEN (MOSTLY):

To Boldly Go... A Look at Death and Dying

        A few years ago I began to wonder not only when I would die (which I had thought about off and on since I was nine years old) but also how I would die. I'd prefer (like most people) to die at 101 "peacefully" in my sleep and to keep my right mind until that day. But I also looked at the possibility of things like a car wreck, cancer, murder, and I contemplated several freak accidents. There are numerous ways to go and... almost anything is possible.

        These days I have to add another consideration to the list and, with my health and history, it should carry a lot of weight: I could die from a face explosion. That's what my son Liam calls the massive (and I do mean massive) nosebleeds that I have had due to high blood pressure. The blood has been known to come out of my face with such strength that it also oozes out of my tear ducts. Yes, I'm serious, I bleed from my eyes. The first time this happened was the worst. Not only did I not know what was going on and assumed I was surely getting the answer to the aforementioned question, I was surely dying in a revolting and terrifying way, but the blood gushed from me so fast that it was not only going out my nose and eyes but it was coming out my mouth and (worst of all) going down my throat with so much gusto that I became very concerned that I was going to drown, awake, in my own blood. It was petrifying and disgusting. I really hope I die in my sleep at an old old age, perhaps more than ever now.

        Still, there are worse ways to go. At least if I go that way no one will feel at fault. I am in charge of what I eat, how much I move, and possibly even how much I worry. I've tried very hard to NOT worry and so far I suck at it. But I've not given up and I do think I'm getting better at fending off the angst.  So, if I go from a face explosion I'll have no one to blame but myself, and better yet, no one else can blame anyone but me. The fate worse than death might be dying and knowing that A.) Someone you loved didn't know just how very much you loved them or B.) Someone was going to feel responsible for your death. Hear yea! Hear yea! Please don't waste your time with guilt over my death unless you LITERALLY killed me. That guilt might be healthy if you shot me, stabbed me, choked me until I couldn't breathe, etc. Other than that type of obvious stuff, give it up. It's not your fault! I promise.

        I've had several NDEs, if you will, and the experiences have made me less afraid of death. That is Near Death Experiences, not After Death Experiences. I'm fascinated with the ADEs and I study them, but mine were NDEs. I will share them with you in the hope that they might make you less afraid of death too.

        When I was sixteen I stepped backward in a river and fell into a hole in the river bed. I could not swim. I fought, and struggled, and gasped, and panicked. I felt a rush of all the things I wanted to do, and see, and be. My dreams were washing over me away, just like the murky river water. I don't know how long I fought it, but soon an odd acceptance fell over me. I stopped fighting. For just a second I was filled with the most peaceful calm I had ever known. "This is it." I thought. But, during that second, someone or some thing pushed me back toward the shore. I didn't move, and yet - I moved. I was suddenly closer to the more shallow sand, and my boyfriend (who later became my husband and the father to my two phenomenal sons) managed to get my hand and pull me to him. I gagged, and coughed, and vomited as he pulled me up onto dry land. By this point his brother had slipped into the deep part of the river while trying to get me out, and I was thrown straight from a panic for myself into a panic for sweet, young JD. I didn't want him to die! To make matters worse, if he died I knew it would be my fault. But he was smarter than me; he was not panicking. He was sinking, pushing himself back up, taking a breath, and sinking again. I was amazed that he could do that. The water going into my nose had caused me to completely panic. No one in our group could swim. (I ask myself now: What in the world were we doing in a river!?) A man at a nearby camp heard the commotion, ran over, and dived into the river. He got my boyfriend's brother out and we all laughed, and cried, and hugged. My boyfriend's mother declared that all her kids (she included me in this concept) were going to learn how to swim before the summer was over! She wasn't going through this again! We did. It took a lot of finagling on her part to get my mother to agree to allow me to go swimming with them repeatedly that summer, but she did agree and my boyfriend, his brothers, and I learned to swim.

        The thing that stuck with me about that experience was that unbelievable peace that fell over me. I've never forgotten it. It has comforted me when I thought of people drowning, people dying. Maybe their panic too was short lived. Maybe they died in that blanket of peace.

        When I was a young mother I had an ectopic pregnancy. I'd reluctantly had my tubes tied because I did not want to have another child if I couldn't completely support the two I had. We'd had to file for food stamps and other assistance several times, and I didn't believe that people that can't care for their children without government assistance should keep having children if other options were available. So, I hated it and I cried a lot, but I had surgery to make it incredibly unlikely that I would ever get pregnant again. And then I got pregnant again. It was less than a year, I do believe, after my surgery. I had wanted another child so badly that I considered this the "miracle I'd been praying for". If I got pregnant after having surgery then surely it was meant to be, right?

        Wrong.

        I'd already been admitted to the hospital when they told me I was pregnant. Something was wrong. I was in a lot of pain, feeling progressively weaker, passing out, my stomach was swelling. They did an ultrasound the next day and told me my baby was in my fallopian tubes and I would have to have surgery to remove tubes - and the baby. I would not accept it. I spent the day calling hospitals, trying to find someone that could move the baby from my tubes to my womb. If they could start a baby in one woman and move it to another then they could move one from your tubes to your womb, right? That should be even easier! If they could start a baby in a tube and move it to a woman, surely they could save my child!

        I made call after call until the surgeon came to my room and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was committing suicide. That I was abandoning the two babies I had at home. He also said, "This baby is gone. Probably dead already but destined to be dead one way or another. You want to go with this one or stay and take care of the two you have waiting at home?"

        I told him I wanted to stay and take care of the two I had at home, and they began a mad dash of prepping me for surgery. As they wheeled my bed down the hall, I began to tremble and then to shake. The doctor told me my blood loss was throwing me into shock. My young niece stopped the bed as it rolled by her. She wanted to give me a kiss. She leaned and stretched, but her plan was futile. She was about two feet from me, and I didn't have the strength to rise up even six inches to meet her. My trembling was getting worse and I was suddenly afraid. I spoke firmly to her, "Shana! Honey! Let them get me into surgery. Okay?" She gave up the kiss, and I watched as her crestfallen little face got further and further away.

        They pushed me into surgery while I thought, "What if that's the last thing you say to her?" I was awash with guilt. I felt sick to my stomach. I prayed, "God if you want me to go please let me make it out of surgery first... just long enough to tell Shana how very much I love her."

        The doctor stripped his shirt off and someone helped him into his scrubs. I remember thinking his chest was extremely hairy. I liked it. It seemed to say something to me about life. "Here, go be human. It's unpredictable. It's messy but beautiful. You will have skin and hair. You will have eyes to look at other people's skin and hair." I realized I was getting loopy, and I smiled. Then the feeling hit me again. Peace like a blanket. I thought, "If I die, I die. I'll be with my baby, and Shana will have to remember that I was not always such a jerk. She, and my boys, and all my family will remember how much I love them."

        I didn't die. When I woke up I felt something resting on my stomach and, in my drugged up post-surgery state, I thought it was my baby. I thought that somehow the baby had made it after all. I was still too loopy to realize that it couldn't have been newborn size already, couldn't have been born. I just felt such relief and love. I grabbed the bundle and pulled it up to my heart, only to discover that it was a pillow. My baby was dead. I remembered. I had agreed to kill it. Bitter tears fell out of my eyes, and I turned my face away. My mother had noticed that I was awake, and she came to my bed. She stroked my forehead. Mother knew. "Your baby is with my baby. Your baby is with your sister now. They'll take care of each other until you and I can get there and be with them."

        In the next few days, only my mother seemed to understand how I felt. Doctors, nurses, friends, family: they all talked about how lucky I was. I was glad to be alive to raise my boys, but I didn't feel lucky. They talked about the' procedure', about the 'surgery'. They told me I had done so much internal bleeding that when the surgeon cut me open blood had came out of me with so much force that it got all over the doctor and two surgical assistants. They talked about the units of blood they had to give me to keep me from dying. They asked me about walking, and eating, and bowl movements. I walked as soon as I could. I knew the routine, and I wanted to get home to my boys, my living children. The nurses bragged about my strength to my mother-in-law and she patted my shoulder and said, "This is one strong lady. I know. She's country-tough like her daddy." But only my mother and one female doctor that came to see me after several days in the hospital, even acknowledged that I'd lost a child.

        I named the baby Jamie. Because it will work for a boy or a girl. It was too early to tell the sex.
 
        I've never fully recovered from the loss and that was over twenty years ago. I don't think grief gets any lighter with time. I think we just get stronger and can carry it a little easier.

        I'll never forget the dream of having that child.

        I'll never forget the feeling of peace that fell over me right before the surgery.

        After my first face explosion, while lying on the hospital bed, I began to feel light headed, sleepy. I was sitting up in the hospital bed. I rested my head back against the pillow and listened to the people around me talking. For a few moments they made sense, but soon they started sounding a little like Charlie Brown's teacher. I could still understand them, but I wondered why they were talking funny. The blood pressure monitor took my b.p again and my step-daughter said, "Does that say-? That can't be right!" And she rushed from the room. The doctor came in and began to work with me frantically. He said, "Elevate her feet! Get those patches off of her!"

        I thought, "Why is he yelling? Why are people running? I'm just dying. Don't they know we all have to die." I was in that peaceful place again. I remember thinking, right as I slipped into it, "I lived to see my children grown. They don't need me so much now. And I lived to see my first grandchildren." But I still had a tickle of regret. I wanted to live.

        Again, I didn't die. (Surprise!) The doctors and nurses had given me too much medicine and my blood pressure had dropped down into the "almost dead" range. They elevated my feet, removed the blood pressure med patches, and I came back to the land of the living. I'm really glad I did too! My boys don't need me as much, that's true, but I still like to think I can contribute to their happiness. I like to think that I'm still vital and a (mostly) positive force in the universe.

        So, maybe it doesn't matter how or even when we die. Maybe Death is beguiling, a lover that will seduce us with calm and swath us in peace. When I was a child I hoped I'd never die. Honestly, I did. I still hope I die old and in my sleep. I hope I die peacefully, not wrapped in either panic or pain. I'm still not ready to go. I've always wanted to live to be an old person, and I'm not quite there yet. I hope to live to be so old that I fall into the human accessory department. You know what I mean, when people are still glad you're here, you're not yet a burden but you really don't have a lot to contribute anymore. That way my death will cause less mourning. My passing will seem less traumatic. Fewer people will feel cheated. But if I go before I become senile or unable to take myself to the bathroom I won't have been too much of a burden on my family. Isn't that ideal?

        Also, more selfishly, I've got this idea that it might be even easier to die if I do so many years from now. I have a theory: I think that the older you live and the more people you've seen make the transition, the more comfortable you'll be with your own fate. If anything makes the idea seem bearable (when I'm not drugged up on an NDE) it's that I'm following in some awesome footsteps. So, perhaps the more footsteps the more bearable the idea will be, even when I'm 100% lucid. That's what I'm hoping anyway, and I'd love to live long enough to test the theory out really really well.

        We don't KNOW what is on the other side of death, if anything. Many of us hope. Many of us believe. Some of us have told stories of tunnels, and light, and love. But we don't (as a people) know what's to come after death. Still, the more of our family and friends that go there, the less scary it becomes - whatever it is. Maybe there is a Heaven and God will take home the "good people" and some of us will fry in Hell. Maybe there is a God and He/She will love and accept us all. Maybe there is a void, a nothingness, an eternal sleep. Of all the possibilities, I fear that one most. I think I'd rather burn in Hell than cease to exist. I don't know... I don't know what's out there or where "there" is, but I'll tell you what I do know: I do know that Jamie went there. I know that my adopted uncle, Crit, is there. My dear friend since third grade, and her baby, and her daddy that were murdered in cold blood are all there. My cousin Teresa Kay, Uncle Les, and my Aunt Guinea are all there. As the list gets longer the idea gets less frightening. If it's good enough for them, whatever it is, then it's good enough for me. I'm proud to follow them, proud to be a part of the whole stinkin' human race. I think that, though flawed, we are inherently good. I believe that when I die I will "boldly go" where multitudes have gone before.


PS: Shana, if you read this I love you more than you know, more than the Harvest moon, and the sound of the sea, and the smell of books... and more, more, more...