I Don't Feel Afraid

I felt an incredible sense of light and peace and love. Where is my dad? And he spoke the words out loud. What happened next remains crystal clear in Carl’s mind. I just had this profound shift happen. This feeling of being with my father came to me. Not being with my father as we had been earlier that year right here on the porch but being with my father as it felt when I was a little boy. That feeling of Everything’s all right. You’re with your dad. Everything’s gonna be fine. With that feeling came an overriding sense of what Carl identifies as profound peace. It just calmed me down. I knew everything was fine.

The Good Life

He was there with me. And he was going on to the next thing, whatever that was. Whatever that is. Carl was struck by the fact that the depth of this feeling was like a vibration, something deep in my bones, in every fiber of my body. It was physical, like a switch had been flipped. Carl has never been a religious person. While he accompanied his parents to church as a child in Florida, I haven’t ever attended religious services of my own accord. I was trained in the sciences, so I come with a healthy dose of skepticism, but also with a real reverence for the natural world and a deep understanding of not having the answers. Carl’s experience on his front steps ultimately became a source of strength for me. About four years after his father died, a business partnership failed, and Carl found himself pushed out and struggling with what to do next. During one restless night, he got up and went for a walk. Again, he was struck by the sensation of really feeling like my dad and my grandmother, who had passed a number of years before that, were there with me and for me, giving me strength in that time of need.

I'm Not Afraid To Make A Fool Of Myself

Carl’s powerful sense of his father’s presence did not end his grief, but it did change his perspective, and it became a source of comfort. I miss my dad, and I wish I could call him up and be with him and spend time with him. I grieved and I was sad, but it doesn’t feel like a tragedy. You don’t really know how prepared you are, but I do feel at ease with it. I don’t feel afraid. Comfort, however, comes in many forms. It may be immediate, as in Carl’s case, or it may evolve over time. A fascinating aspect of the shared death experience is the individuality of the interpretation, and the changes that the experiencer undergoes. My mother was very nurturing and very loving. My problems were her problems. I didn’t have to do anything but care for my child. When Madelyn and her husband later separated, It was so painful, she recalls, adding I hadn’t told my mother because she adored him, and I was afraid to tell her.

We Never Change

Although she was only in her late fifties, Madelyn’s mother had already suffered several strokes due to complications from an aortic valve replacement. I didn’t want to upset her. But at one point I was in her home, and I collapsed, sobbing on her bed. And she held me, she rocked me. She said that I should trust myself, and that she loves me. Only you know what’s good for you,’ she told me, Trust yourself. For Memorial Day, Madelyn’s family had plans to gather at her parents’ beach house in New Jersey. Madelyn recalls that she was going to arrive one day late. I got a call saying, Mom had a stroke, get here. Madelyn arrived to find her mother unconscious, on life support. Her family was sitting vigil in the hospital waiting room. There were maybe fifteen to twenty people praying, people from the community, rabbis, my family, my cousins, aunts, uncles. My mother was the one person I could count on. When it was Madelyn’s turn to be in the hospital room with her mother, alone, she saw a huge presence, on the left side, over her bed. This presence felt heavy and intense to Madelyn. It conveyed to her that there was no negotiating to be done, the final decision had been made. Looking back, Madelyn says, I felt like the purpose of that presence was to stand over my mother, and protect her, and usher her. But her personal response in that moment was overwhelming. I was knocked to my knees and began sobbing. She describes the sensation as feeling as if my soul was being peered into. There was no judgment, she adds. It was a witnessing of my whole being, my whole life, everything I had ever done. And in front of her was her comatose mother. She was still being kept alive, her heart was going, she was being kept breathing artificially, while her body was breaking down. It was so physically painful for me to see her in that condition for several days. I felt like she needed to be set free. She explains that in the Jewish tradition, We light candles, the women light candles to usher in the Shabbat at twilight. You light the candles and cover your eyes as you say the blessing. At that moment, when you remove your hand, you behold the light anew. When Madelyn removed her hand, There was this blinding light that filled the room for me. It was so bright, I couldn’t open my eyes. It was so profound, more profound than anything I had ever experienced up until that time. No one else in her family could bring themselves to do it. It just felt that was what her soul and spirit wanted and needed. It felt very significant for me, to be the one to set my mother’s soul free in a kind of way. Setting free of a soul had another resonance to Madelyn. We sat on the floor.