She was waving me good bye. I had the message, or the feeling, that she was telling me not to worry, that she was leaving, that she would be fine. I asked her where she was going, and she kept saying not to worry. Then I woke up. As I was in bed in my room wiping the tears off my face, the door of my room suddenly opened. My mom, who could barely walk by herself and whose brain had been tampered by the cancer, walked in, leaned on me and embraced me, as strong as she could. Then she walked back to her room and lay in bed. Following this wonderful event, I decided not to say anything to my father, believing that my mother was about to die, anytime during that day.

In the afternoon, though, I had coffee with my father in the kitchen. My mother was in bed. As we were having coffee, my father suddenly tells me that he woke up that morning… crying. That he had seen my mother in a wonderful place: a meadow, huge trees in the background, waving him good bye. Exactly the same dream I had had that very same morning. I was stunned. I told him that I, too, had seen her in my dream.

My mother passed away three days later. We buried her the next day. The following day, a woman came to visit us. She used to come to help for cleaning and cooking when my mother was alive. Actually, she was the only one who came to help (close relatives, that my father and mother had helped out so many times, were nowhere to be seen when my mother’s health started to decline, although they were staying two minutes away… on foot. But this is another matter).

Anyway, my mother was very grateful that this woman would spend time to help. This woman came home and told us that three days before my mother died, she had a dream. At our bewilderment, it was the exact same dream that my father and I had.

I don’t know about coincidences. My father and I had endured for the last eight months considerable stress due to my mom’s illness. And I can understand that, perhaps, this dream could have been just a burn out effect. But this “third party”, I can’t explain.

I believe it was great. I just knew, somehow, that my mom would be OK where she would go. I also know, that close relatives who didn’t help, who turned away their head, who didn’t basically care about her, didn’t get any “message”.

Now, I would love to know if my mother had a near-death-experience three days before she passed away, and if she did, have my father, this woman and myself, been part of it?

Thankfully

Murat Karaali

Jim Nichols! I’m happy to see you here!

Bob - I was awfully scared when you went down for the count. You’re my hero, you know. And one mighty writer.

And there was this.

When my wife and I were in our mid-twenties and living together in So. Portland, ME, we rented the upstairs of an old Captain’s house near the Voke school where I was taking classes. From the living room you could look out at Casco Bay, and one night we were doing just that, kneeling on the old hardwood floor, watching through an open window as a thunderstorm snapped and boomed over the water. I think we might have maybe smoked an illicit substance to heighten the experience; anyway, as the storm moved closer it didn’t occur to us to worry. We just knelt there rapt. But then there was an instant of lost time, and we found ourselves sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, a smell of ozone in the air and the strangest disconnected feeling in our heads. I remember my fingers and toes were curled tightly, and my jaw felt achy. But that was it. The next day we went outside to look and there were scorch marks on the side of the house and you could see where the bolt had traveled from the peak of the roof down through the wall (and us!) and on into the ground.

But me? other than being at gunpoint a few times, which is only near-near-death, I got nothin’ for ya.

Great interview!! And congrats on the Eggers pick!! WOO HOO!!

Thanks again, everyone, for being here. You’ll all be linked at midnight.

———————————————-

Flesh has no idea how unlikely life is. If you knew you could not risk as you do.

Every day Pablo stood within kissing distance of death, as sleek boxes of rushing metal bore down and swerved, avoiding him by inches. The cars stampeded around the curve from the Fulham Palace Road like bison, gaining speed and heading directly towards Pablo and fifty other pedestrians standing at the top of King Street. Two or three dozen cars, as many drivers, aimed head-on at the defenceless commuters by the lights. And not one of those pedestrians moved. Not one shrieked or turned tail or even closed their eyes and held their breath. They were not afraid, because they believed that every one of those twenty or thirty drivers – those strangers, with their unknown infirmities of mind and body, with their madnesses and angers and unresolved despairs – every one of those human beings whose cars were accelerating towards the sidewalk would turn the wheel and follow the road. So the pedestrians just stood there and risked their lives when it would take only a slight misjudgement or a momentary malice to kill them.

Pablo drove Natalie’s car through the rain from Cornwall as she slept in the passenger seat. I was riding Pablo’s vision – the splashy chevronned curves, the dark tree-tunnelled runs, the shushing villages hunched in their shawls against the kerb. And as Pablo slowed on blind black corners, as he minded the white lines and appreciated the roadsigns, I needled. It would be faster if we took the corners sharp, easier if we rode the centre of the crow’s-wing tarmac, more fun if we hit the humped bridges with our foot down. Do it, I told him, slavering – do it!

He would not do it. He couldn’t. The broken band of white along the road was inviolable. The random ridge at the edge of the road was not negotiable. The indifferent darkness demanded thrown switches on the dashboard, and Pablo met those demands. I rustled around in Pablo’s brain, and I found my father’s voice. “The least you can do is be punctual. Pablo. What if we were all half an hour late?”

What if we all refused to wash? What if we all stole chilis? What if every one of us straddled the white line in the wet, serpentine night and put his foot down?

More deeply, more implicitly than you believe in God or Hell or Truth, you believe that no approaching driver will see that it’s quicker to cut across the pavement; you trust that the guy behind you on the platform won’t push you into the path of the oncoming train. No one roars around the curve straddling the line and everyone assumes no one else will.

You risk your life each minute, assured that every dumb sack of bones around you has agreed to that bargain; you’re convinced that every other soul sees the world the way that you do.

That’s the least true thing I’ve ever heard.

I do have a memory of watching it all from the sidelines - not so much from above. And then deciding to get back in my body.

But no white light, no people beckoning.

The very odd thing is my son does not know this story, but went through a phase that lasted several years where he was afraid of me dying. He is over the worst of it, but requires regular check-ins by cell phone when I’m away.