As you remember from my previous blog post, I’d split my backstory into 2 parts – telling you about my journey from horses to corpses with a blood infection, coma, and near-death experience along the way. Now that we are all caught up, I’ll search my brain for the right words to describe how truly amazing it was for me.
I recall nothing o the accident, ambulance, ER, helicopter flight, or ICU and that doesn’t surprise me. As I see it, memories are objects created from the electrical impulses within the brain – a fleshy organ that was broken, swollen and poisoned within my body’s shattered skull. Rendered useless, my brain was unable to create those memories for me.
But I know now that I am not defined by my body alone. That broken mass of corporeality lying in the hospital bed tangled in a web of tubes and whispered prayers was no longer me. It was the vessel used by my spirit to function on an earthly plane – to fit in with the rest of our humanity.
I’m doing my best to describe my out-of-body experience in terms that are understandable and seemingly sane. But I can tell you that once your soul departs from your body, you know – with every “fiber” of your spectral being – that your flesh, bone and blood were meant to be given up. And you’ll be happy to do it!
As it’s often described by others (trust me, I’ve researched other people’s experiences after having my own… probably for validation and a sense of fellowship), my spirit levitated from my body and I suddenly found myself above my hospital room looking down on the goings-on as if I was watching an animated diorama of the ICU. I saw relatives in my room beside my bed. I saw medical professionals bustling about the hallways. As I continued to soar higher and higher, I even saw my concerned friends and family navigating the hospital corridors to find my room.
Then it went to black.
Everything vanished. No bright light greeted me. No tunnel beckoned. I found myself in a deep dark nothingness. If the afterlife has a waiting room, I was in it. But instead of the awkward chair spacing you’d find in a doctor’s office, I was comfortably alone. And instead of corny Enya-esque background music, I was met with a beautiful silence.
Then it was my turn. It was like my name was called. but without sound. I became immediately aware of another presence with me in the darkness. It was higher and bigger and more important than me, but instead of feeling intimidated, I felt overwhelmingly loved and accepted.
Still in the glorious darkness of death’s foyer, the presence asked me a simple question. Using telepathic communication rather than a voice with sound waves, it gave me a choice.
Would you like to continue on, or go back?
Within an instant, I felt as though I was being buried alive in the most miserable emotional pain I’ve ever known. I recognized it as the emotions of those I loved. I experienced my mother’s growing deep, dark depression as she watched her child die right before her eyes. I felt my father’s dreams crumble just out of his grasp. His horse training livelihood had all but killed his youngest daughter. The pain and guilt was too heavy to bear. Then I heard the prayers of those I loved as they hoped against hope that I would pull through.
That’s when the physicians and neurologists descended upon my parents. “We’ve done everything we can do,” they started to explain. “If you believe in a higher power, now is the time to pray for a miracle.”
Then it was decision time for my soul. Do I embrace the awaiting love and comfort of the afterlife? Or do I return to my mangled corpse, take my chances with recovery, and hopefully end the furious emotional battles wages by my family and friends?
I did what I thought was right even though I was warned that it would not be easy. I figured that the afterlife will be waiting for me no matter what I chose. If I went back and took my chances returning to a broken body, I could try my best to make the most of a very unique earthly experience. Besides that, I could potentially restore my mother’s faith and my father’s dreams!
Without a word, my decisions had been made. Then *WHOOSH*… I fell backward, falling into my flesh and back into a brand new life. Waking from the coma was easy. I was, however, completely unprepared for the challenges that lay ahead of me. My essence was trapped within an invalid body, but my new roots of faith kept me grounded and inspired.
I struggled through my recovery, relearning to be human again – to think, to speak, to walk. I used a walker because the right side of my body lagged behind me as though I’d suffered a stroke. Between my bouts with physical therapy in town, a speech therapist would come out to the ranch to work with me one-on-one. It was a vigorous team effort trying to get me back into school to start my senior year and hopefully finish high school.
One particular memory from that time is less fuzzy than the rest. I can recall sitting in a recliner with my walker beside me one morning. My grandmother was sitting in her wheelchair in the livingroom with me and she was calling the high school superintendent on the telephone. When he answered, my grandmother gasped and reached for the remote control to turn on the television.
The date was September 11th, 2001.
My healing brain was in no position to grasp the severity and reality of the television images. But whose brain was really, truly up to the task that day anyway? The nonstop video relays of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center’s North Tower. The cameras already trained on the smoldering New York City skyline for the attack on the South Tower by a second airplane jus a few minutes later. I thought I was watching a video game. This couldn’t be real. Nothing felt real! In fact, it wouldn’t feel real for me until 4 years later when I would take a break from a modeling gig in Manhattan to visit the massive expanse of nothingness at Ground Zero during the rebuilding process.
Watching it all unfold, my head felt heavy and my heart bottomed out. My spirit raged within my reanimated corpse. Why God!? WHY!? Why did I come back to see such ugliness!?
I was upset. We all were. There was nothing anyone could do. There was nothing God could do. Humans make their own decisions, after all, and there are some incredibly evil souls out there.
Over the course of my body’s recovery, I would come to understand my soul’s true calling. I would use my own deeply personal near-death experience to help others through the rigors of death. I am in a unique position. I am a mortician who does not fear death because I know for an absolute fact that it’s not something to be scared of or hide from. My restored faith gives me the strength I need to help people as they trudge through feelings of grief and loss. That is why my career dreams made the dramatic leap from horses to corpses.
