TWO FRIENDS TALKING
I could feel myself dying.
If my body has a trillion cells I was losing a thousand of them per second.
I called a friend. I walked as I talked, describing to him what was happening (or not), trying to find words in a brain that had been through this same identical experience only a week before but which I had shared with no one, not even after the fact.
“Am I dying John?”
“What does it feel like, Lee?”
One word seemed to fit, the word was “darkness” but it described a feeling – not a dimming departure of recently improved eyesight but a farewell to the welfare, which Life and Love may offer.
Inside me, throughout all of me, I was dark meat and I was growing darker.
The friend I had called was Jiggs’ Boy, John; we (mostly “I”) continued to talk.
“Will I live through this night?” I asked.
“Did I have a stroke?” I wondered.
“A heart-attack?” Perhaps.
“Did the darkness imply evil?” voiced “Little Lee”.
“Will I go to Hell?” I asked The Rest Of Me?
Talking and walking lifted my spirit and repaired the rheostat of the light within – my dying cells began a welcome revival.
I felt a Spiritual Presence and asked for a safe place for whatever was left of that which I think of as “Me” after this apparent departure from the material world had completed its metamorphosis and I wondered if my theories about God were correct.
Is The Creator of all things The Source of Love or the source of fear? Am I about to become a pillar of salt?
“Do you want me to come over?”
“I’m afraid I’m dying, John.”
“Do you want me to come over and watch you die?”
I laughed. Jiggs’ boy chuckled.
Note: This page from my diary will be in a forthcoming book,
WHAT A LOVELY SPRING DAY.