R. I. P. Me.

I've been wanting to write about this. I've been dreading writing about it.

Last Thursday, sometime during the late morning (I think), I died in the emergency room of a local hospital, with doctors, nurses, paramedics and two friends in attendance.

People here and in so-called "real life" (which is a somewhat small piece of turf for me these days) have been asking what it was like to punch out for the last time.

I'm going to try to tell you. It won't be easy. Some of what I know is second-hand (I was comatose), some of it wasn't pretty; some of what was beautiful then has turned ugly since. Some of my attempts at "humor" may offend, some of my views will surely offend some religious folks.

Believe me: while writing this, I will be laughing and weeping, reliving the experience, Hope with me that I hear no sirens, lest I hit the delete key; it's a sound that wigs me out now.

You must know that my attitudes about many things have been altered as if by an earthquake. Much of what I think (or "know") has not formed fully yet. I am a changed person; not sure what I have changed into as of now.

I'll report. You decide.

Or not. This is more personal, I think, than anything I've ever put in a journal. I know it's affecting me just to think about what to say.

It really began when I was loaded into the paramedic ambulance. The same guy who rode with me on the trip the day before was there today. I could tell he was in a much bigger hurry this time, more intensely concerned with my state.

I told him, as I told Ernie and Holly, that I was dying. I know I told the paramedic to just take me to the Alpo plant so I could be useful. I didn't want to die, you can bet; I was in considerable discomfort. But it seemed a done deal.

And I will say that the fear I saw in Holly's eyes hurt worse than my own knowledge of my impending demise. No one should be treated to an ugly display like that. I was sure I was dying, sure I felt guilty about doing it front of anyone who mattered to me.

Inside the ambulance, the tech kept telling me to relax and I'd be okay. I told him I would not. I kept trying to pull off the oxygen mask (not just a nasal tube like he'd used the day before). It felt as if it was sucking air out of my body.

I remember our arrival at the hospital. It was warm and sunny outside. As the doors to the E.R. opened and I was pushed inside, I wanted them to turn the gurney around. I wanted to die in the open air. The darkness inside was going to kill me.

I remember nothing else for a while. I have no recollection of the nurses cutting off my clothing, inserting an airway, starting all the drugs and fluids flowing that keep people alive. I did not see my eyes gyrating, my chest heaving for air denied to it, my death-pale skin, the last struggles of muscles about to surrender. Those things were seen and reported to me later.

One final look into Holly's eyes, filled with fear, sadness and -- I hoped -- love, and I was gone away from that room.

I couldn't describe where I was. Call it a void; no shape, no color. It certainly had nothing to do with the "experts'" tales of golden light, heavenly choirs and Jesus-as-game-show-host welcoming you to the Happy Hereafter.

The first thing I saw was Hobbes, my cat who died last year. He was alive, looking at me.

The I saw my music teacher, also now alive again. Finally, I saw my sister, felled so many years ago by an aneurysm. No sounds, no nothing. They were there. They existed. If I wasn't also dead, I wouldn't see them. I understood that clearly.

And then -- to use an unfortunate cliche -- all hell broke loose. Hobbes and the two people about whom I cared so much vanished.

Again, I can offer no physical descriptions of what I "saw." Allow me yet another cliche: you wouldn't understand if you didn't see it, would if you did. That's not me making a judgment; it's what is.

I have a sense that more than one person -- or at least the "conscious" (soul, if you want) of more than one person -- was mad at me, indeed. I was being shown a kind of highlight film of my greatest mistakes. If I ever lied, hurt, offended or cheated anyone (and I did), I got to sit through it again.

In the background, there was a sound. I couldn't tell you what it was, couldn't discern pitch, but it was getting louder, a monstrous and frightening sort of humming. Trying to relive (so to speak) the moment, I have a feeling now that once the volume reached a certain peak, whatever was "me" -- that business of souls and consciousnesses is damn tricky -- was going to cease to exist.

I won't tell you (or anyone else, ever) what misdeeds I was taking the most heat for. Be assured that this was not a court of judgment; it was a place to kick the shit out of whatever self-respect I had.

And then it all stopped. Nothing. Over.

I have a vision in my mind of seeing, but being unable to hear or speak. I'm told I was revived, on a ventilator, in a room in Intensive Care. I opened my eyes and saw Holly's lovely eyes looking at me with love and concern. I felt her hands on mine, saw her lips move: "I love you." I sense her pulling me, somehow. I'm convinced I would be somewhere -- or nowhere -- else without her.

PARENTHETICAL NOBODY-CAN-UNDERSTAND EXPLANATORY THOUGHT: I am quite convinced Holly is thoroughly irritated with my adoration of her. I loved her before, but that certainty of her saving my life -- and not in a vague metaphorical way -- works so deeply into one's system that the feelings it evokes transcend anything to do with sex appeal or any other elements of normal "relationships."

No matter what she says or does or doesn't say or doesn't do from this day on, she will have a full measure of my devotion and love. It's as if she has a prepaid phone card from the soul. Doesn't mean she ever has to see or talk to me again; hell, she can throw rocks through my windows. She has done her good deed, and I can't imagine anything changing my positive view of that or of her.

But I will always be no more than a call away. I mean, she saved my life. You don't forget little things like that.

Okay. So there were a few moments of relative clarity, in which I understood that I was a) alive and b) feeling pretty damn miserable. Basically, I have no conception of time at all between the moment of death on Thursday and some time on Sunday.

As soon as I regained a reasonable amount of consciousness, I was convinced that I died. I have since received some pieces of proof.

What did I learn? Not sure I believe in God, but I surely know there is some kind of creative force behind the universe and everything in it.

If there is a God, I'm gonna say He is more like the Old Testament God of sometimes unrighteous and unjustified wrath, hellfire and brimstone than the sanitized Mr Nice God the happy-clappy churches try to sell.

If what I was in was a sort of Purgatory, I know a lot of people who will zoom through in the afterlife's equivalent of '59 Cad convertibles, sipping tropical Adult Beverages from glasses with little umbrellas on 'em,, while others will have a much worse time in the molten-lave hot tubs than I did.

Yeah, that's all been reduced to crappy metaphors. Because my sense of the whole thing is once you've done the crime, you will do the time, and there is no such thing as "forgiveness." Pay up, then vanish.

I think I've stepped on damn near every major religion there is by now. Sorry. But it was not a pretty sight and doesn't fit in with any known theology I've checked into.

Well, maybe Judaism. I kind of hope so, because it means there's a good chance that all of you will run into this dude with a robe who looks like Jackie Mason and will say something like: "Oy, him you listened to? What a schmeckele he was, so we dumped extra-heavy on him. From nothing is what he knows. You want a Yoo-Hoo or a Dr Brown's soda with your Hebrew National kosher dog?"

FINAL PARENTHETICAL NOW-THAT-I'M-ALIVE THOUGHT: You'll have to decide for yourself that I'm full of BS or telling you the true story. You'll have to read between the lines a bit, too, here and there. We all ultimately make our own judgments about everything.

I know three things:

1. I was dead. It was not nice.

2. I am now alive again. Alive is better.

3. I am considerably different from the Me who died a week ago today, in ways and to extents I can neither understand nor explain.

To prove or disprove my experience and beliefs, you'll have to die and come back with a full report. I, for one, would prefer you all remain happily alive.