My mom and I were very close for the first 13 years of my life. Then we drifted apart. And only really found each other again the last few years of my life, about 40 years later.
This was a year or two before she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just after Christmas 2013 and we were told she had a few weeks to live. She lived for almost a year, not only a few weeks.
Fortunately she had Altzheimer’s so she never realised she had cancer or that she was in pain. We were fortunate she knew us the whole time. She also played a mean game of bridge three times a week right until she passed over! Every time we’d ask her how she was feeling, she would say, ‘My health is the one thing I can’t complain about! I have a white bread under each arm.’
It was only the last month that she was bed ridden and the last day that she was on morphine. She was home-nursed at my sister’s house and I slept next to her again on her last night. It was the first day she was unable to communicate with us because of the morphine.
I lay next to her with my ear plugs in and my ear phones playing gentle music into my ears over the earplugs, desperately trying to cut out her chain-stokes breathing. But I gave up because the noise cut right through everything, I was unable to sleep. At one point, I decided to take out my ear plugs, turn off the music, and just BE with her in her dark hour.
Then I wondered if I could connect with her. I was unable to touch her hand as she had them clasped together under her chin. So I touched her arm. I don’t know what I expected; maybe to hear her say, ‘my child I am fine’ or something like that. All I know is that I was blown away by what I experienced.
I saw the gentlest, deepest, richest light. It was white and silver but predominantly gold. The feeling of utter PEACE was so beautiful. There just aren’t any words in this world to describe it.
I passed out and slept right through the night. The nurse woke me up the next morning and said ‘Boy did you sleep! You snored all night! I probably snored louder than my mother’s chain-stokes breathing and I am not a loud snorer.
I took the nurse home and my mom waited for me to come back before she passed over. I gonged the Tibetan Singing bowl, played music and washed her body, just as I washed my husband’s after he died in 2012.
I could not really mourn my mom’s death because of that experience. Of course, I miss her because she had become my best friend. But it is as if she climbed into my heart after that experience. And I feel that somehow our connection has opened up a bridge for a lot of ancestral healing that is busy happening now, which is another story.
And for the next year I experienced a miraculous year. Normally I attend one or two workshops for personal development. That year I attended thirteen workshops. Theyall came to me and somehow I just had time to do it all. They were all fun. I dived with the dolphins, attended dancing workshops and had a truly blessed year.
I saw a movie of Wayne Dyer explaining that as we step out of the way and become selfless, we open up for miracles to happen. Miracles are always: 1) Positive, 2) Intense, and 3) Unexpected. Suddenly, I realised what had happened that night. I needed to take out the earplugs, let go of MY need to sleep, and just be with my mom. Then I was unexpectedly hit with an intensely positive experience.
This opened up a life of miracles. As Anita Moorjani says, it is an event that opens a door for ongoing realizations to happen. At first, I was euphoric and tried to explain to everybody. Nobody understood. Then I started withdrawing into a world of feeling more connected to the Other Side than here. After reading Anita’s book, I learned about this website and realized that maybe if I write about my indirect NDE experience, it might make a contribution to the NDE puzzle. I know here that I will be understood and heard.
For me a big message of encouragement in my experience was the fact that I was shown that people might sound to us as if they are suffering, but in reality they are already in a space of great peace. Maybe my story helps somebody find peace who is assisting a loved one in the dying process.