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Lazarus redux, An Easter reflection.
The closest thing to a truly transcendent religious experience in my life occurred many years ago at 2 AM in an ICU cubicle. At about 11 that evening I had responded to a Code Red alert that involved resuscitation of a young woman in the maternity ward. She had thrown a blood clot into her lungs and was dead or actively dying. There were other doctors and medical students ahead of me in the recovery process, so I mostly watched until it was obvious that she was back to life and there was nothing else to see. I headed back to bed. I was next in line as an admitting intern, so I was not surprised to get the call that I needed to come to the ICU to write the admitting orders for her transfer into that unit. What do you say to someone who is now alert but has been brought back to life from death?
I didn’t need to say anything. This young woman assumed I had been responsible for her survival and with somewhat halting and breathless words, proceeded to describe the joy she felt at being alive. She didn’t actually say that she had been floating above everything as she was dying, then having to make a choice whether or not to return to her body. It was the joy she expressed that filled the silence and darkness of the room. She had seen and experienced something indescribable.
What she expressed was palpable joy and profound peace. That peace filled the room and sang and chirped along with the sounds of the medical equipment that stood at attention to the moment.
Such is life, and at that moment, resurrection.
Published in General
So much of what motivates us comes down to fear of death. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, and concluded that death is not something to be feared. I won’t like being separated from the people I love, but I’m not afraid of dying.
“That will do! You make the common mistake, but I do not. I do Marko the honor of thinking and speaking of him after his death exactly as I did when he was alive. To do otherwise would be to smear his corpse with the honey excreted by my fear of death.”
Nero Wolfe, to Carla Lovchen in The Black Mountain by Rex Stout. A little graphic, but it has stayed with me for years.