The Negative of the Photograph

[CitM]

My story is a simple one. I'm not from here and here's the secret, neither are any of you.

What this space was before we came to know it as it is now, I do not know. I see the earth, but not the earth.

Each of us has died at least once. Most of you don't know you did. Some of the depression you are feeling is the grief of a loved one you left behind.

Death happens so fast for most of us that we don't even know .. I didn't for a long time. But the last time, when I was 48 I was in a bad car accident. I didn't realize at first what had happened even though things were odd.

In seconds, I felt my glasses removed from eyes that could see light, but not longer see because of the glass. I felt the warmth of the blanket, the ride of the gurney and the 'bang' I heard was not my car colliding, but the bang of the door of the emergency vehicle. slamming shut.

In seconds it happened. But the rest of the nightmare was just getting started. My body mirrored here what was happening to it there. I could hear snatches of conversations as I went along my day here as if they were standing right next to me.

There was brain damage, I don't know what else. If you've been through your own death, really been through it.. and I was like that for two years until I died there, it changes you.

When I see news articles of accidents, sometimes I see the process of people being separated by death. Those that seem to die here, lived there in the accident and those that lived here, died there.

Are we the world of the dead or the living? Is it always like this for everyone? What hurts.. the most... is that in that world, I will never see my kids grow up. My youngest daughter had a nervous breakdown over my death there. I think John donated a kidney so that I would have more years of life there. I wanted to wake up so bad and be there.. I didn't even care what condition I was in.

There is no medicine that can take that pain away. There are no drugs that will let me forget a trauma like this or for them either. They have each other and I have this family which is not like mine really.. but look like them even if they are not exactly the same. And all I can do, is do the best I can, and pray for all of my family everywhere in whatever world they are.

That's my story. I'm a survivor of dying.

CitM