Death

I think my cat might be dying. He's not sick -- far from it -- in fact he's getting very playful. That's what scares me. Maybe this is his last hurrah. He knows the end is near, and he wants to get in a little fun time while he can.

I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I haven't been sick in such a long time I feel as if my days are numbered. I might have one good struggle left, and then it's bye-bye birdie.

I damn near died once. It was almost two years ago exactly. I was in the hospital for some relatively minor thing, and then the next thing I know I'm in the ICU, and they're trying to kill me. There was no doubt in my mind they were trying to kill me, and they tried for a week. Luckily they were unsuccessful.

They weren't really trying to kill me of course. I was hallucinating that whole week, but they were such vivid hallucinations. And it wasn't like a dream and where I find myself in a different place and in an unusual situation. This involved everything that was going on around me, my entire surroundings. And my brain just worked everything into its warped outlook.

I don't know why I thought everyone was trying to kill me, but I did. And this involved the entire hospital staff from janitors to administration. And I remember exactly how it started out.

Two nurses came in, and they had an IV to hang. They were arguing as to which one was going to hang it, because the juice in the bag was designed to kill me, and neither one of them wanted my death on their conscience. Actually, it wasn't their conscience that was bothering them. It was just bad luck to kill someone. So they were playing odds and evens to decide.

From that little escapade blossomed an entire plot. Somehow the hospital's computer was tapping in to my thought waves and was using them to hatch devious schemes. It used my own fear against me. In fact, there was a 24-hour computer program designed with only one purpose: for killing. And it scared its victims to death.

One relived the 24 hours preceding and including the 9/11 mass murderers. And it put one on the passenger list of one of the ill-fated flights. With all five senses and mind prescient to the danger, one would feel the horror of impending doom culminating in a slow fiery death -- the main event slowed down so that one felt flame and heat melting one's skin an agonizing pain.

Over the course of the week this program was started many times with me going to sleep thinking I would wake horribly, or if I was lucky I wouldn't wake at all. For one reason or another the program never ran its course, but there were a host of other concocted conspiracies. Invariably I was tricked into causing my own demise. But it was subtle.

CNN broadcast news of my suicide. People that knew me were interviewed saying what a tragedy it was. I wondered why I had killed myself. Surely the hospital had something to do with it.

Sometimes I saw the Earth as if from a satellite, and once I was given an eagle eyes view of Kensington, Maryland, a town I frequented, and the voice of the computer asked me if I had friends there, and when I answered yes, I saw a mushroom cloud and then a crater, and the computer said "not anymore."

The computer was always finding ways to hurt the ones I cared about most, and I knew it listened in to all my thoughts, so when I had visitors I was afraid to open my eyes and look at them for fear the computer would seek to hurt them. My father and brother lost their photography company. My sister and mother lost their homes. Every piece of property was taken and given to some stranger for pennies on the dollar.

If I wasn't fearing for my own life, the lives of those around me were in peril. And the computer taunted me relentlessly. I kept flashing to the interior of one of the 9/11 planes, and much to my horror the seats filled up one by one with family members and close friends.

At one point I was walking in downtown DC and some artist had left huge unfinished paintings of Jesus on the sidewalks and streets. One image might cover a whole city block or more. When I finally met the man I mentioned he should finish his work, and as he put the final touches to each piece, it came alive. Looking back on it, I was experiencing my version of the second coming, and I had a good talk with Jesus. He told me exactly how to pray to removal my sins, and I was so happy that I was going to make it into heaven until I remembered that I had committed the one unforgivable sin. That was a blow.

When I finally came out of my hallucinatory state, I was so shaken by the experience I asked for a do not resuscitate order be put on my file. I had been on a respirator during the experience, and I didn't want to go through that again, being scared for my life every minute of the day, hour after hour. After a few days the trauma subsided and I rescinded the DNR. Lucky for that, he does it wasn't more than a year before I was on a respirator again. But that's another story.