Near-death experience (NDE)

"A near-death experience (NDE) is a personal experience associated with death or impending death. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light. When negative, such experiences may include sensations of anguish and distress.^[1] NDEs are a recognized part of some transcendental and religious beliefs in an afterlife.^[1][2][3][4]

Different models have been described to explain NDEs.^[5] Neuroscience research suggests that an NDE is a subjective phenomenon resulting from "disturbed bodily multisensory integration" that occurs during life-threatening events.^{[6]" . Wikipedia}

She, like everyone else, was always intrigued and fascinated by the anecdotes of near-death experiences. The bright light, the tunnel, the peace and the sudden return to life.

Her life today was like a very slow-motion NDE. She lived looking at herself from the outside of her body, the world moving around her unresponsive body, reduced to mere reflexes to social stimuli. No intent in her actions. She watched the living world in a jail-like box seat in the life's theater that was featuring this long running show that she had no part in it.

What she felt today was a kind of perverted NDE. While most accounts of NDEs show this smooth pilgrimage-like stroll towards the light, finishing with a sudden thrust back into corporeal life, her life now was different. She'd been suddenly thrust into the after-life where she was now trapped.  She had known about some negatives accounts of NDEs involving anguish and despair, but they all finished with a resolution. She was now dragging herself in a suspended state of despair that saw no end. It seems to her that others recounts of NDE felt they were still "alive" inside of a lifeless body, her sensations were clearly showing someone dead that felt trapped in a living body.

Hers was not a near-death experience. It was an all-around-death experience. There was no light. No serene stroll, no reassurances and she felt the certainty of death every single moment of her so-called life.

If I do all you ask of me, will you let me die?

As I sit here in the darkness of the noisy bus

The huge stars in the vast sky weigh on my head. 

There is another person screaming 

in the solitary confinement of my soul 

begging to be set free. 

It’s myself trying to escape through the tears. 

But just tears are so narrow for my pain to go through.

I’m banging on the walls of my sanity:

let me go, let me go!

Close your eyes near me so you can see it. 

Hold my hand and the screams will be deafening. 

If I do all you ask of me, will you let me die?

Dec 8, 2018

How to start a story

"...Quem sofre fica acordado

defendendo o coração." 

Thiago de Mello

She thought about writing the story of her daughter's life.

It would have to start with Clair de Lune, by Debussy. It was her daughter's favorite.
It was pretty like her, profound, full of mystery and beauty, energy and despair, intensity and resignation, but above all, with awe for life, the universe and all its possibilities.

Awe was what had filled her when she came home from the hospital with her little princess. She was so complete, so perfect. Her heart was full of happiness and energy, that felt like trapped in her chest, almost out of air in admiration the beautiful present that she was given by nature to be able to mother such perfect being.

She remembers she holding her daughter embraced by her husband and all of them surrounded by such warm love that it was as if the universe had stood still watching them.

Intense was her daughter's life. So short, but so intense. So large was the void when she left. In her grief she though she would never be able to write anything. No amount of words would do justice to describe what was having a child like her. It was as if finding the right words would mean confining her daughter's life to the limits of this word, showing her the true extent of her tragedy, her pain, the finality of everything. Her daughter was made of stardust,, she thought. She made herself believe that her daughter's pain was over now, but her life now was free from her body's jail. She had to believe in something to survive.

She wasn't sure why she needed to survive. "You need to survive!" That's what she kept hearing.  She didn't have strength to fight.

Nights were dreaded. The indigenous people of her homeland were right. Bad spirits can haunt you at night if you fall asleep. They sure did. Her nights were tormented with nightmares where painful reality couldn't be forgotten.