Ginny B's Probable NDE

EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION:

            When I was a year old my half brother, who was seventeen, passed away with Scarlet fever.  He had had Rheumatic fever when he was four years old.  He'd always been a sickly, but angelic child, as his first illness left him with a 'hole in his heart'.  He was a beautiful and talented young man who loved me and taught me to walk.  I adored him.  

When I entered first grade my teacher was very cruel to me.  I was dyslexic and had much difficulty reading.  The teacher would shame me terribly for my inability to concentrate, and read.  I became very depressed.  That same year the winter was severe.  I had to walk almost a mile to school in a padded snow suit and boots through huge drifts of snow.  My mother, too, was depressed.  My father was authoritarian, and dictatorial.  My diet was the typical 1950's meat and potato sort.  I was allowed to eat a great deal of candy, and white bread was typical. There was no consciousness of robust nutrition in our home back then.  My body was very delicate.  I believe I had rickets the first two years of my life as my legs were terribly bowed. 

I remember walking home from school one day during the beginning of a winter blizzard.  I'd been terribly wounded at school again.  It seemed that every day this teacher had it out for me.  I was delicate and 'pretty', with very thin blond hair and pale skin.  The teacher was huge, heavy, had a dark moustache and thick ankles. We were polar opposites. 

Walking home through the difficult and freezing cold I sort of gave up.  I was so sad and depressed I just wanted out of the entire show.  That night I had a terrible sore throat which developed into what they thought was diphtheria.  My left ear became infected.  Our house was always filled with cigarette smoke as both parents were smokers. They put me to bed with a high fever.  No thermometers were used, but I felt I was burning up, became delirious, and went into an altered state. 

My maternal grandmother was a Christian Science practitioner, and so she was called over to visit me after it became apparent that I wasn't improving.  She sat next to my bed and read to me from the Bible and The Science and Health, and prayed.  She sort of lectured me, that what I was experiencing was error.  It wasn't real.  I tried to hear her, but I kept going in and out of consciousness.  I was very ill like this for several months.  I stopped eating.  I had no appetite. I barely moved from my pillow.  I remember closing my eyes and seeing a void.  Everything was black inside.  And then in the distance, if I concentrated there, I would see a tiny white dot a way off in the distance.  Slowly it came toward me, finally rushing at me with a roaring wind sound. Then, everything I saw inside was brilliant, blinding white light.  The brightest light I'd ever experienced.  And then I'd see a tiny black dot way off in the distance, and that would come rushing toward me getting bigger and bigger until everything was all black again.  This same pattern kept repeating over and over endlessly for months. 

Meanwhile my left ear drum popped. The pain of the ear drum bursting and then draining was beyond words, the smell of rotting infection, the delirium.  Mother would change my pillow case over and over.  I couldn't let anyone touch my ear it hurt so much. All I longed for was my altered state, and the dots.  I had a hot water bottle over my pillow for some comfort.  But the only relief from the agony was when the black and white dots would start up again, and I'd escape the pain. 

During this time, I think this lasted two or more months, I ate nothing.  I don't remember drinking much either.  Water sometimes. My sister told me later that during that time I looked like I'd been in a concentration camp, skeletal and white.  

One night the dots started up again and I found myself out of my body, completely pain free and floating above my body in the corner of my bedroom.  I remember thinking that I was going to leave now. I felt glad about that, to leave the pain behind. I didn't want to stay.  Just as I was about to set off away from there I saw my mother come into the room.  She knelt by my bed and prayed and cried. Her beseeching tears touched me deeply.  She prayed that I should be healed. I realized that she really did love me.  I guess I'd not been sure of that before that moment.  I remember deciding to return and give it a go. 

The next morning I woke up.  My fever had broken and I asked mother to bring me some fruit.  Fresh fruit was scarce in Omaha during the winter then.  She brought me a bowl of canned fruit cocktail which tasted like ambrosia.  I ate the entire thing and got out of bed.  I was weak, but pain free and feeling healed. 

Some years later I looked up Streptococcal infections in the Encyclopedia Britannica and found that the bacteria can live for years in rugs and upholstery.  I don't know if that is true, but wondered if I was infected by my brothers bacteria, actually, and/or metaphorically. We both shared a delicate artistic sensitivity and were faced with a father who was a tough guy.  

The first grade teacher who had tortured me emotionally was fired and was committed to an institution.  Mother told me this years later.  She was mentally deranged.

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words? No      

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?          Yes     I'm not sure what you mean here.  The illness itself was very serious, painful and life threatening.

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness?    This is difficult to tell because each state is so different and they all have their intensities.  The floating in the corner of the room that night and seeing my mother walk in beneath me to my body was very clear.  But so was the taking of my first food.  I can still see the cup of fruit cocktail.  The red half cherry that I didn't like because it was too sweet.

How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal every day consciousness and alertness?    More consciousness and alertness than normal

If your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience was different from your normal every day consciousness and alertness, please explain:            This is difficult to tell because each state is so different and theyall have their intensities.  The floating in the corner of the room that night and seeing my mother walk in beneath me to my body was very clear.  But so was the taking of my first food.  I can still see the cup of fruit cocktail.  The red half cherry that I didn't like because it was too sweet.

Did your vision differ in any way from your normal, everyday vision (in any aspect, such as clarity, field of vision, colors, brightness, depth perception degree of solidness/transparency of objects, etc.)?  Yes     I think I've described this above. During the altered state the blackest and then the brilliant light were not normal.

Did your hearing differ in any way from your normal, everyday hearing (in any aspect, such as clarity, ability to recognize source of sound, pitch, loudness, etc.)?
            Yes     I became very aware of the sound of the infection in my ear, as if I could hear the bacteria chomping away and moving about like microscopic worms, and my bodies cells at war with them.

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?     Yes

What emotions did you feel during the experience?            Relief from all pain, stress, anxiety and gloom.

Did you pass into or through a tunnel or enclosure?          Uncertain      I think the dots were symbolically similar to the tunnel experience.  They were like the like at the end of a tunnel in their action.

Did you see a light?           Yes     I've described above about the brilliant light.  It came before I was fully conscious of being outside my body. It would come and go for days on end during the illness.

Did you meet or see any other beings?           Uncertain      I don't remember, but may have.  Vaguely, some visits to other dimensions may have occurred, but I don't have any clear recollections.  Just a sense that this did happen, but it was beyond conscious awareness.

Did you experience a review of past events in your life?    No       The events I described changed my life forever.  When I finally returned to school I was really very far behind the other pupils.  My second grade teacher was a love, and very kind to me and understanding.  She made no demands of me about the reading.  I think she saw that I loved to draw, and so, that Christmas she asked me to do a mural on the wall.  She put up sheets of newsprint and with poster paints I did a nativity scene all by myself. 

When parents night came round everyone complemented me on the mural profusely. I was so proud and happy they liked it that I decided then and there that I would be a painter and that is what I've become. I found my work, my profession, and my joy. This was huge for me. 

Curiously, that very March or April, as the snow was melting I walked to school, and remember thinking how happy I was that I had found that I could draw, that my talent was being recognized, and that I would become a painter. Laying on the sidewalk, just a block from my house, was a T square right in the middle of my solitary path.  I picked it up and knew it was for me.  It was a sign.  I don't know how I knew that this was a T Square, an artists tool, at that age, but I did, and I still have it.