A Merry Dance

I woke up in the middle of the night  to hear an interview via American Public Radio with Dr Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon and death survivor.

There are a lot more of us around since modern medicine evolved into something that worked...

I  was three when my 'Near Death Experience' (NDE)  happened. Of course I appreciated it with a three year olds consciousness - accepting everything that happens as ' this is how it is' having no concept at all of dying, death or an afterlife. I thought nothing of it, woke up from a coma, regained my sight, learned to walk again, and pretty soon, led my parents a merry dance as I made the most of my newly acquired celebrity status.

'You were dying,' my mother said, 'And God gave you back to us.' Interesting, I thought. It never occurred to me to question who God was, I just  felt something flutter inside, and a need to say, Thank you! ' For hadn't God just given me back to the people I loved most in all the world?

I recall as sensation,  the time I spent elsewhere. Light, love, colour, security, and most overwhelmingly, JOY.


I knew others were there, or rather that I was not alone, but I didn't see anyone, or remember doing anything but chasing bubbles and laughing, laughing, laughing... . Dr Alexander's account in 'Proof Of Heaven' (2012)  is a full account of an NDE, that is more typical than mine, written with the objective edge of a scientist.

However, I didn't embark on this  to attempt to persuade you to believe in the incredible - if it hadn't happened to me, I wouldn't believe it either - but to record what my mother tucked behind the clock on the mantelpiece.

I rapidly graduated from little celebrity to little horror. My long-suffering parents were advised by the hospital not to allow me to get upset, as my repairing brain might rupture a second blood vessel, and I  soon realised that I could do anything and get away with it.

Finally, my desperate mum and dad took me back to the doctor to find a solution to the problem of Mary. I remember it! How old was I? Five or six, I think. Young enough to be gullible.

The doctor listened to the list of my misdemeanours with a solemn expression, then slowly reached for a pad and a pen. Do you know, I have just recalled how fascinated I was watching him scrawl  across the page, the first time I ever saw a left-handed writer. Black ink, real ink, from a gold-rimmed fountain pen.

With a flourish, Dr Morris tore the sheet from the pad.

'This Mrs Cook,' he declared, solemnly, looking straight at me, 'Is a prescription for a cane...'

From that day on, whenever I drove my mum to her tether's end, all she had to do, was point to the clock on the mantelpiece... .

Snow Day

I saw all this white space ... And

Being a poet, it seemed proper to

Fill it with words.

Feathery, floating words that rest on the tongue

Like frozen sherbert

And melt away like poetry

When inspiration fades.

I gathered up a thesaurus of winter

Compressed it into a world the size of my hand

And laughed aloud as I

Threw it into the sky.

A frozen firework, , it exploded over my head

And fell to earth as soft, white flakes... .

Carl Sagan

Dr. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot

"That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, where every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam...

Like it or not, for the moment, the earth is where we make our stand. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to prerserve and cherish the pale blue dot...the only home we've ever known."

Bollocks!

Hubris. I have one friend who will be able to tell me whether I should be using 'Nemesis' instead, (Good Morning, Iris!) but hey! I shall stick with hubris for the moment.

I have been ill. Not seriously, just ill enough to discount all my blessings and do a little wallowing in self-pity, with a side order or regretting past mistakes, and a huge helping of wanting what I can't have.  I am a whisker away from harming others, if tongue-lashing my husband for his shortcomings counts, and he would say that it does. In short, I write breezily about resisting these activities as a waste of life, just days before reaching for all of them as a palliative for a minor stomach upset. Brought on, I confess, by a surfeit of left-over Christmas goodies: Don't feel sorry for me.

I have to laugh. I get to this point, from time to time, when I begin to believe my own publicity. 'Oh look at you,' I tell myself admiringly, 'You have it all together. So erudite, so compassionate, so wise!'

 Bollocks.

I ought to stop there, but the urge to make something out of my experience for the benefit of  humankind is just too irresistible.

I sat with someone with real problems yesterday. We talked about the Higgs Boson, the ludicrous antics of our government, the state of Israel, the raving lunacy  of fundamentalists ( He a Jew, I a Roman Catholic) and we laughed at it all.

Sitting down with a cup of tea and giving away time didn't cure his depression or my stomach ache, but afterwards, we both felt a little bit lighter.

We salvaged a moment.