Isabelle L SDE

Experience Description

I was in the hospital room where my 26-year-old son was living the last minutes of his life after five months of rapidly progressing, aggressive cancer. He had fallen into a coma about 15 minutes earlier, and I was alone with him, talking to him.

His breathing was irregular and jerky, almost as though a machine were making him breathe. However, he had nothing attached to him except an IV drip and a nasogastric tube in his nose. He had been using the tube for a week and had continued living at home with his partner until he asked to return to the hospital three days before his death.

His breathing was unusual, but whenever I told him something very important, he would suddenly take a deep breath. Each time this happened, I hoped he would wake up. It also confirmed to me that he could hear me.

Suddenly, I remembered that two days earlier he had asked me to find a song from his childhood. I had managed to find it the day before. I played the song for him on my phone and stared at his face, convinced that hearing it would wake him.

As the song was nearing its end, I suddenly realized that he had not taken another breath. He was no longer inhaling.

Then the entire room seemed to become wrapped in a cloud of very pale white and pale yellow. An incredible feeling of euphoria came over me. I said to him, "We did it, we did it! Thank you for this gift. You gave me an incredible gift!"

When I looked up, the room no longer seemed to have a ceiling. There was only this pale white and pale yellow mist.

I did not cry or scream. Instead, I felt tremendous joy, as though we had succeeded at something I had never dared to hope for. The feeling was more like the relief that comes after giving birth than the despair of watching your only child die.

About thirty minutes later, the nurses came and asked me to leave the room for five minutes so they could lay him down properly and clean him up a little. I went outside to see my loved ones who were waiting for me. They thought something had happened to my mind because my expression of great joy was so incomprehensible to them under the circumstances.

The moment of his death remains with me like a gift that is always present. It feels almost like a parallel moment in time. Whenever I focus on it or talk about it, that incredible feeling of euphoria returns and fills me again.

Background Information:

Gender: Female

Date of NDE: 10/15/2023

NDE Elements:

At the time of your experience, was there an associated life-threatening event? No

How do you consider the content of your experience? Entirely pleasant

Did you feel separated from your body? No

How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness? At the moment when I left my son's face to look toward the ceiling from where this misty white yellowish light was coming
This instant is extremely engraved and I feel and relive it with the same intensity

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness? More consciousness and alertness than normal

Were your thoughts speeded up? No

Did time seem to speed up or slow down? Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning
I don't know how long it lasted and it is still there today, like a continuous time, without end

Were your senses more vivid than usual? Incredibly more vivid

Please compare your vision during the experience to your everyday vision that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience I cannot say because I saw nothing more than this misty light that filled the room and the whole sky since the ceiling no longer existed

Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience I heard nothing particular except my own words that I heard normally

Did you seem to be aware of things going on elsewhere? No

Did you pass into or through a tunnel? No

Did you see any beings in your experience? No

Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased beings? No

Did you see or feel surrounded by a brilliant light? An unusually bright light

Did you see an unearthly light? Yes
It was a misty light very white and light yellow at the same time, like sparkles of both colors at the same time but with more white

Did you seem to enter another world? Some unfamiliar and strange place
I felt that this luminous mist opened onto something else, I knew it continued very far, very high above the hospital room

What emotions did you feel during the experience? I was euphoric, I only wanted to thank my son for giving me this gift of sharing his death that I felt as a passage to cross where he was going toward happiness.

Did you have a feeling of peace or pleasantness? Incredible peace or pleasantness

Did you have a feeling of joy? Incredible joy

Did you feel a sense of harmony or unity with the universe? I felt united or one with the world

Did you suddenly understand everything? Everything about the universe
It's as if I knew that death was not sad, that one just had to successfully pass to something else, like for a birth, as if the only hard moment was the passage

Did scenes from your past come back? No

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure? Uncertain
I knew that the luminous mist continued very far but I did not know if there was a border

Did you come to a border or point of no return? No

God, Spiritual and Religion:

What was your religion prior to your experience? Unaffiliated - Atheist

Have your religious practices changed? Yes
I cannot say if my beliefs evolved because of this experience or because of the loss of my son whose presence I necessarily need to feel to resist suicidal urges. I now believe in other simultaneous realities that are in all this void that has a mass that is in our body and all around until the "end" of the universe, realities that our brain prevents us from seeing so that we remain adapted to our own reality. I now practice meditation daily. I practice intuitive writing at the end of my daily meditations and I have found that it provokes "signs" linked to my son to whom I ask questions during these meditations. I had been practicing yoga since 2010, I still practice it. I feel the difference between thoughts that come from my brain and intuitions that cross my mind without me thinking about the subject.

What is your religion now? Unaffiliated - Atheist
I never had a religion and I was raised in a very strong atheism. I did not believe in life after death, despite the disappearance in the ocean of my first love when I was 18. Today, I believe it is impossible that death is the end of everything. I have been passionate about physics (classical and quantum) and astronomy since the death of my son, who was a little interested in it but had not managed to interest me before his death. Having many inexplicable "signs" linked to realities related to my son, and fortunately often in the presence of loved ones who accompany me, I am now much less Cartesian, materialistic than before, whereas before, I mocked what I called the "naivety" of spiritual people because I did not think that science had already shown that matter was a near illusion.

Did your experience include features consistent with your earthly beliefs? Content that was entirely not consistent with the beliefs you had at the time of your experience
Already explained in my response about religion.

Did you have a change in your values and beliefs because of your experience? Yes
Apart from my certainty that death is just a passage, the other changes I mention next are not necessarily from this experience but especially from another lived 1.5 years later, from my listening and reading books, interviews, conferences on astrophysics, quantum physics, NDEs, signs and synchronicities, etc., and from the fact that I no longer have a child. I no longer judge anyone, lack of money no longer worries me at all, I no longer find anything serious, nothing frightens me anymore, I am convinced that plants and animals have an intelligence at least equal if not greater than ours, I am convinced that the past does not exist but that we "download" with our brain each memory of the past in a "cloud" at every billionth of a second of our life, I am convinced that space does not really exist, that we are all a single particle that knows everything about everything.

Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice? No

Did you encounter or become aware of any beings who previously lived on earth who are described by name in religions (for example: Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, etc.)? No

During your experience, did you gain information about premortal existence? No

During your experience, did you gain information about universal connection or oneness? Yes
I felt that my son was joining a space where he would not be alone or in pain

During your experience, did you gain information about the existence of God? No

Concerning our Earthly lives other than Religion:

During your experience, did you gain special knowledge or information about your purpose? Uncertain
One must accept death without fearing it

During your experience, did you gain information about the meaning of life? No

During your experience, did you gain information about an afterlife? No

Did you gain information about how to live our lives? Yes
Death is not dangerous, it is a relief, a passage that does not frighten

During your experience, did you gain information about life's difficulties, challenges and hardships? No

During your experience, did you gain information about love? Uncertain
In fact, I felt that there was nothing more to fear about anything, that everything was normal, coherent

What life changes occurred in your life after your experience? Large changes in my life
Today, meditating to feel the connection with my son, writing down all the "signs" that come to me every day, learning about physics, listening to the stories of my friends who have had NDEs (I discovered after my son's death that 11 friends of mine whom I had known for years had experienced them), sharing with other bereaved parents and supporting my friends who are dying of cancer is the center of my existence.

Have your relationships changed specifically because of your experience? Yes
I can only be with perfectly sincere people who do not spend their time criticizing others. I can no longer be in public places where there is aggression, useless haste, etc., but that, I don't know if it's the experience or the fact of having lost my son that makes life seem useless and absurd to me

After the NDE:

Was the experience difficult to express in words? Yes
I have the feeling that there were many other things in that moment but I no longer remember them

How accurately do you remember the experience in comparison to other life events that occurred around the time of the experience? I remember the experience more accurately than other life events that occurred around the time of the experience
I remember roughly the moments before but hardly remember anything of what happened after that moment and for weeks after my son's death, where the time of my life with others seemed to dissolve as it unfolded, like an open fan being closed, while this moment of the experience itself is like a parallel time always there, like a treadmill under the time of my pseudo-life that unfolds.

Do you have any psychic, non-ordinary or other special gifts after your experience that you did not have before the experience? Yes
I really have the feeling of knowing what people really think, really feel and, when there is a gap, I strongly feel the discrepancy with what they say they think or feel. I have the feeling of knowing what plants, insects, birds, animals in general want. I apparently have an ease in entering a modified state of consciousness in meditation that astonishes the one who initiated me after my son's death.

Have you ever shared this experience with others? Yes
A few weeks, maybe even the day after his death. They listened to me attentively, I don't know what they said to each other, I didn't ask.

Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? Yes
My son had introduced me to Stéphane Allix's documentary on NDEs ("Enquêtes extraordinaires") 7-8 years earlier I think, and I had discovered that 3 of my friends had had one, and 2 of them told me they had already talked to me about it well before that year 2015-2016 when I discovered this documentary but I didn't remember. I had been a tiny bit interested in it between that year 2015-2016 and my son's death because I was finally dealing with the mourning of my first love that I had buried in repression for 25 years.

What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened? Experience was definitely real
Because it was the moment of my son's death and that moment is there all the time. This misty light had indeed invaded that room.

What do you believe about the reality of your experience now? Experience was definitely real
Because it was the moment of my son's death and that moment is there all the time.

At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience? Uncertain
I lived 1.5 years later an even stranger experience that I will tell in another message.

Did the questions asked and information that you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience? Yes
The questions really allowed for a good account of it