On NDE

The last thing I remember before losing consciousness was answering Karrie’s question, “How are you feeling?” They had voice-overed “All Available Personnel to the O.R. -- STAT!” 

It was me. They were calling for all personnel for me. For. me. 

“I’m so happyeeeee,” I telepathed to her and gave myself butterfly kisses with my own eyelashes. No. My mouth moved. I dreamed to her. Maybe she heard. I don’t know if she heard.

There was a time in the O.R. when I saw a spaceship above me, a swimming ancient sea turtle in a Caribbean blue sea in Atlantis. I was under its belly. I could hold my breath. I did not need to hold my breath. I did not have gills. I was, simply. It looked like the inner workings of the crab. It felt like the terracotta strawberry planter. It was not like a subway station in the middle of London. It let me follow it, shadow it, through brilliant waters and undersea life that I was no longer afraid of. It telepathed to me: Do you want to follow me, or do you want your life with your son? But it was not so vulgar. So either/or. I began to hear voices in an emergency of growing concern, and it did not align, so I continued to walk/swim/shadow the turtle, the brightest of lights blazing through the waters above me. 

My son was safe. He made it. He will be fine. He is a big boy. They let me cuddle him before they took him to the NICU. I sent Joe. Joe wanted to stay with me. “No, he needs you,” and I began to cry. 

That was before the situation with the post-partum hemorrhage, before Janna said, “Shhh!” to the nurse who said, “Uh-oh. Noo,” like she was in The Matrix and just found out that the Soprano betrayed them all.  Right before she dropped a heaping tub of blood all over the floor.

Geriatric pregnancy is right, I guess. 

But honestly, the uterus did her job: she portaled three live, thriving, healthy babies into this plane. She did it through endometriosal-ish issues, and a blackening and thickening over time. I reveled and hated being a woman. I reveled over and hated my own uterus. I have hated that womb, behind and under my belly, in moments of darkness. It has been blackened by mercenary men who put things there that they should not have, and then called me a great lay in the process. I have hated it because of all the women who called me a biscuit or a Lolita or a provocateur, beginning when I was 3. They objectified me, and I turned over, again and again, onto and against myself. 

How do you put a neutron star into a tiny box about the size of a 5-karat emerald? Continue the process of appeasement and self-objectification that you survived on. 

Well, at least I’m talking to my body parts again. I did not realize that sometimes things die when I stop talking to them. I did not realize that sometimes terrible things exist because I worry about them and the terror they would bring—and then they do. Like serial killers in the 80s. Like people who preyed on and ate the marrow of innocents. Of innocence. That is my gnosis folded over onto itself, over and over. 

When I remember myself as a child, I remember the certainty and certitude I had for what the world could be that was cannibalized by my family over and over and over again. The waste of time might have been wondering why for so many, many years in exile. Wondering how to both be who I am and have the safety of a family and tribe. It was never aligned to betray the Jehovah’s Witnesses by pretending to be repentant for my sexuality, especially the parts where I acquiesced to sex before I ever could have given consent. Shame on those old men, letches and vipers. I felt their mindsets as wife-holders and slave holders, those men who controlled the fates of the covered women’s heads who stood by their lascivious and unscrupulous sides. Those men who knew where I came from and instead decided to exile an 18-year-old girl as punishment for fornication and a late-term abortion. Excellent. That action was on you, apostates. I have never been the hypocrite.

I know my son will need me. My path is just beginning to unfold. This is where it gets interesting.

And, in a rush of light, I am back. 

They are scooping out my uterus like it’s All Things, Great & Small and my rusty old puss just delivered a calf. The blood is pumping and so is the saline and so is the bag of other drugs they gave me and they are praying around her. This madwoman obstetrician and this resurrected dead woman, geriatric pregnancy survivor, who for so many moments seemed like she was spending some time in the Mostly Dead category, both in a dance together to bring forth life. And I think, “No wonder liability insurance is so high for OBs,” which is how I know I’m back.