ALMOST HEAVEN

Near Death Experiences...Fact or Fiction?

I don't know how long I was out but it couldn't have been more than a minute or two. When I awoke, my hands were still knotted around the steering wheel. Every muscle in my body was tense almost to the point of cramping. In my panicked daze, the world was filled with bright lights. Everything was spinning. Through the fog, I saw the driver of the 18-wheeler stumbling around the gravel road in front of me.

My first instinct was to discover how badly I was hurt. With maniacal focus, I ran my fingers over my head and body, searching for blood or other injuries. The pain in my chest let me know I had a few cracked or broken ribs. As my search continued to my extremities, I discovered that my right leg was bent in a location other than my knee. I had broken both bones about eight inches above my ankle and my foot flopped around on the floorboard like a beached flounder.

I dared not hope that I had escaped the incident with only a broken leg and a few cracked ribs. I started at the top and carefully checked my entire body again. By the time I made it back down to that broken leg, I was ecstatic.

I was alive! Against all odds, I had survived a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler.

My pickup had been rammed 100 feet back from the point of impact, through a fence and into a field. The driver of the Peterbilt wandered over and stuck his head in the window.

"Are you alright? he asked."

"No," I said with a smile on my face. "I think I broke my leg." He took a look at my splayed limb, started to turn green, and began to walk away.

"Hey!" I yelled. "This door is stuck. Can you help me pry it open?"

He reluctantly returned. With me pushing and him pulling, we were able to bend the crushed metal around the door to create an opening large enough for me to exit. I crawled out, my ankle and foot swinging like a pendulum.

The driver took one look at my wrecked appendage and hurried off. I flopped the dangling member down on the ground in front of me and eased my shaking body onto the dirt.

Now, traffic accidents happen every day. Mine was not very serious in the big scheme of things. I survived and after a couple of months in a wheel chair and on crutches, I was as good as new. But, what stuck with me from that experience was not the fear, the panic, or the pain. The thing I remember the most...is the joy.

The ecstacy that filled me, when I realized I had survived, never went away! When the paramedics showed up, I was cracking jokes. I was so cheerful and happy, they wrote it off as the result of shock. I partied all the way to the La Grange hospital, where the orthopedic surgeon set my bones. I stayed on top of the world all the way to Austin. Even on the operating table, nothing could spoil my mood. I had the whole surgical team in stitches. (...a little medical joke)

Sure I was in pain, but that was secondary to the joy of just being alive!

A brush with death almost always makes us appreciate our lives. The old saying is that you don't realize what you have until it's gone, and that's certainly true when it comes to a near death experience. Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the Swiss M.D. and psychiatrist who began the hospice movement in America, has cared for literally thousands of dying people. She had this to say about her experiences with terminal patients.

"My dying patients taught me so much more than what it was like to be dying. They shared lessons about what they could have done, and what they should have done, and what they didn't do until it was too late...They looked back at their lives and taught me all of the things that were really meaningful, not about dying...but about living."

People have been asking questions about death, dying and the hereafter since the dawn of time. Corliss Lamont, in his book The Illusion of Immortality, says that more books have been written about those issues than about any other single subject. He points to one book, published in 1870, that included more than 5,000 such titles in its bibliography.

Almost every bookstore in America has a special death and dying or a “light” section that caters to those interested in “near death experiences” and other esoterica.

But, to the regular working Joe, the threat of death can become very real.

I work with a man every day who had a head-on collision a few years back. His wreck was much more serious than mine. He was on his way to San Antonio in his pickup, driving about 70 miles per hour. A lady in a Geo Metro, coming the opposite direction at the same rate of speed, lost control of her vehicle. They hit head-on. She was killed instantly. My friend was badly injured. For four days he lived in fear of his life. He was in the hospital for three weeks and on a walker for four months.

I asked him how his life had changed after the incident.

"Before it happened, I was invincible. After it happened, I was much more aware of what could happen...I never used to think about things like that...that in one minute you could just be gone. Now, I think about what people mean to me."

Almost everyone who is forced to face their mortality is changed. But, some report experiences that are hard for others to believe. Many people who find themselves eye to eye with the grim reaper and live to tell about it, tell stories that have become known as "near-death experiences" or NDE's.

Dr. Kubler-Ross was one of the first physicians to take such reports seriously. She and a minister who helped in her research documented over 20,000 cases of people who clinically died, or came close to it, and then came back to life. They discovered a remarkable similarity in the stories. The people who had near death experiences said that after dying, they were free from pain. Most claimed they were met by guides or loved ones and taken to a place that was perfectly loving and comforting. Upon returning, many reported that they had not wanted to return to life but were told "It's not time," and sent back. Many reported a "white light" or "tunnel of light" that appeared to beckon them as their spirits left their bodies.

That "white light" is now an icon of new age theology, so sensationalized by the media that it's hard to tell if such stories are reality or segments of the "X-files."

Many scientists would support the latter. The medical and scientific communities, by and large, discount the claims of near-death experiences of this sort. Medical explanations for the experiences and sensations range from LSD flashbacks to hypoxia (oxygen starvation), from endorphin release caused by the stress of dying to anesthetic agents in the blood stream.

The truth is that nobody knows, and almost everybody has an opinion.

However, there is one issue upon which everyone, from the farthest out new age tofu-eater to the most skeptical scientist, agree...

People who must face death are profoundly changed.

I have another old friend who has a little weekend place near Round Top. Though approaching fifty, she's an athletic person, a runner, and someone who has always taken care of her body. She's been a family friend for over twenty-five years and stood with my wife and her siblings through their mother's slow death from breast cancer.

A while back, a malignant tumor was discovered in my friend's breast. She was terrified. Just as anyone in that situation would be, she was afraid for her life. Happily, her condition was stabilized. Her cancer went into remission. But, it seemed that her new awareness of the possibility of death somehow increased the stakes in her life. She got more serious about her running. She started taking on longer races. We kept up with her exploits because she often ran her races in memory of my mother-in-law.

That little brush with the grim reaper changed not only her life, but also her husband's. He's a career police officer, a tough cookie, but the thought of losing his wife was enough to turn that macho hard case into a sensitive, caring spouse. It was a heartwarming thing to see.

Just two months ago, my friend ran the Houston Marathon, her first such race. We all drove down to Houston to cheer her on. She hit the wall at about eighteen miles. The weather was hot and she had a hard time, but somewhere inside she found the courage and determination to finish the twenty-six miles. It was an inspiration to us all, an opportunity for us to stare down the limitations we had placed on ourselves.

So, you see, when death comes knocking, doors open. After watching thousands of people die, Dr. Kubler-Ross offers this recipe for a peaceful passing. "...death can be one of the greatest experiences ever. If you live each day of your life right, then you have nothing to fear. Live so that you don't look back and regret that you've wasted your life. Live so you don't regret the things you have done or wish that you had acted differently. Live life honestly and fully. Live."

When I was a young man living in Austin, my youngest sister drowned in a lake near my home town. She was just a teenager. When I got the call, I couldn’t believe it. It was so sudden. I was devastated. My girlfriend (the same lady that later became my wife) agreed to drive me back home to Waco. I needed help because I was so upset I didn’t think I could drive safely.

About half way there, I lost it. I told my girl to pull over to the side of the road. I bolted out of the car, jumped over the barbed wire fence and ran into the woods, crying like a child. I had to get away where no one could hear me fall apart.

I screamed and howled. I was furious that she was gone. It didn’t seem fair. I cried, regretting all the things I had not said to her when she was alive. I remembered all the petty cruelties that siblings visit upon each other and was ashamed I had not been a better big brother. Mostly, I was just sad that I had been unable to say “goodbye.”

Finally, I sat on a ledge in a dry creek bed and cried.

That’s when it happened. Suddenly the sound of the birds and the wind seemed to change, becoming more clear, almost crystalline. I was overcome by a sense that all things were connected, that there were no accidents, that everything had a purpose. Somehow that feeling comforted me and I was able to tell my sister “goodbye.”

At that point in my life, I had no use for religion. I was more interested in philosophy than faith. But, the thing I experienced that day led me to ask questions which eventually brought me back to a religious life. Today, my faith is very important to me and I truly believe I would not have found that part of myself had my little sister not died.

That doesn’t make me feel any better about her death, but it does make me feel better about my life.

That's the bottom line. The lesson we can learn from death is not about dying. It's about living. It's about the incredible miracle of life. It's about the astounding opportunity that we have before us to fully experience our time on this planet.

Day to day, it's so easy to let the little things steal that miracle from us. Worry, frustration and our foolish preoccupation with material things often cost us our vitality. We become dull and lifeless, or sullen and cynical. We get lost inside ourselves or caught up in the petty irritations of life, and miss the wonders around us.

We pretend that we are in control of our lives. But, death teaches us that we are not.

When death is near, all pretenses fall away, all arrogance is overcome. Just like those who have died and returned to tell about it, we discover all that really matters, is love.

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