I will share my NDE. First from what I can recollect I didn't have any of the conventional experiences. First, I don't have my medical records anymore. I was unable to discuss the details of the night for most of my life. After the shooting I went to see my surgeon on follow up care and he wanted me to know, "son, you were as close as anyone can ever be without being gone forever." My parents wanted to talk to me, "about that night..." likewise I was unable to discuss it with them. It wasn't until this past year when I sat down and wrote about my experience in an effort to write a suicide prevention book that I was forced to consider the events of that night when I buried the end of a muzzle 1 inch left of sternum in the middle of the woods and tugged the trigger.

I know before I pulled the trigger I prayed and I took a small King James Gideon's bible with me into the woods. It was approximately 4:45 to 5:00 PM in the evening. I lived 22 miles away from the hospital and the nearest rescue squad was 18 miles away. As I say I was alone in the woods. I know it would take 40 minutes of drive time to deliver me to the surgeon. I reason I went over 90 minutes post shooting.

What I remember: This reality and I hope we can be mature, but it felt like latex. The closer I moved towards the death the more this latex was stretched. The more "thin" that reality was separated from this one. Here healthy and full of this life, that reality is invisible. As the progression of the damage carried its way through me I became "aware" of "voices"... the "voices" (I called the voice "it" most of my life) "It" confronted me a period of time after the round went off. I belive it was an answer to my prayers. It asked me to, "name a reason to live" this is why I say, "Find one reason to live and hold fast to it if you are having a crisis of hope." For a blink of an eye or two, I felt what I believe where my children. One NDE symptom is a life flash forward. Death is outside of this realm of time. "It" gave me directions on how to get out of the woods. Further I remember my body and face "banging off the ground" When I woke up in the ICU I was unable to open my left eye. They told me, "It was due to you dragging your face off the ground in the woods (saw briars, stumps, rocks etc)" I don't remember fully making it out of the woods. It was a struggle to sit and breathe after the sucking chest wound. If I lay down on my side/back I felt like I was drowning. If I set up I used to much energy and that made me breathe faster causing more pain and misery. I cleared the wood line and "It" instructed me to call for help. It was all I could do to whisper let alone scream. Yet my screams carried. My younger brother was in the home a distance away and felt an urgency to come into the woods to work with firewood and thus found me.


When I reached the ER. I was in and out. I never had those, "I went to hell and suffered fire. Or, I went and hung out with Jesus," but I was at peace. I didn't want to die by suicide. My "spirit" was grieving I had done that to me. I wanted to live. I remember the chest tube insertion. That was hell. It's a long spear that the trauma surgeon shoves into the intercostals spaces between ribs. I saw my family walk into the trauma hallway. They were maybe 20 yards away. I remember, I turned my head and looked at them. They covered their face and walked away, grief stricken. I was upset they were gone. I wanted them to know I was fine and okay. I made eye contact with them but they never saw me look at them and make eye contact.

I have sensations of hands gripping my heart. I have a thoractomy scar covering half of my upper body and a bullet fragment remains near my spine. I shot myself on January 24th 1986. The space shuttle went down four days later on a Tuesday. I had been discharged from the ICU and on to a main floor. My head was foggy. I was struggling with ice chips that day. No one pulled a curtain and pulled up a stool to, "talk to me about my shooting..." Yet, as I watched the space shuttle blow out of the sky, I knew exactly where they were going. My thoughts, "They went further than me" going back to that veil. I believe I touched it while they went through it.

As I wrote my book, I listened to my "writer voice" and what my subconsicous mind had to say. I visited a psychiatrist for a year after the shooting. He wanted me to "free write" about what I saw in the woods. He wanted me to access what my subconscious mind knew but blocked from me. As I wrote last year I wrote a scene that touched my heart. It boils down to, "sitting almost on a hillside beneath an illuminating sun light with my feet stretched out. Not wanting to leave the warmth and joy of that place. Not wanting to go back to the cold and chaos. I was at home and wanted "them" to know I was okay and happy". I don't know if that sequence was relevant to an experience.

Sorry for the round about NDE experience but I feel it's important when ever I talk about mine to share it without embellishments. I wish I could remember mine like so many of these other folks that see loved ones and others.