Bonnie B

When I was six years old I contracted diphtheria, was taken to hospital where I stopped breathing and died. I had been sick for several days, with a terrible earache in my left ear, and then it started in my right ear. My mother had been trying to treat me with drops of warm oil, but it didn't help. I became sicker, and less responsive, and I remember daddy leaning over me as I lay on my bed. He tried to talk to me, and tried to get me to talk to him, but I felt disconnected, and unable to focus on him. I must have lost consciousness because the next I remember he was carrying me into the doctor's office. The doctor took a swab of my throat and daddy carried me into an exam room and laid me on a bed while the doctor looked through a microscope. Suddenly he yelled at daddy, (who was standing next to him) 'Get her to the hospital immediately! She's got diphtheria!' I remember only part of the drive to the hospital, and then I woke up in a bed covered with something I didn't recognize. Mother later explained this was a canvas tarp, used to create an oxygen tent. Since I was so young, I didn't know what oxygen was, or why I was in a tent I couldn't see out of. I thought that tent was what was keeping me from being able to breathe, and started to fight to get out of it.

Nurses came in and gave me many shots of penicillin (I'm very allergic now) but I kept getting worse, and felt as though I couldn't breathe. I was in fact breathing; I was gasping in huge deep gulps of air, but somehow it felt as though I wasn't breathing at all and that I was suffocating. I wanted to lie down, but every time I did, I would be unable to breathe and would feel as though I was going away somewhere. When this happened, I would jerk up to a sitting position again and try to breathe in enough air. Mother, who was sitting in a chair beside the bed, would tell me to lie down and I would be fine. I told her repeatedly that I couldn't breathe, and she would tell me again to just lie down and I would be fine. I have no idea how long this went on, with me gasping desperately for air, sitting up then lying down, then jerking up again when I would stop breathing. But gradually I got weaker and it grew harder to sit up and stay conscious. I must have finally gotten sick enough that I could no longer fight, because at one point, I lay down on the bed and stopped breathing and that's when I died. It was not a 'near' death experience, it was death.

I heard a loud buzzing and felt that I was in a total darkness and then I left my body. I didn't know at first that I had left my body; I was aware that I was floating above the bed, and that I was somehow very, very different. The first and most vivid sensation I had was that there was some place I wanted, HAD, to go to, and I knew I had to get out of that room to be able to go. I went up, trying to go, but I was stopped at the corner of the room where the walls and ceiling met. I looked down and saw the bed covered with the canvas tarp, and mother sitting on a chair beside the bed. Her purse was on the floor beside her chair. Her hands were folded in her lap and her head was down. I wonder if she was praying. I realized that I had no physical body, but I was still me. And I wanted desperately to go. There was a 'place' I wanted to be - a light - a beautiful, golden, brilliant light of pure love and acceptance. But no matter how I tried, I was unable to get out of the room. I could 'feel' the solidity of the walls and ceiling against my back, and knew I was supposed to be able to go through it and beyond, to the light, but I couldn't. I don't know how I knew I was supposed to be able to go through the solid walls of the hospital, but I did. I also knew that the place I wanted so badly to go to was 'HOME.' I was allowed to keep some memories, but there are others I can't quite grasp.

I think I may have left the room and went on to the light, but was not allowed to remember all of the experience, because I retained memories of a total love beyond any earthly love, and being embraced in it, music that was unlike any I had ever heard, and smells of flowers sweeter than you can imagine. I saw Earth as if from space, and saw what looked like sparks from July 4th sparklers coming from it and going to it in a steady stream. From all over the Earth there were uncountable 'sparks' leaving it and just as many coming to it. There was no sense of time or space, and no regret at leaving my body or my family. I felt only complete joy and happiness. I have no idea how long this lasted, and I'm not positive that I was prevented from going to the light. I may have, but was not allowed to remember anything except being stuck there in that hospital room.

But suddenly I was back in my body again and it felt as though I was awakened from a very deep sleep. I sat up in the bed and had to vomit. There was a sink beside the bed, and mother helped me to lean over the sink while I vomited what mother later told me was a large amount of phlegm. As soon as I had finished, I laid back down and went to sleep. It was at that point that I began to recover. I no longer had to gasp in huge amounts of air; I was able to breathe normally. I still had to spend a lot of time in hospital, but I got better from that point on. I believe God took my soul from my body long enough for Him to put a healing hand on it, and cause me to get well. And he let me remember enough of Him to know for a fact He does love us beyond measure, and watches carefully over each one of us.