My mom sent me a video of an American neurosurgeon who got encephalitis and was in a coma for two months. He emerged from it with no knowledge of this world, but quickly regained it over the next few days. In the video, he describes how he was in a dark place and then there was a light and a pretty brunette lady telling him he was loved. He said that1’s when he knew there was a loving personal god and that was the message he needed to take back into the world. He’s written two books about his experience and firmly believes in free will. He thinks patients have the ability to direct their own healing.
Which, I must say, is utter bullshit. In my own NDE (near-death experience), I went from simply not being to being in one violent moment. No light. No angelic figure telling me how loved I am. Nothing. Just me opening my eyes with a gasp and panicking at what the fuck was going on. I was scared, angry, and ready to fight whomever needed to be fought. There was no peace and love and all that.
I will say that in the first few halcyon days of being drugged to the gills, I was overflowing with love. I was grateful to be alive and was convinced that it was the support and love from everyone around me that had carried me through. I have said since the beginning that three things helped me through–love, Taiji, and luck. I do believe that the collective is stronger than each individual part. I do believe there is something bigger than us. I don’t believe that’s a specific God with a capital G, however. In addition, I firmly reject the notion that somehow, I deserved to come back more than someone else. This is a particularly American point of view–that we deserve all the good things that happen to us (and , conversely, that we don’t deserve bad things). It’s toxic positivity, which is very American. In addition, it’s confirmation bias. To put it bluntly, people who died from their medical trauma can’t exactly object to what he’s saying, can they?
I’m not dissing his experience. If that’s what comforts him and gets him through, then so be it. If he wants to believe in heaven and pretty angel ladies, that’s his prerogative. That wasn’t my experience, however, and that’s just as valid as his. I mean, if we’re putting such weight on near-death experiences that we don’t have to quantify them at all. What did I learn from mine? That there is nothing other than this life. Or rather, there is love that is bigger than any one of us. We are powerful as a collective. There is a spirit/energy out there that is undefinable, that encompasses us all. But God with a capable G? I’m not as sure about that.
And you know what? I’m fine with that. I don’t need a God who cares about me as a person. In fact, I have a hard time believing in one who simultaneously doesn’t care if entire species of creatures are eradicated. A God who allows terrible atrocities and condemns people to a lifetime in Hell if they displease him. This doctor said that he believes in a personal loving God, which, again, good for him. I’m not being snide, either. I honestly believes whatever gets you through is great, but with the caveat that it’s not for everyone.
The good doctor stated firmly that 95% of people who came back from NDEs were more loving. I had to laugh because that was firmly an ass number (as in, pulled out of his). How the hell would you quantify that? It’s not as if we have a scale for how loving people are. In addition, some of us were pretty fucking loving to begin with. I’ve always been an empathetic and nurturing person so it would be pretty difficult for me to be even more so upon return. Yes, I felt tapped into an interconnectedness that I hadn’t before, but it wasn’t as if I was a cold-hearted bitch before my medical trauma. He also said that people became less materialistic, which, again, how is he measuring this?
I was brimming with love for the first few weeks I was back. That was the drugs, too. Believe me, I was really fucking high when I awoke. I was on sedatives, narcotics, and antibiotics all at once. I was feeling no pain and everything was amazing. I was like a newborn, emphasis on new. I didn’t realize how high I was until I got home and the drugs started leaving my system. Then, I realized that I actually had a body that could feel pain. But that two weeks was brilliant and I could finally understand why people did drugs.
My point is that my NDE was very different from the good doctor’s. It’s not any more or less valid than his; it’s just completely different. One minute I wasn’t, and then I was. There was no in-between. The first thing I remember upon waking up is talking to Ian via Zoom. This was Day Two of being awake. I was high as a kite and babbling about Dark Souls III, my favorite game. There’s an ’80s trailer for it that has the tagline, “When you pick a fight with the devil, you better be stronger than hell!”, which I kept quoting to Ian for what felt like ages. Later, I apologized to him and he laughed. He said it was like two minutes and he was so happy to hear my voice, he didn’t care what I said.
I appreciated being alive more after my NDE, it’s true, but I did not lose my sarcastic sense of humor. In fact, I think I became even more sarcastic and funny after dying because I could see the silliness of life. Not that life itself was silly, but that it was so fleeting. I died. Twice. In twenty minutes. I was goddamn lucky to come back. I will grant that having practiced/studied Taiji for a decade-and-a-half put me in good stead, but it was mostly luck. Luck that I was rushed to Regions, one of the best clinics for heart issues in the state. Luck that they had a bed available. Luck that they believed in lowering body temp after a cardiac arrest, which is a relatively new therapy and not practiced everywhere. Luck that my body said, “We’re fighting! Let’s gooooooo!” rather than giving up. Luck that I have no brain or heart damage from the ordeal.
I can accept it’s luck and just be grateful to be the recipient of it. There’s no need for it to be anything more.