I have a friend who was revived after being coded, and later on her sister, who is a nurse, looked up the hospital records to see how long she was "gone." We were all shocked to learn that the official time was 22 minutes.
The night my mother died, that friend stayed up with me til almost 3 a.m., telling and retelling the story, which I'd heard many times, of what happened to her while she was "gone."
Here is the story…
"I was so free, no body, no weight at all, as if I were a little thought with eyes. I could see a light ahead of me, the most intense white, bright light I've ever seen, but strangely it didn't hurt my eyes to look into it. It was so peaceful, there was no sense of time or of space, there were no limits to anything anymore.
"I wanted to go into that light more than is imaginable, like nothing I can explain. I knew that in the light were people waiting for me, but I didn't see anybody. I didn't see anything but that light. And I wanted to be in it more than I've ever wanted anything.
"But, I started thinking about my children, (she had a 2-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old son) and as soon as thoughts of them entered my mind, I had to struggle with the ‘decision’ to ‘come back.’
"It was like pushing my whole body into the neck of a coke bottle. I had to exert all my will to push.
"As soon as I had gotten back into that ‘space' I could see the tops of the nurses and the doctor's heads. I could hear what they said to each other, and noticed what they were doing. I remember watching one of them leave the room for a few seconds, then come back.
"It was almost a resentful feeling, having to come back. I could feel that heaviness again, that awful weight that was my body and I was unhappy. But when that final ‘push’ was over, I felt myself gasping, and they all were surprised.
"I told them later what they had said and what I saw them doing, and they all said, ‘You couldn't have seen that, you were imagining all that.’ But, I knew I wasn't. I've never been so sure of anything.
At this point I stopped her and asked, "Now that its been so long, (about 20 years by that time) does all of that seem like a dream to you?" and she answered, "Oh, no, not at all, in fact, it seems like the most real thing that ever happened to me, and all this life, everything that's happened since, is like a dream, somewhere I'm just passing through.
"It was such a feeling of complete and utter peace, like nothing I can begin to describe. There was no pain, no sorrow, no encumbrance of any kind, until the point where I started to think about who would raise my children, then it was like a sledgehammer, and I had to force myself to turn away from that light. I could sense that in that light, that was where total peace would have been. I longed to go ahead, but I came back."
Now, you have to remember that I said when we had this conversation, 20 years had lapsed since she'd had this experience. At the time it happened, in 1971, we'd never seen stories about "the light" or about this kind of "after-life" experience on TV. But I fully believed her when she told it to me for the first time, way back then.
I've known this friend all my life, and she isn't the type to make something like this up, I've never known her to tell a lie, or exaggerate or embellish anything.
That's the reason that her sister finally looked up the hospital records- to see how long she was out. 22 minutes…… that was unheard of at the time.
Not long ago, she was speaking to a grief support group. She said, with tears in her eyes, even after all this time, “It was like I was finally coming home. I felt that I had been there before, that I belonged there. The only way I can really describe it is to say that it was a feeling of complete love.”
Hearing that made me realize that Mother had made it into that light. It was what gave me comfort, and I was so thankful for this friend's experience. I knew that my Mother was not in pain, and that she was, like my friend said, “A little thought with eyes."
Now, every time someone I know passes away, I always think, "Oh, they made it into the light!"
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