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The Blue Steps
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‘Okay, I guess I’m dead.’ I’d reached
that conclusion, upon waking up from the operation, as
I didn’t seem to be in the recovery room. No nurses,
no beeping machines, no oxygen cannula attached to my
nose, no overhead fluorescence lights. I appeared
to be resting on a cool stone floor in a dimly lit
space and not wearing
the cotton gown, with the embarrassing opening in the
back, that I was clothed in when they transferred me
from the gurney to the operating table. Instead I
found myself dressed in a set of sweats, a light blue
hooded top and pants, that felt softer than anything I
have ever worn. There
was no pain anywhere and, when I hesitantly lifted the
lower front of my shirt, I found no bandages covering
an incision that should have been there, right there,
where my ruptured appendix was supposed to be located. I had been
really sick and now I was not.
At first I was pretty confused and, I admit, a
little bit scared but then this wave of well-being
washed over me. I found I was
more curious than frightened. ‘Where was
I? Where
had I landed?’ There
were no walls, no ceiling, just a kind of hazy blue
mist that seemed to extend far beyond any horizon. As I sat up
I became aware of a glittering translucent cobalt blue
staircase in front of me that appeared to lead upwards
and downwards at the same time, very Escherian. As weird as
this seemed it also felt strangely familiar and then I
remembered. Years
ago I had a painter friend who showed me his most
recent canvas, a painting of a foggy blue landscape
with faceless figures standing on a blue staircase. “It’s called
The Blue Steps,” he said, “a place people go after
they die.” Ironically,
he himself had perished in a plane crash soon after he
had shown me that painting. I must have been really
impressed with that artwork for here I was staring at
those same blue steps but my painter friend didn’t
seem to be around.
I hadn’t expected to die so early in my life,
so maybe, if I was patient he would show up and give
me some guidance, if this was where his soul had
landed. While
I sat there, checking the cerulean blue landscape for
other wandering souls, I began remembering my brief
explorations into life after death.
Over the decades I’d given very little thought
to the after-life, especially during my early years. As a young
boy I was exposed to several varieties of
Christianity. Since
my father changed careers quite often we moved around
a lot and so we became ‘Nearests.’ We would attend the
nearest church and that helped to introduce me
to, among others, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists,
Episcopalians, Methodists and Holy Rollers. What I
gleaned, from the experience of visiting those
churches and Sunday schools, was that there were two
beliefs each of these sects shared: the first was that
when you died you went to either to Heaven or Hell and
the second was that if you believed in Jesus Christ
you would live forever.
Unfortunately, midwestern prejudice did not
allow our family to enter a Catholic church or a
Jewish temple so I missed out on those rituals and the
hearing of the Latin and the Hebrew texts. It was much
later, when I was a young adult and on my own, that I
finally ventured into both a Catholic Cathedral and a
Jewish Synagogue.
In my teen years I began to have many doubts
about organized religion and, at fourteen, I rebelled
and walked away from church, any church, never to
return. I
replaced Sunday Morning Services with sleeping-in and
exchanged Wednesday Evening Bible Classes with movies
and pot smoking.
I began to drift away into an Agnostic state of
being.
Later, as a busy adult I didn’t have much time
for religious musings and I put thoughts of my
mortality entirely on hold. The French
are amused by our determination in the U.S. to evade
death by jogging and running, working out, dieting,
plastic surgery, etc.
‘The Americans believe they are going to live
forever.’ When
you are a young adult, and feeling healthy and alive,
it’s true that you believe that you’ll never die. But then one
hits one’s middle years and things began to change as
you hear that old grandfather clock of mortality
ticking away.
Unlike the many good Christians who plan on
‘going into the light’, I, a borderline Atheist, was
not looking forward to a reunion in heaven with my
family. There
were several of them with whom I did not want to spend
an eternity; chatty cousin Patty and dismal Uncle Don
for example. I
mean, we choose our friends but we have no choice when
it comes to relatives.
I know, you don’t have to say it, I’m a
curmudgeon.
As the years flashed by I started to think a
little more about what might happen to me after I
shook off this mortal coil. Was there
really an old bearded dude, sitting on a golden
throne, that nestled in the white clouds above our
heads, who was going to decide whether I should be
allowed into Heaven?
Would his sidekick, that ancient saint Pete,
standing by those gates that are embossed with pearls,
find my name in that big book of his? Or was I to
be led away to an express elevator that goes straight
down into that smoky volcano called Hell where I’d be
roasted on a spit and poked eternally with pitchforks
by little red devils?
Try as I might, I couldn’t believe in this
cartoonish scenario.
If there really was a God (and I had serious
doubts) he had deserted his post a long time
ago---'God has left the building.’ All one has
to do is look around; shootings, starving children,
plagues, wars, cancer, rape, assassinations, rich
versus poor, black versus white and on and on. Who would
want to be God and have to deal with this mess called
humanity?!
However, like most human beings, I wanted to
find something to believe in so I began
reading up on the various great religions and
philosophies. I’m
not an intellectual but I was smart enough to
understand some of what I read and to appreciate the
wisdom of the various authors. I liked that
the Judaic religion believed that Heaven and Hell were
here on earth and not to be found after death. After what
they have had to endure they should know.
I envied the Mormon man who, upon his death,
earned, by living a moral life, his own planet but I
wondered what the Mormon woman earned. And I wasn’t
about to give up my coffee.
That the Quran promises the Muslim male a bevy
of lovely Houris waiting for him in Heaven sounds
inviting and the Muslim woman gets her quota of Houris
as well. But
that’s about all she gets.
I was pretty much turned off by Catholic
purgatory. The
thought of suffering for years in limbo while waiting
to enter the Kingdom of Heaven was not a strong
selling point.
Christian Science is another religion that
believes that the concept of Heaven and Hell is simply
a state of mind and not to be found in an after-life. But I do
believe in vaccinations and antibiotics so I guess I
wouldn’t quite fit in.
I was attracted to Buddhism because of the idea
of reincarnation.
To be able to continue growing and learning,
one lifetime after another, sounded worthwhile. However, I’m
very bad at meditation.
And I wouldn’t want to come back as a snail.
But it was the words of one ancient philosopher
that eventually helped me the most and, as I sat in
front of those blue steps, it came flooding back to
me: ‘What you choose to believe, about what may be
awaiting you after death, will be that which you will
find there.’ Meaning
if I believed in angels with harps or beautiful
dancing girls or drowning in lava or just a black void
that’s what would be there for me. And so I
opted for an open-ended after-life, a place where one
could kind of shop around for different experiences. I didn’t
want to be limited to one eternal path. I’m afraid I
bore easily.
It was while I was trying to determine if I was
responsible for the reality I was now in, that I felt
a touch on my shoulder.
It was like whisper, a feather of gentle wind
and I didn’t jump with fear but slowly turned to see
who or what it was.
The hand on my shoulder was attached to the arm
of a very tall figure shimmering and vibrating like
some aquatic creature, like a giant rainbow trout. It’s face
kept changing, sometimes a visage I thought I
recognized; my grandmother, my uncle, my first-grade
teacher, my dog Rascal---and then it morphed into Ted,
my artist friend.
“Ted! You
made it,’’ I said, delighted to find him standing
there. But
then his face melted into someone I didn’t know, a
rather solemn stranger who spoke without opening his
mouth.
“Begin to choose.”
“I---I’m sorry?”
“Up or down.
It doesn’t matter,” he said, pointing to the
blue steps. For
a moment I flashed
back to my mother reading to me from ‘Alice in
Wonderland.’
“Please---I--I’m---I’m new here. I---I just
arrived and---”
“Choose.” And, with a bright blue flash of
light he, she, it, they, whatever, vanished.
Up or down?
That seemed to be the decision that was
required of me but I stood there in a state of
temporary paralysis.
I had been conditioned by society to think of
‘down’ as a negative---a descent into Hades and ‘Up’
as heading Heavenward.
What to do?
If, at that moment, I had had a coin I would
have tossed it but, as we all know, you can’t take it
with you so I bravely opted for ‘down.’
The steps had no railing so I had to move
slowly while trying to ignore the seemingly bottomless
blue pit that surrounded the stairs. As I
descended, the air around me grew lighter and, after
what seemed like many hours but was probably just
minutes, I began to see a tiny white room far below
me. With
each footstep the room grew in size and I could make
out small figures that appeared to be sitting in
chairs. Then
I saw the battleship-gray floor tiles and a clock on
one wall and a television set on another wall and
windows and---the waiting room! It was the
hospital waiting room and there was my beloved wife
and my son seated side by side. She was on
her cell phone and he was staring up at the TV with a
vacant disinterested look.
One of my fantasies of the after-life was to
become a ghost. To
be able to move invisibly among the living and
therefor maintain a connection to the earth. So here I
was standing next to my wife and son. I whispered.
“Martha, sweetheart, it’s---”
“Nothing yet.
We’re just waiting for the doctor to
come---well, he said it might be awhile.” She spoke
softly into her phone.
I reached to touch her hand but when I felt her
fingers they were very cold. She gave a
little shiver and pulled her sweater tighter around
her shoulders. “I’m
fine. Just
a little chilly. Jason’s here with me. I don’t know
why they keep the air conditioning on so high---or
low---whatever.”
“I’m right here, sweetheart,” I said, hoping
she could hear me.
Nothing.
Well, I had accomplished the invisibility part
and it was very frustrating. It was one thing to be a
participant in life and quite another to be just an
observer. I wanted to let them know I was right there
beside them. I
started to put my arm around Jason’s shoulders when I
heard the automatic doors to the operating room
hissing open. The
doctor entered
and was walking towards my family. Shit! I knew
what he was about to do.
I knew what he was going to say and I didn’t
want Martha and Jason to hear it. I didn’t
want to hear it. But he didn’t even get a chance to
open his mouth. Martha
stood up, saw the look on his face and let out a
strangled sob.
I’m ashamed of what I did next but I couldn’t
bear to watch what was happening. I turned and
ran. I
leapt up the blue stairs, two steps at a time, trying
to block out the cries of grief that were
echoing around me.
Martha had been right when she used to say I
always ran away from unpleasant situations. I was never
good at confrontation or at watching people in pain. As I quickly
moved away from the white room, and my suffering
family, I realized that being a ghost was not the
voyeuristic joy ride I had imagined. To observe
my beloved in such pain and to not be able to comfort
her was a nightmare of pure agonizing torture.
The higher I rose the darker the space around
me grew. I
began to make out stars in the deep blue atmosphere
that rippled all around me. Running out
of breath, I finally sat down on the steps and found
myself gasping and then weeping from a combination of
sadness and awe.
I realized I was mourning the loss of my
contact with the living, with my family and friends,
while at the same time being overcome with the beauty
of this other world.
I hadn’t planned on dying this early in my life
but death works according to its own schedule so I
needed to get over it. I don’t know how long I sat
on the steps. Time
didn’t seem to work the same way here. I slowly
became aware of these loose crystals sparkling on my
lap and scattered all around the steps and realized
that they were the tears that I had been shedding as I
sat in a pile of self-pity. When I stood
up, they dropped onto the steps with these musical
clinks and some of them shattered into diamond-like
pieces. I
picked up one of the unbroken ones and held it close
to my eyes. It
was a perfectly shaped tear but made of glass.
If this was my version of heaven than I had to
have control over what was happening, right? I was
creating what I was seeing. But a
crystal tear wasn’t something that I would have
imagined. What
had I imagined? A
place for exploration was what I had wanted , a place
in which to try new adventures. But these explorations
seemed to unfold on their own. Maybe I needed
to be more open to them
And, as if the universe was eavesdropping, a
row of tall turquoise doors appeared in front of me. There were
three of them, each identical to the other, quite
ornate with unfamiliar symbols painted in silver on
the panels. As I had
requested I was, once again, given the opportunity of
making a choice---which door first? Earlier it
was up or down. Now
it was left, right or center.
Brainwashed, I saw the left door as liberal,
socialistic, communistic---nonsense. Right was
conservative, moral, logical---nonsense. Center:
middle of the road, safe, non-committal---more
nonsense. But
it didn’t matter what door I opened. There was no
way to know what was behind any of them. Each
one had a silver doorknob shaped like a crescent moon
and, once I quieted myself enough to let myself feel
the power emanating from these doorways, the choice
was made for me.
The handle on the left door felt red hot and I
reacted instantly by jerking my hand away. I looked at
my palm, expecting to see a red burn, but it was
unmarked and cold.
The next doorknob, the center one, was icy and
my hand stuck to the handle like a wet mitten to a
frozen lamp post.
I had to blow my warm breath on it to free it
up.
By now I was understandably apprehensive about
touching the handle on the door to the right. I felt like
Goldilocks and the three bears, ‘this one is too hot,
this one is too cold.’
Would this one be ‘just right?’
It was more than just right. The moment
my fingers wrapped around it’s warm crescent moon a
delicious effervescence flooded my body. It was like
my heart was pumping champagne. I pulled the
heavy door open slowly and entered. As my eyes
adjusted to the sapphire blue light that flooded the
space I found myself standing in the center of what
appeared to be a library. Surrounding
me were tall towers of shelves that
reached up into the darkness above. They were of
such a height that I wondered how one could reach a
book that nested up there on the top shelf like a
paper pigeon. In
the center of this space was a long black table that
appeared to be carved out of Obsidian and it’s shiny
surface reflected the image of the lone arm chair that
sat at one end.
Now, I admit I’m a reader, mostly mysteries and
biographies, but this was overwhelming. Here were
acres of volumes that lined these long shelves that
ran off into the distance until they disappeared. I felt like
I did as a child when I made my first visit to our
local library. All
those books---how could a person read all of them? It would
take a million lifetimes. Well, if
this was truly eternity, I now had the time to read
each and every book.
But that couldn’t be the reason I was here
staring at this intimidating archive. I hadn’t
fantasized spending my after-life buried deep in the
pages of a thousand books. And what
exactly was the focus of this compendium of
literature?
Fiction? Non-fiction? History? Biographies? The only way
to find out was to open one of the books.
Every tome was wrapped in a blank dust cover
(blue, of course) with no titles. There was no
way to know what the contents where, so, checking one
of the lower shelves I started to reach for a small
book that looked like an easy choice. It literally
flew off the shelf and into my hands. Momentarily
stunned, I finally opened it expecting to see a title
followed by the authors name, but I found only two
words---Promises
Kept. This title
made it sound like it was a volume of poems by Emily
Dickenson. I
turned to the next page only to find it blank, as were
all the other pages, until a reached the last faded
page. Scribbled
there, in what looked like my own handwriting, was one
short sentence: “I
promise to call the plumber.” I was
dumbfounded. Was
this a cosmic joke?
Was this supposed to be a record book that kept
a tally of all the promises I made during my lifetime
or, more accurately, the record of the one and only
promise that I ever kept?
But this was ridiculous. Surely I
kept more than one promise in my life. True, I was
always very careful about what I promised, making sure
that I could accomplish what I said I would do. Was it that
I had made so few promises? I found
myself getting angry at who or what was in charge of
this illusion. It
had to be an illusion, right? And then I
remembered that I was in charge of all this madness.
I decided then and there to change the
direction of this adventure. I would pick
another book and not let it choose me. ‘Maybe on a
higher shelf’ was the thought that came to me and that
idea had no longer crossed my mind than I found my
body lifting up and heading skyward towards the very
top shelf. One
of my fantasizes of the after-life was to be able to
fly. Sometimes,
in my earthly dreams, I did rise above the world and
it was wonderful.
And now here I was up in the air. I hovered like a hummingbird
and, nervously extending my arm, touched one of the
larger books wrapped, like all the others, in an
anonymous blue jacket.
It felt light for it’s size and once I had it
in hand I attempted to open it. With a
stomach-flipping drop I suddenly started to descend
and I had to hold on tightly to the volume for fear of
dropping it. Once
on the ground I stumbled over to the chair and
clumsily sat down.
After getting my heartbeat back to a more
normal rate I lay the book on the table and prepared
to open it.
Since I had determined I was in charge of all
that was happening I made sure that this volume would
follow my lead and reveal something important---like
the secrets of the universe. Here would
be all the answers to the questions I had been living
with back in my former life. What really
happened to Amelia Earhart, D.B. Cooper and Jimmy
Hoffa? Did
Shakespeare really write all those plays? Did Atlantis
really exist?
I turned to the first page and read the title:
The Book of
Regrets.
What the hell?! Hell. That was it. I was in
hell. Someone
else, probably someone with a red tail and horns, was
running the show.
My only hope was that this was a compendium of
the regrets of famous persons. Quotes from
celebrities like
George Clooney, “I should’ve never played Batman” or
Billy Graham, “I should have studied more and preached
less.” But,
of course, this was not that book. What I was
looking at was a collection of my regrets, a
lot of them, hundreds.
The first regret, on page one, was written when
I was ten years old.
“I wish I hadn’t lied to my mother.” Come on,
give me a break!
I don’t even remember what I fibbed about. This was so
absurd. I
leafed through the pages quickly, fully intent on not
reading any more regrets. But I
stopped at page twenty-five when this sentence caught
my eye. “Why
can’t I stand up to the bullies in school?” Middle
School! Jesus! 24 pages
into this document of shame and I had only just
reached the age of 14.
Gimme a break!
There were at least 12 regrets on each page so
that totaled about 288 so far. How
many would there be by the time I reached the end of
this book?
“I should have spent more time with my family,”
“I wish I’d done more things with my son,” “Why did I
paint our bedroom bubble gum pink?” “I could have been
a rock star,” “Why didn’t I kiss Jo Anne Paterson back
in high school?” Stupid regret after stupid regret. My favorite
was the one I found on the bottom of page 73; “I
should never have eaten that fish taco.”
I stopped reading after that. Enough,
already. Even though there were no
ceilings or walls, in this library from indigo hell, I
felt claustrophobic. No
more books, thank you.
I mean, what would be the title of the next
unpleasant blue wrapped volume, Physical Defects
and Character Flaws? Get me out
of here! I pushed away from the table and made my way
to the exit. For
a moment, I feared the door might be locked but it
opened easily and I stepped out into the azure mist.
The other doors stood to my right like two
giant Druid priests daring me to come into their
realms. My
instinct was to walk away into the swirling fog of
blue light but, admit it, if you saw a magical
turquoise blue door in front of you, you would want to
know what was behind it, right? Maybe it
would lead me back to the arms of my family. I remembered
my hot and cold doorknob experience but
I willed myself to be brave and, very cautiously, I
approached the center door and reached for the
crescent moon. Before
I could test the temperature of the handle it began to
swing open of its own accord. I stepped
back in case the being on the other side of the door
was unfriendly but it wasn’t necessary because there
was no one there.
The first thing I noticed was the music. It sounded
like a melody one would hear at a circus or carnival
but played on a tinny out-of-tune piano. With this
music came the familiar recorded laughter of the jolly
fat lady that you hear playing at every amusement park
and travelling sideshow.
I then became aware of the lights, bright
colored lights of every hue. The space
was so blindingly lit that I had to squint as I moved
through the doorway.
Once inside I stood still and, turning my head
slowly, I took in this rainbow-colored environment. It was like
some kind of fun house.
There was a two-story high yellow slide and a
spinning platform painted with red, white and blue
polka dots and one of those giant rotating barrels
that lay on its side.
You had to try to get through it, as it turned,
by stumbling toward the open end and you had to
accomplish this without falling on your ass. There
was the zig zag walkway that jerked back and forth and
was almost impossible to traverse. At the end
of this walkway, lit up with dazzling neon letters,
was the entrance to the Tunnel of Terror. You know,
that spooky ride that takes you hurtling through the
dark in a little train with all of those scary things
jumping out at you.
Finally, the universe got it right. This was my
idea of heaven.
After making myself dizzy, by spinning,
twisting and shaking my way through this raucous
environment, I
left the bright candy colored world of light and
entered the dark silent void of the tunnel. Feeling my
way around like a blind person I eventually found one
of the carts and eased myself into the front Naugahyde
upholstered seat.
As soon as sat down there was a click and a
grinding of gears and we were off.
I felt the cool air rushing by me as the
rickety little cart jerked ahead. It travelled
noisily along in the dark and then made a sharp turn
to the left. In
front of me I saw, at a short distance, what looked
like a waterfall.
As we approached this wall of water I could
tell that it was flowing directly onto the tracks. I guessed
that it was an image projected onto some sort of door
and, like some of the amusement park rides I had
visited in my former life, this door would swing open
when my little cart ran into it.
With a loud bang and a knee bumping jerk we
pushed through the hinged panel. The effect
of the projected waterfall was very realistic, so
realistic that I imagined that I could feel the water
all around me. However,
when I tried to take a breath I found that I somehow
was really under water.
I was drowning!
I panicked and began thrashing around until I
could feel myself going unconscious. When I woke
up I was sitting safe and dry in my little cart which
was still moving along slowly. To my right
was a diorama of a riverbank and lying on the plastic
grass was the body of a little boy. A man was
kneeling over him giving him mouth to mouth
resuscitation. They were only manakins but it hit me
with such a jolt.
That was me!
I was that little boy.
I was about five and I had been playing near a
river. The
edge of the embankment crumbled and I fell in and, as
I couldn’t swim, I began to go under the water. I remember
the bubbles swirling around me and then nothing more
until I woke up with this stranger, who had obviously
been my rescuer, hovering over me. Because of
this near-death experience I developed a lifelong fear
of water and never learned to swim. But why was
I being reminded of this now? Was this one
of my entries in the Book of Regrets,
not learning to swim?
My cart began increasing its speed and we
rushed forward into the continuing darkness. As we
curved left and right I caught sight of flashing red
lights quite a ways ahead. Getting
closer, I could see another hinged door extending out
over the tracks.
There was a big stop sign painted on the panel
which was illuminated by the flashing red lights.
Evidently my cart didn’t believe in stop signs or
maybe it couldn’t read because there was no reduction
in speed and we slammed into the door with a bone
jarring crash.
Once we had pushed through the door and were on
the other side everything was different. I found
myself squeezed between four passengers and there were
three other riders sharing the seat in front of me. My little
cart had become an automobile---it had morphed into
some kind of a sedan.
What was going on? I took a
good look at the driver and then I understood. Tubby MacRae
and his old Lincoln town car, of course, and we were
flying along a deserted highway at 100 miles an hour.
I knew Tubby from kindergarten right up through
high school. He
was something else, a true rebel from the start. I remember
him telling me what he was going to do after
graduation. “I’m
going to be either a crook or a cop.” He
eventually became the sheriff.
So now I was back in the car Tubby had
inherited from his grandfather and it was late at
night, after a school basketball game, and he was
showing the seven of us how fast it could go. I’m fighting
the urge to tell him to slow down because I don’t want
the guys to think I’m a pussy but I know what’s ahead. And it
happens just like it happened way back then; a deer
runs out from the brush and, wham, the car is bouncing
off into the trees from the impact with the poor
helpless doe. We
land upside down and the rest becomes a hazy blur. I’m in pain
and I close my eyes.
When I open them I’m alone and back once again
in my cart moving past another diorama, this time on
my left. It’s
a gruesome scene of a car wreck, blood and bodies
everywhere. Two
manakins are standing holding on to each other, Tubby
and me. Five
of my high school buddies are lying on the ground
critically injured and one, Steven Taylor, is dead. Five seat
belts for eight passengers. Stupid.
As my cart pulled away from the scene I found I
was weeping. What
is going on here?
Is this me experiencing that cliché about how
your life passes before your eyes as you die? I was
already dead for heaven’s sake! For heaven’s
sake. That saying took on new meaning. Why ‘for
heaven’s sake’? Why
should I care about heaven? It seemed
perfectly capable of taking care of itself. I was the
one who need some TLC.
I wanted this ride down memory lane to end but
my rickety cart just kept rolling along.
We travelled for quite awhile in total
darkness. I
began to wonder if this was it---the void, and that
this was where I would spend eternity. I became
very frightened and was about to reach out into the
inky blackness, in the hope of grabbing hold of some
part of the tunnel structure, when a dim gray light
began to appear in the far distance. Were we
heading for the exit or was this going to be another
disturbing diorama? This
thought was interrupted by my noticing the faint smell
of smoke. It
was a familiar odor but not a pleasant one. As we sped
along I could feel wisps of what I thought was some
sort of fog hitting my face but it soon became more
dense and my eyes began to water. The smoke was gray
at first but soon came at me in waves of black acrid
clouds. I
was choking and coughing and couldn’t breathe and then
I felt myself beginning to pass out.
I was awakened by a flickering red orange light
that filtered through my partially closed eyelids. The cart had
stopped in front of another of the dioramas and I
recognized the scene immediately. I was in my
early twenties and living in a rented house and one
night the blower in the oil furnace somehow caught on
fire, something to do with a fan belt. I never
quite understood what happened. I just know there was
a lot of black smoke and I couldn’t find my way out. So here was a
recreation of the burning house. A manakin,
representing me, was on the ground, once again, with a
fireman giving me oxygen. He had
carried me unconscious out of the smoke and flames to
safety.
I stared at the scene and waited for the cart
to continue travelling down
the tracks to who knows where. However, my
little vehicle seemed reluctant to move on and then it
hit me. ‘Its’
waiting for me.’
I was supposed to do something. Was there a
button to press or a lever to pull? I wanted so
desperately to end this horrible ride, this journey
from one near-death experience to another that I toyed
with the idea of climbing out of my seat and walking
to the end of the dark tunnel. It took
several very long minutes before I finally understood. This trip, I
had been experiencing, was all about how lucky I had
been to escape death three times. As soon as
my brain processed this fact the cart jerked into
action and we sped forward.
As we trundled ahead to what I hoped was the
end of the tunnel I tried to make sense of what had
happened and was happening to me. Was there a
puppet master pulling my strings or was it my
subconscious expressing itself? Was there a
force here at work that I didn’t understand? Was I wrong
about God? Did
he/she exist? Nothing
in this version of the after-life was as I imagined,
well maybe, with the exception of the Blue Steps. If this was
going to continue on the way it had been going I
wasn’t sure I wanted to be here in this world of
unpleasant surprises.
The coal black walls of the tunnel began to
lighten up to a dove gray as the cart rattled forward and I
saw the exit ahead.
The familiar misty blue glow, as we left the
tunnel, was a welcome sight. I could
finally get off this ride from hell. Hell or
Heaven, wherever I was, I wanted to be somewhere else. I missed my
family, I missed being alive. My family
needs me, god damnit!
I should never have died. It wasn’t my
time! It
was a mistake, a celestial error!
The cart rattled to a stop and I hurriedly got
out, not wanting to end up going on another journey
through that Tunnel of Terror. I was angry
and scared and ready to head back to the Blue Steps to
try and find my way out of this grim version of the
after-life. It
was then that I noticed that the third azure door was
standing in front of me, blocking my way. Determined
not to enter one more negative space with who knows
what nasty surprise inside, I stepped to the left side
of the door frame in order to pass around it. It silently
moved left. Stunned
by this maneuver it took me a second or so before I
recovered enough to start walking over to the door’s
right side. The
door swiftly slid right.
After one more attempt to skirt around this
dancing door I accepted the fact that I was being
forced to go through this portal. Obviously, I
had no choice. Remembering
my experience with the burning hot doorknob, I pulled
the cuff of my sleeve down over my hand and placed my
fabric covered palm on the moon shaped handle. I could feel
no heat through the cloth and I realized that it
probably was no longer a threat.
I swung the door outwards and entered. It took me a
moment to figure out what I was looking at and then I
found myself laughing.
I had anticipated something ominous and
threatening but what appeared before me was just an
extension of the fun house. It was a
Hall of Mirrors with an aisle of framed looking-glass
that distorted your image. In one I was three
feet tall and very fat and then, as I moved to the
front of another mirror, I was very tall and very
skinny. The
next mirror seemed to remove my head and the one after
that gave me elephantine legs.
I continued down the aisle chuckling at the
bizarre images that appeared in each of the many
mirrors, and there seemed to be a lot of them. However, the
novelty began to wear rather thin after a while. I stood in front
of what seemed to be the fiftieth one and saw myself,
like I was in all the other mirrors, in my blue sweats
but I noticed that there was no distortion. I was
simply looking at myself gazing back at me---no
giraffe-like neck or hands the size of
watermelons---just me.
It was a bit disconcerting and I found myself
wishing there was a little distortion. I was
uncomfortable staring at this person. Who was this
guy anyway? It
was like I was looking at a total stranger.
I moved on to the next mirror only to find the
same image, the stranger, following me. The
next---stranger---and the next---stranger. I finally
turned away in the hopes that this creepy feeling of
being stalked would dissipate but when I turned back
he was still there.
However, after I had moved further down the
line, I forced myself to confront this doppelganger
and there was a difference. At first I
thought the glass was dirty. The image
was a little hazy and as I progressed along the aisle
it got fuzzier. I
eventually stopped walking and took a long hard look
at the foggy face that was peering out at me. Yep, that’s
me. But
what was beginning to happen to the rest of my body? It seemed to
be fading. No,
not fading. It
was my clothes that were fading. In fact they
were disappearing.
By the time I reached the next mirror I was
standing in my birthday suit, bare naked, nude. It was
shocking to suddenly see myself so exposed. Even though
I was alone, with no other entities around to see me
in the all-together, I was embarrassed to look at what
appeared to be my body so out in the open. There was my
pudgy stomach and love handles and knobby knees and
below-average penis.
As I turned the torso in the mirror around, to
check out my rear end, I glanced down at my own body. To my horror
I discovered that it wasn’t just my mirror image that
was nude. My
blue sweats were gone and I was as naked as my
reflected image.
To stand so exposed, in this Hall of Mirrors,
surrounded by hundreds of images of my sad body was
the final blow. The
universe had won.
I was literally brought to my knees. As I knelt
on the cold stone floor, sobbing like a lost child, I
knew that what my father had said to me so many years
ago, when he heard me whining about some silly
injustice, was not true.
“You know young man, you’re not the center of
the universe!” But
I was the center of the universe because it’s
the only place any of us can be. We can’t be
in anyone else’s head and really know what they are
thinking or feeling.
So the center of the universe is a very crowded
place full of a lot of lonely people. And here I
was.
I collapsed onto the floor and lay on my back. Above me, in
the deep blue darkness, twinkled millions of tiny
dots. My
tear-filled eyes caused them to ripple and swim in
swirls and eddies.
I remember thinking that this is what Van Gogh
must have seen, which only made me weep even more. How blind I
had been when I was alive. If I could
just start over again.
How I had squandered my time. So blasé, so
self-involved, so non-observant. We are given
this precious thing called life and---
My miserable ramblings were interrupted when a
dark shadow slid over my face. I wiped my
watery eyes in an attempt to make out what it was. As my vision
cleared I recognized the tall iridescent figure of the
trout man, he of the changing faces, and I recoiled as
he leaned over me.
He brought his rotating visage up very close to
my tear-stained face and I’ve never been so frightened
in my entire life.
“Choose!”
All I remember after that was a blinding
sky-blue flash and finding myself standing at the blue
steps. The
air felt cold as it caressed my exposed flesh and I
started to wrap my arms around my chest, in order to
warm up, only to discover that I was wearing a
hospital gown. Yes,
one of those with the opening down the back. I stood
staring at the stairs, feeling humble and weak and
confused. The
man of many faces had boomed into my face that one
word: “Choose!” I
looked at the steps going up and then at the ones
heading down. “Choose!”
After turning in a circle in order to take one
more look at this mysterious blue tinted place, this
glimpse of what could possibly be a version of heaven
or hell, I started down the stairs and that’s the last
thing I remember. Transcript
of recorded recovery room conversation on 12/02/20
with patient 2123770 |
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