WHAT IT'S LIKE TO DIE....
There is nothing quite so unique as death . . .
Death came in and on me . . . quickly - - very quickly - - rushing in - - displacing everything - - claiming all I had. There are no words for its simple efficiency. Unstoppable . . . Formidable . . . are not even close. Not even close.
Close your eyes and imagine you are five years old, alone . . . at night . . . floating in the middle of the ocean. That's what you are as you face Death. But aloneness is not fearful. It is just that Death is larger than we can imagine in life. Death is so large, that there are no words large enough. Death is so quick, that there are no words fast enough. And in Death, you are so alone that being a young child, floating in the middle of the ocean at night . . . is not alone enough.
But no, that's not close . . . either. At the end of our days, words are useless. Descriptions describe, and hence, describe nothing of it truly. Death is beyond our describing.
But we try . . . we . . . try.
Death is a silent wave miles high . . . worlds' high . . . and I was a single point of greenish-gold light. Death was impossibly huge . . . and deathly quiet . . . as it silently sucked me and the other points of light up and onto the wall of that gigantic wave. It drowned all the noise of my life as it broke over me. It swallowed me whole, and baptized me with unbelievable finality . . . unbelievable speed and efficiency. The noise of my life was simply . . . gone.
And I watched it all--detached--third person--from a perspective ten or a dozen feet above my corpse. I saw my lifeless, cyanotic body lying there as two French climbers paid their respects to the departed. I saw Bill crying....the doctor, too. I saw my body, hands seemingly trying to find an umbilical lost lifetimes ago. I lay there peacefully--a face without humanity and without....a care in the world.
I floated in a vast and infinite Sea. My reality was like a water sculpture formed of a single sheet of nylon. It floated around me, over me . . . suspended. Then, as though tremendously fatigued, my reality lost its form, and it flapped lazily in that currentless sea of Death. A final, stubborn tether was tenderly severed, and my reality gently floated down on giant manta wings into the depths, and all was gone. I passed away. I died . . .
The gigantic wave then seemed to turn in on itself like a pipeline surf, as it swirled and formed a liquid corridor of impossible light. It was as if my life had been cleansed from my spirit by the wave of death, as it then joyously fell with certain gravity toward the white magnesium light that became all there was. The light. It was a caring and peaceful . . . consuming light . . . as it entered my being. And finally, I became the light.
It was so peaceful in the light....so....heavenly. There was only the light. All pain and torment were gone. All everything....gone. There was only the light which was not a light so much as it was a total absence of anything. Reality stripped down to nothing, and that was the light that was....not anything else.
And then, like a speck of dust in the eye of the Godhead, a nagging remnant of cognition . . . a forgotten dream . . . And I was the dreamer....
I dreamed myself and I dreamed my reality. Like a painter faced with an immense blank canvas....I painted. First with temerity, and then with a strange and focused sense of urgency. I dreamed. I dreamed myself . . . alive. It was a forgotten dream. But it was then my brush strokes that painted the images of my reality--my will and intent with which I dreamed--with which I . . . created.
Despite my body lay there in the Mission hospital amidst the nuns and doctor, I was still alone . . . and . . . unsure. Had it all been a dream? Or, was I still in its midst? Would I wake only to find myself lying below Firmin's Tower, dying as I drowned in my own blood?
I never knew.
But that was how I lived for decades. Absolutely alone, and always expecting to wake from this long and detailed dream, to only die again on Mt. Kenya. And that pushed me so far outside of normal, that I was released from being normal....ever again.
So, that is how I live now, for the most part. Gloriously alone. Blessedly focused on my life's path. Compassionately patient with others. Passionately demanding of myself. Laughing lots. Having fun. Full of equally large measures of wonderment and gratitude.
A blessed life found in my . . . death.