Fifteen months ago, I was hit from the driver’s side by a tractor trailer going 80 mph on I-95.
It was on my way home from work, at 8:24 at night. I had made the journey at least 100 times before with no issues, not even traffic tickets, but that night, he didn’t see me when he changed lanes, and he sent me careening into and over the guardrail until I landed somewhere upside down in the wooded swamps that line Delaware’s highways. Five different people called 911.
The first time my heart stopped beating, it was hundreds of feet in the air in a helicopter evacuating me to Christiana Hospital because my lung collapsed and I couldn’t breathe. I was dead for a total of 16 minutes, with EMTs and flight nurses pumping my heart for me with the sheer resilience of their biceps.
The second time was on the operating table when they drained the blood building up between my brain and skull. That was shorter, five minutes. I was in a coma for the next 53 days.
And I have some tips for the living reader, because death isn’t what they tell you it is in cartoons and Sunday school.
There is a road. When you die- which isn’t like a flash moment but more of a gradual process -you slowly begin to come to on a straight road that stretches forever. It is always nighttime, but there are street lamps. They are evenly spaced so that there is always one far enough ahead of you to make it appear as though you are racing towards a light. The light. Many people mistake this for God or Heaven or the ceiling light of the operating room, but it is the street lamps.
When I opened my eyes, I was traveling down the road in a car that no one was driving. I imagine it may have been a horse or a carriage or simply walking for those who died in the past- I like to think that death evolves with the living world. I was in the passenger seat and strangely calm, painless. “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver was playing on the radio.
Though the shadows rippled around shapes that looked like houses, trees, and other cars, I could not make any of them out. There were no other vehicles on the road. It may be alarming at first, but do not try to stop the car. You will not be able to reach over and turn the steering wheel, and when you look down below the driver’s seat, you won’t find any brakes. Maybe the song you hear won’t be John Denver, but even if it is, you won’t be able to change the radio.
I can’t tell you how long you will cruise. Time is different in death; it’s stickier, like molasses. When the initial panic subsides, you will resign yourself to the song, and the formless shapes outside the window, and the lights you are headed towards but never quite reach, and you will sink back against your seat and wait. You will know you are waiting, but you won’t be sure what for, not until the car rolls to an easy stop and the doors unlock.
It will still be dark, but one-by-one, the stars will start to fade back into the sky as it gets gradually bluer. If you’re anything like me, you will continue to walk at first, because the edges of the road still won’t have any solid shape and you may be hesitant to head off the well-lit asphalt. Only as it begins to get lighter will you see the trees, tall, black pines tipped with snow (though you won’t be cold), stretching up just a few meters higher than what you would see in the living world. In between the trees, there will be paths cut through leading to places you cannot see. Though you will swear you saw the outlines of houses on your drive, you won’t see a single one now.
And there will be no street lights. You will not remember them ever having blinked out, but at some point they did. You are left with only the trees, sporadic paths, the snow, and the road.
No matter where you stop or what path you choose, you will go in the same direction. Don’t rush to figure anything out; you will have time. I’ve told you about the molasses. Sixteen minutes in the living world was days for me. Maybe weeks. Maybe months. It doesn’t matter.
A word of caution: do not step off the path for any reason once you veer off the road. It doesn’t matter if you hear the faint cry of a child from deep in the pine forest, calling for help. Understand that there is no child. There is never a child. If you are confused and stubborn enough to run after the voice, you will find that as you get deeper into the forest, the “child’s” voice does not get closer, and then you’ll be lost among the trees. Once that happens, there is no advice I can give that will help you.
Do not turn back. You are no longer welcome on the main road, and if you manage to find it again, it will be what the dead call “high noon.” You do not to be on the road at high noon. Remember the shapes you saw? They were not houses.
So just walk forward. It’s safest not even to look behind you. Up until this point, you will have been alone on the road, but on the path, sometimes you may run into others as their paths off the road begin to merge with yours. They are mostly harmless, often just as frantic as you will probably feel, and they may even sit down in the middle of the path and sit numbly in shock, just trying to process. Let them do this…everyone needs time to adjust. You can even join them if you’d like, for as long as you’d like. The light will not fade until you get where you are going.
Watch out for anyone who is not nervous and walks confidently down the paths. It means they have died before.
More and more people will join you in various states of disarray. No one comes over to death disfigured, even if they were in life, but they may still be bleeding, and gunshot victims may have holes. People who died in fires often smoke, and smell like char. I once saw a young man walking next to me with the noose still around his neck.
Eventually, the forest will clear into a meadow, with the path continuing on into purple mountains beyond it. The meadow is planted with sunflowers as tall as a grown man that droop slightly forward so it looks like they are staring down at you. Pay close attention to the buzzing you hear from deep inside them, if you get that close at all.
In the center, there will be an A-framed house made of black wood that looks like a triangle sticking out of the ground. It will have one window at the top, and the outlining wood will be painted yellow. Whatever you do, don’t go inside. I know it’s been a long walk, I know, but it isn’t worth it. Listen? Hear the buzzing? Walk away from the house. Even when your compatriots, smoking and bleeding, curiously stumble towards it through the meadow, walk away from the house.
They have taught you that the righteous go to Heaven and the evil go to Hell. One is up and one is down. This is not true. In death, things are intermingled and not so easy to distinguish, and there are many, many ways to get to Hell.