In the dream / reality

February 5, 2018 Comfort Zone Opinion

Last thing I remember was floating in a canvass of total darkness. It was like a dream but with the realization that I was living a reality. I knew the world around me was real even though it was like a dream.
And I knew I was dying.
This awareness caused me to carefully say “I have lived a full life, Lord, I am ready.” Then a feeling motion. Moving from ‘here’ to a ‘there’ took less than a moment, I sensed being drawn to a door in the middle of nowhere. I was caught up with the feeling of unfathomable serenity and calmness to pay heed to the drama unfolding around me.
It was about 7:30 in the morning of August 30, 2017, around an hour since I casually told my wife and brother-in-law I suffered a stroke that I sensed my death was on hand while life and death decisions were being made around me at the BGH emergency room. Although neurologist, Dr. Socorro Sarfati was wrangled from a busy schedule that day, she nevertheless made the crucial calls that may have brought me back from death.
I was clueless of the distress I was causing, all I knew was the feeling of floating towards that door where all peace was oozing from. I wanted to enter that door and be engulfed by that calm and worry-less feeling. I just had to get there.
Then came along a new emotion. It started off as a small and distant voice in the background of that black on blackness. It gained momentum slowly – an incessant buzzing at first until the voice grabbed my attention from that door of peace and serenity. It held a thread of urgency that could not be set aside any longer – and it said “Come Holy Spirit!” over and over without fail or cease.
“Come Holy Spirit” it begged. “Come Holy Spirit” it called on me, and I knew I had to reply. My answer was immediate without hesitation – “Here I am ready to do your bidding”- and just as quickly I opened my eyes to the worried faces of family and the determined look of my doctor.
This is how it started for me – my second birth. And this is how I find myself today in silent and not-so-silent struggle as I try to make a new life from the scraps left to me after my stroke. My left eye is slowly leaving me, my left ear can no longer hear and my right ear going the same way, my right arm to hand and fingers still refuse to follow my commands. The same with my right leg and foot.
Still I have reason to be thankful to God who has called me back to this life for a reason. A reason I still have to discover and fully fulfill.
The events in my dream/reality closely mirrored life as it was unfolding in the ER, I latter on found out…
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The author used to edit several newspapers in Baguio and Benguet in his 25 years as a local journalist. Prior to his stroke he was editing a Filipino weekly paper catering to expat and OFW communities in Dubai, UAE.