Out of the Woods

Out of the Woods 

I closed the door to my French Quarter apartment that overlooked Iberville Street. Then I turned to take my first step on the road less traveled, though at the time I had no idea what that was. I thought I was going to San Francisco for a better job, but at a deeper place within me I knew I was on another path of suicidal depression where I might be successful this time. Death waited around the next curve on I-10. I got on the bus with a twenty in my wallet, a letter of recommendation as a 3-star cook, and a loaf of fresh baked bread from La Madeline, a chunk of cheese, and a two year old bottle of French wine that my ex-girlfriend had given me for the trip.

When the bus arrived in Tucson, I had a two hour layover which gave me time to take a walk around the bus station. I saw that Spring had turned the desert into a floral garden where I felt like I’d landed in a field of poppies. The dry, cool air felt so good that I didn’t get back on that bus.

I couldn’t find work nor did I have enough sense to ask for help, so depression kicked in again. It had been two months now and the desert had turned from a lush garden to a stark vision of hell. I felt dead already, so I wandered off into the desert with a blanket to get some rest. I had wandered about a mile from the barrios of South Tucson where I found a private patch of weeds behind a convenience store to spend the night. There I ate the stale peanut butter sandwich I’d carried all day and sipped the last of my water.

If depression is a hole, then the weeds behind that store must be the bottom of that hole. That’s where I awoke at about 11am the next morning. In record breaking heat I headed to the nearest bus stop to catch a busload of air-conditioning. At the bus stop I stared down at my feet as I sat down next to the sidewalk in the grass. A dirt path had replaced the cement where I saw footprints of various animals. A tiny bird sang in the top of a sapling next to me. A creek trickled somewhere to the left. Beneath the sound of the trickling though, I heard a deep, rolling roar. I stood to see what was coming.

A city bus sped down Sixth Avenue heading past where I stood now on the sidewalk. On the corner to my left I saw someone who looked just like me run directly into the path of the speeding bus. I grabbed the sapling I thought was beside me and felt the hard metal sign post, but I held on feeling a force like sideways gravity pulling me into the path of that bus.

I screamed, “Nooo!”

When the bus passed it left no evidence that anyone had been hit. I held on tightly to the bus stop sign shaking all over and feeling cold inside. I need help, I thought. So I shuffled down Sixth Avenue towards Congress Street where I’d heard there was an office for the homeless shelter to get some help.

“Depressed with hallucinations.” Someone said.

“Yeah” I said. “The world is just a mixed basket of poison flowers and toxic garbage.”

“Linda, can you take him out to the mental health clinic?”

At the clinic I sat on a couch waiting. Like death holds down a corpse I felt gravity pulling me down into the couch cushion. The clinic’s lobby was quiet. Only a receptionist sat at a desk and a social psychologist kneeled in front of me. “Wait here,” she said, “I’ll get you some medication.” There was a professional concern in her voice.

A few minutes later I saw her come out of the doctor’s office with a prescription in her hand walking briskly following a sign that said Pharmacy. After about an hour she returned with a bottle of pills in her hand. “Here you are,” she said. “Take one now and another just before dinner tonight at the shelter.

“What is it?” I said.

“It’s a new antidepressant called Serintol.”

I swallowed the pill and chased it with the little cup of water she gave me. “What now?”

“I’m taking you to the shelter to get you checked in. Tomorrow we’ll do the social services paperwork. OK?”

“Sure,” I said as if anything really mattered.

After a long afternoon's dreamless nap I awoke to a shelter volunteer with a pill and another tiny cup of water. I swallowed both and she led me to the serving line for dinner. I’d nearly reached the end of the serving line when my hands let go of the tray of food I was holding. My vision had become a kaleidoscope of colors. If I concentrated hard enough I could see the face of the man who’d last served me. And then I fell backwards into someone’s arms who dragged me to a chair. I felt nothing now but hunger and I tried again to see.

It took nearly all of my life energy to focus on something yellow to my left—a basket full of bananas. But I had no energy left to lift a hand for them, nor could I ask for help. I closed my eyes to dream of bananas and wait. Soon I heard  low murmuring voices in the blind distance. Metal clattered in front of me and I felt my body move upward and then horizontally. Lying on my back my eyes opened and I saw the ceiling moving fast above me. Someone cut my shirt open and attached electrodes to my chest while another someone slapped a mask over my nose and mouth. There was movement again, this time upward and forward that ended with a metal click.

A diesel engine revved and I felt a greater forward movement, heard a screaming siren, and opened my eyes to see red and white lights flashing in the sterile white curtains. I lay there watching those lights and wondering where I was going until I heard panic in a voice beside me. “No, I can’t find the damned defibulator anywhere.” That brought my attention to the sound of the heart monitor—beep, beep, beep. Then I heard the beeps go steady—flat-lined.

We must have been only a few minutes from the hospital, because I wasn’t dead long enough to do any damage to my body. I came back to life from my little death on a cold stainless steel table in the emergency room. The first sound I heard was from a nurse, “Can you speak?” Saturated with saline solution I replied, “Yeah, I gotta pee.” I spent a week in that hospital while the staff ran tests three times a day on my heart. A social worker told me I had a case for a lawsuit if there was any damage to my heart. “Sue them?” I said. “I’d rather thank them. This has been the greatest experience of my life.” And to tell the truth, I haven’t been depressed since.

In reading stories of NDEs, I’ve seen that most are interpreted through the person’s religious beliefs.I refused to do that. No, this experience was too primal to fit into a modern belief system. I knew then that I’d chosen a journey on a road less traveled, and that I had no room for any hand-me-down baggage. There was a steep learning curve ahead and I intended to take that path with a clear head. I’d begun to see two views of the world: There was the modern world that we all deal with every day, and beneath this façade there was a primal world, timeless. I named the two worlds the “Artificial World” and the “Real World”.

I packed some camping gear and set out on an adventure to learn all about the Real World that the Artificial World had forgotten. I found that the Native Americans still held much of that primal knowledge which meshed well with our own pagan (rural, not evil) heritage. I’m still learning those “old ways”, and attempting to integrate the two worlds. I learned an old Apache meditation that I call “the little death”, because it can take me down to a place very near to my near death experience. It was immediately after one of these meditations in 1997 that I became a ghost writer for my spirit.