Back to Life

Many of these reports have aspects in common: bright lights, unearthly

music, a floating sensation followed by a view of the physical body

from somewhere above . . . These subjects tell of seeing familiar

people who'd died before them reaching out reassuringly. Some men-

tion a being dressed in light, exuding an indescribable warmth. And

before they know it, they're in their own bodies again. But what

happened to them seemed to make profound changes in the rest of

their lives.

From an article on people who've died and lived

to tell about their "life-after-life" experiences

I

When the room went blinding white I closed my eyes.

Then the music came, the kind that's piped in

anywhere you don't need music,

and I could have been strolling the grocery aisles,

wavering in Canned Goods, frantic in Cold Cuts,

finally breaking down at the Checkout and buying

more gum than a country could chew.

But when I opened my eyes I found out

I was in some private elevator rising in the dark

and I couldn't for the life of me remember

asking for a hospital room like this one,

the bill they'd send me going through the roof.

When I stepped off into thin air

and looked down at myself in bed,

I could clearly see I'd gone too far.

I saw the doctor panic, rip apart my gown

as if he still could pull me through.

I remember wishing he'd give up

and hand over whatever's left to the nurse.

l'd found a whole new point of view

where her harsh plainness curved into beauty.

I wanted her to blow me a kiss,

to be an angel and quote Plato's dreamless sleep.

I doubt it even crossed her mind. I doubt

that's what she wrote down on my chart

when the doctor shook his head,

when all negotiations ended in his eyes.

No kiss and no philosophy.

Just ordinary, down-to-earth decorum.

I'd have settled for a lilting bought the farm.

What really killed me was those Mellowfinger Strings.

Absolutely heartless on the part of God.

No chords being wrenched from an organ,

no saxophone swinging low.

In a world more perfect, this one or the Next,

Monk's Misterioso would be the way to go.

u

My idea of a Great Beyond

would be not running into anyone who knew me.

No family. No friends.

Just a roomkey, an assumed name, a weakness

in the knees and a sly wink from the nightclerk,

his promise to keep this out of the news.

In a truly Great Beyond my personal angel

would be W. C. Fields in slippers and gin.

We'd sing together loud nights in the hall.

But I don't remember getting any final wish.

I would have asked for too much one last time.

What I got was the Obligatory Beyond:

people I'd somehow managed to outlive

on parade through a long home movie of the dead.

I saw my grainy father waving for me to follow him

as if he knew some secret shortcut back to town.

I suppose he meant it as a gesture of solace,

but that far out-of-focus I couldn't be sure.

I remember him calling me to supper like that

when I was young enough to think

I was too young to die,

and my fatal mistake every time was that I went

into the interminable dining room

where I looked up once in a while from my plate

as I picked bones clean in the silence

and watched the after-supper daylight-saving

ball-throwing sunlight slip away in the dark.

I saw my fourth grade teacher, her hair even more

ethereally blue. One day after school

she warned me every inadvertent burp and missed report

was being written down in my Permanent Record.

Her low-key blackmail scared me into line

until my brother told me it was only a hoax

passed on from one year to the next.

Seeing her again after so long, I wondered

what she'd really done with those hundreds of notes

full of undying love I meant for Debbie Fuller.

At this rate it was bound to happen:

Lou Chambers, overweight neighbor I dreaded,

still pulling pins from invisible grenades

and diving to the ground, his moronic introduction

to yet another story from the Big One, WW IL.

The truth in his life-and-death blather

would fit on the head of one pin.

And what I thought might be the fabled Being

of Light turned out to be Small Heart Cooper

fresh from his counter at Third Avenue Sweets,

still all fidget and malice, shining

a mirror into my eyes like he'd finally do

when I played pinball on one dime all afternoon.

I couldn't see anything through the glare

and he'd laugh while I drained down the middle.

Please don't believe anyone who says

life flashes in front of your eyes.

At best it's a dull ache behind them. Or maybe

you're only imagining what really isn't there.

It could be Scrooge's gruel, your own last meal,

mere chemicals the brain lets go for entertainment,

to pass whatever time it thinks is left.

I say go out and buy any theory

that might make you feel better when you're back

to your old self, still wild-eyed in bed

hours later when the nurse brings dinner

and you're trying to convince yourself that

no matter what you've just been through,

there must be a Great Beyond somewhere, or at least

a Reasonable Beyond. Until even the mysterious

pudding on your tray is a good omen:

it will be like nothing

you've ever seen in your life.

Il

Since I've been back I've heard a lot of talk,

how I'm supposed to know an inner peace so deep

it can't be fathomed, some tranquility

huge and inexpressible as sky. I'm here

to tell you what I know so far

is only crackpot love and admiration.

My friend read a book he swears is true

and suddenly he's a scholar of the Other Side

and other people who've returned

ecstatic with versions of serene eternal life.

I try to tell him that's a crock or else

they've been misquoted. He can't believe it

when I say my nerves are ringing off the hook.

From everything he's read, calm's bound to come.

What comes today is a letter from someone in Wyoming

who claims he's been legally dead 18 times

and wants to start a club of people just like us.

He says if I join right away

he'll send me the name of this woman he knows

who whispers sweet nothings on the astral plane.

I think I'd rather learn the Secret Handshake.

I think this whole thing's badly out of hand.

What I've been through is a far cry from a miracle.

Think of your own emotional close call,

your spirit worn down to bare filament

and your heart gone dry, running on fumes,

on one too many day's accumulation of white light

with no real color in it.

Like everyone, you waited for the dark

before you came apart completely.

You closed your eyes, and it was touch and go.

Didn't you feel each cell in your body

sweating out your life?

And secretly you cheered them on.

You thought it wouldn't hurt to see

how far things could go wrong.

Be grateful there were no machines plugged in

to measure the implosions.

You would have seen your heart and brain reduced

to humming parallel lines.

And wasn't that the first time you noticed

yourself, through a fluke of genuine perception,

lying absolutely still, waiting for something big

to happen? And didn't it happen,

it was a small eternity of waiting, and for nothing

you were counting on, nothing larger than life?

You just did what anyone would have done

in your position. Sure, it would be nice

to say you tried something more heroic, like

looking your dying straight in the face

and knocking out its teeth.

You admitted you were scared. But not to death.

It's no wonder you backed down, sneaked away

and caught your breath. Came slowly

to your senses, your bones lining up days on end

to take back their familiar weight.

So you tell me.

Did you feel any calmer in your body than before,

worry less about losing your hair?

Were you nonchalant in your shower

when the water went cold without warning?

Did you stare down the shivering length of your life

and find anything so good

you never knew you had it?

Because when we come back, it's always

right where we left off: the middle

of a night, a room where the phone never rings

or it never stops ringing.

And now that we have both sides of the story,

we'd rather forget everything we know,

start over and see how it goes this time.

But we know too much. So what we ask is

another day in oblivion's good graces

before it all comes back to us.