Category Archives: Writing Excerpts

They say you see “the light” when you have a near-death experience.  I don’t know if it’s actually something supernatural or if it’s just the paramedic shining a penlight in your eye, but either way I definitely saw lights.  In fact, the lights are about the only thing I remember from that day.  There were sounds, too, but at the time they seemed much less important.  Machines beeped, and people talked, but it all just floated past me in garbled tones.  I lay at the bottom of the stream of consciousness, staring upwards and searching for the sunlight.

There were times of blackness, too, but I remember those even less.  The only times that I was really aware of the blackness was when I was coming out of it, pushing upward desperately toward the light.  Sometimes I would get a brief glimpse of the light, dappling down as though shining through a tree branch.  Then I was shoved back down into the darkness, falling and falling and trying to fly.

Just when I thought I could not possibly push upwards anymore, that the blackness finally had me in its grip permanently, it gave up.  I found that I didn’t have to push anymore; I was simply floating to the top.  The light no longer showed itself in bits and pieces and occasional bright flashes.  Instead, it started very small, a pinpoint on the horizon.  Like watching the dawn of the sun, the light slowly brightened.  It quietly crept into all the corners.  It tiptoed a wide circle to get around and behind me.  It silently wrapped its arms around me and pulled me gently and steadily further away from the darkness.

I opened my eyes.