I remember going to bed happy that night.  As a special education teacher, I was on Thanksgiving vacation.  I was planning on going to San Diego to visit my family.  My partner and I had laid around all week binge-watching everything we could on Netflix, and life was good.

When we went to bed, I remember thinking, "I'm gonna take melatonin because I want to sleep late tomorrow."  I don't remember going to bed or falling asleep.  Out of a dead sleep, I heard a voice in my head, so loud, "WAKE UP!"  I felt jolted awake with electricity and kind of jumped right out of the bed.  I was half asleep but thought I had to take a piss and I did.  I suddenly began to sense something was wrong - very wrong.  I felt like I had been working out; my heart was beating fast and I was breathing heavy.  "But why?” I thought, “You are asleep, not at the gym."  I tried to lay back in the bed and do some deep breathing exercises; it just wasn't working.  I got up again and kind of walked into the living room when time slowed down and all the light changed color.

Suddenly I was overcome with the feeling that this event had already happened.  I felt I was having a memory of something I already knew about.  Everything was glowing with this aura of yellow and pink light.  I thought this was all because I had high blood pressure or something so I tried to distract myself by wiping down the kitchen counters. Everything was so slow and then a feeling came over me. I knew I was dying.  Right now.  I've had lots of times in my life where I've thought, "I'm dying!" but now I knew it. When you are dying, you know it.

Everything was going weird; the apartment was lit by a strange light that was coming from nowhere and everywhere.  I woke my partner up and remember saying as calmly as I could, "Get your phone and call 911. I'm dying."  Somehow I ended up on the couch, arms spread wide, trying to breathe, gasping, drowning, panicking; the horror of the situation was overwhelming.  The pain in my body was so intense, I fought and fought, but it spread up my body to my neck and I fell forward.  I just remember thinking, "Oh my god, I'm only in my underwear and they are totally inappropriate to die in,"  then black.  I was later told that by the time the paramedics arrived my head was grey and blue and my body was bright red.  My body was swollen from all the muscles seizing and beginning to die.

I'm in blackness now.  Total thick velvety blackness and it's all around me. I feel fine, safe, happy, and I am me but - something is not right.  I didn't care, I wasn't scared but something was just odd.  Then I could hear voices, people talking but I couldn't hear what exactly they were saying. I heard the chime of the elevator, the slam of car doors.  I knew I was in this ambulance but I was in black. I think they are talking about me but I'm not sure.  Then awake with a jolt. Alarms going off inside the ambulance. I remember thinking, "Wow, I'm in an ambulance!". More alarms, lots of frantic activity, someone is screaming, "He's Crashing,” something about 94-degree body temperature, no blood pressure.  I was actually getting pissed off. I was in black again, I was fine, there was nothing wrong, what are they talking about? I just remember thinking, "There is nothing wrong with me!"

I felt I was there in my body and I was in a hospital emergency room.  I sensed lots of people scurrying around me.  I heard things like core temp, blood pressure, heart-stopping, machines, beeping, alarms.  They put a thermometer like a long wire up my butt to get a core temperature reading.  I couldn't move or talk but I knew what was going on around me.  Then I was awake, eyes open. Some guy was pressing a sonogram machine or something hard into my stomach or pushing it up by my breast bone.  I remember I told him to fuck it off because it hurt. I kept saying, "There is NOTHING wrong with me."  I think one of them said, "Oh yes there is!"

Next thing, I am out of my body.  I'm up in the air, like 8 feet looking down.  I'm me; I have the same mind and I am looking around.  I looked over to the left and someone was there. I didn't need to look at it. I saw it through my peripheral vision and it was like a friend, someone I knew for a long time.  I did notice that time was all crazy; a second was an hour and an hour was like a second.  My overall thought was, "Wow, how cool." 

I looked into the hallway and there were these paramedic guys there. There was an African American lady who I thought was the ambulance driver. They all looked really concerned and I thought, "Wow what's going on with them?"  Then I saw my partner; he was there in the hallway, and he looked so short compared to the paramedic guys.  He looked horrified.  I was thinking, "Why could they possibly be so upset?”

I felt kind of like I was at a baseball game, up in the stands, looking down at the game now.  I see a hospital table down below and a guy on it.  He has a beard, he kinda looks like me.   Slowly I realize it is me -- It is me!   At the same time, the person next to me sent the understanding and I said at the same time, "I'm dead!"  There were people working on me and I'm sensing this big bright light behind me.  I know there is no roof or walls behind me, just like a big void.  I could sense it.  Black on the outside, with light in the middle.  I feel great.  I'm sensing there are all these people standing behind me, but I never turn around to see them.  I can just feel them.  I feel like who I was always supposed to be.  Everything was so clear, I could see so well out of both eyes.  I understood and felt what everyone in the room was thinking and feeling.  Everything made sense to me.  I saw myself like some old clothes laying on the floor and I really didn't want to put them back on.

There were no words, but this person communicated, "Do you want to go back?” and “Why don't you go back?" in the same thought and feeling.  I hesitated.  I didn't really want to go back to my stupid life.  Then I'm being pulled fast.  Backward and up and back into the air.  "Me" on the table is disappearing way below.  Then in this weird split-second 5-hour thing, I felt absolute and total love and acceptance.  Unconditional; god, I guess.  Like nothing I have felt.  I can't explain it.  I just don't have the words.  Then in a second, I felt what everyone was feeling in the room: Adam - the doctors - the paramedics -and I felt all the students I have ever worked with in my life, at the same time.  I was like, wow that's a lot of kids with disabilities.  I never thought about it before.

Now, I am noticing that the "me" on the table is being held in the arms of some lady and I stop moving backward and start moving back down towards me.  She is holding me like a mother or something.  I didn't believe in angels or virgin marys, but something like that.  And the feeling was amazing, it just so touched me, and it moved me like nothing else ever has.  Then I just thought, really ambivalently, "Whatever! I'll go back."  The next second I am slammed into my body, my eyes open, and I am hurting again.  I pass out.

This just happened to me, so I still can't make sense of it all.  I later learned that I had actually died in the bed before I woke up.  My doctor explained that my heart went into a V-tach fatal arrhythmia, my body temperature was so low because I had been dead.  Whoever screamed WAKE UP in my head saved my life.  If I hadn't of thrown myself out of bed, I would just be dead now.  Hard to wrap your mind around.