When I woke up I was being loading into an ambulance to take me to University Hospital.  While I was out, Al went to my home to pick up Arlette and the boys. They were there as they were loading me.  I quickly pulled out my billfold and keys and gave them to Arlette as they closed the doors.  The next thing I knew I was in intensive care weaving in and out of consciousness for the next twenty four hours. 

  

 

There are two types of heart attacks.  The kind most people know about is the tingling in the left arm then pain in the jaw and neck and then pow in the chest.  I had the second kind.  It's called a silent heart attack.  It starts like a bad case of heartburn and slowly progresses until it feels like a snake squeezing the air out of you.  Slowly and quietly.  It doesn't hit hard and then it's over.  No.  A silent heart attack can linger.  The doctor told Arlette that mine lasted two days.  That two days is what this writing is all about.  Not about the heart attack itself but what happened to me spiritually in those two days. 

​

 

During those two days I spent most of my time asleep.  I wasn't in pain and I didn't know that technically I was still having the heart attack.  I thought I was in intensive care so that they could watch me in case I had another attack.  Not to see if the one I was having was going to kill me.  I spent most of my time asleep but I really thought I was in hell.  Literally.  Each time I went to sleep I went to this place I believed was literally hell.  It was a dark place where there was no light, no daytime.  Just eternal darkness. 

​

 

I could see things but like things seen in a dark room at night or when outside and there's a sense of moonlight although there is no moon.  Everything was in ruin and decay like a city after it's been bombed and blown to pieces.  As I wandered through this desolate landscape I noticed that there were other people there besides myself.  At first I thought I was alone.  Then I saw them wandering about like myself.  They were mostly in pairs walking engaged in conversation ignoring the others who were also walking and talking.  Their clothing was shabby, raggedy, old and dirty.  

 

 

As I looked around, suddenly a man jumped on my back and clung to me.  I struggled to see him and at one point I got a look at his face.  It was rotten and old.  His jaw was dangling on his face by one hinge.  His eyes were falling out of their sockets and his skin festered with sores.  He was rotting off his bones.  I screamed.  I thought he was going to kill me or that he was a zombie and was going to make me his next meal.  I spun around and tried to knock him off but he clung with such tenacity I couldn't break his grip.  As I struggled to throw him off me I realized that he didn't want to hurt me.  He only wanted to get close to me to feel my life-force.  My life.  My aliveness.  I struggled less and less as my fear subsided.  After a while he let go of me and looked at me with what was left of his face, an expression of embarrassment and shame.  He turned and walked away as I stood there trying to understand.  

 

​

I continued to walk around and explore this dark depressing world when I noticed there was a big building that was still somewhat intact.  All the other structures were in ruin.  So I went into it to see what it had been or still was.  It was empty with the exception of this one little man.  He was rather short or at least shorter than me and I'm pretty short.  He was wearing a long white lab coat like doctors wear and he was carrying a clip board and pen.  He was bald and wearing thick horn rimmed glasses and whatever he was saying to himself sounded like meaningless gibberish.  He was walking around the rooms in the building in a quick stride.  It was difficult to catch up with him.  As I followed him into this large empty room I noticed a large rectilinear white box in the middle of the room.  It looked like a large freezer box about five or six feet long,  three and a half feet high and about two feet wide. 

​

 

I opened it up to see what was inside.  There was an internal light that lit up when I opened the lid.  Later I realized that it was the only light I saw in that world.  At the moment however my attention was on what I was seeing inside the “freezer”.  There were two blocks of ice.  One was slightly larger than the other by a couple of inches.  They were about two feet square.  There was a large snake in one and some fish in the other.  The snake was flat and curled.  Its skin had a bright colorful pattern on it and was surrounded by bright colors.  The other block had some gray fish that looked like tilapia.  They looked like they were frozen in place as they were swimming.  I had no idea what they were doing there or what they might symbolize.  Although I couldn't help but think that the fish represented Christ and the snake represented the devil.  Frozen like that made me think that in this world “faith” was on hold.  Suspended.  A place between those two worlds.  That's when I thought that I was not in hell but in PURGATORY. 

​

 

Purgatory?  What did I know about purgatory?  Very little.  Not being Catholic I had a basic generic understanding of the concept.  I knew I was born on All Saints Day, November 2nd also known as Purgatory day.  This day is to commemorate or more properly is a day of prayer for those in purgatory.  Purgatory in Catholic belief is the place you go to clear your karma.  If you haven't been good enough for heaven but not bad enough for hell than you go to purgatory to cleanse or purge yourself of your sins to go to heaven.  Or if you are unrepentant then you go to hell.   

 

​

This place was purgatory and all the people here were waiting for their karma to balance itself so they could move on to the next world.  That's what all these people were doing.  Penance.  That's why they would walk around and just talk and think about their lives and sort themselves out patiently until their judgment came.  But I wasn't dead so why was I here?  Just then the short man in a white medical smock walked by me carrying his clipboard and talking to himself.  I turned and followed him trying to get his attention.  He just ignored me and kept walking at a quick pace that was hard to keep up with.  I kept trying to ask him if this was purgatory but it was useless.  I might as well have been invisible. 

​

 

As we were walking I looked over and leaning on a wall was a beautiful painting.  It was an abstraction and though I am not big on abstraction I couldn't take my eyes off this piece.  I went over and picked it up and took it with me while I followed that distracted “mad scientist”.  (That's what he looked like to me.)  Pretty soon we were walking outside in what had been a park.  Like I said, everything in this world was in ruin like a city after being bombed to hell.  We were walking down an ornate curving stair structure and coming up the stairs were three women.   

​

 

They were dressed like Mexican peasant women with their heads bowed projecting a sense of humility.  One was old.  One was middle aged and the third one was young and quite beautiful.  I didn't pay attention to them as we walked by and I accidentally bumped into the youngest of the women.  I apologized profusely and quickly excused myself so I could catch up with the little man who was quickly walking away.  Before I could catch up to him someone grabbed my arm and pulled me back.  It was the old lady.  She was shaking her finger at me and scolding me in Spanish.  I held up my hands to calm her and try to find out why she was so mad at me.  Then I noticed the young girl standing next to the old lady.  The middle age lady was standing back a bit behind the other two.  The young girl had a smudge of paint on her right cheek.  I looked down at the painting and could see where there was a smeared spot on the painting.  It was obvious that when I bumped her and without knowing the painting was still wet I smeared her face.  I also noticed by her eye above the smudge was a crack just under her eye moving toward her ear on her cheek.  It wasn't bleeding or seem to hurt her.

 

 

She kept looking shyly down as if she was embarrassed about the old lady's fussing.  I apologized over and over again but the old lady went on and on.  Suddenly she stopped and took the girl's hand, put it in mine then abruptly turned and walked away with the middle aged lady.  I just stood there bewildered and wondering what was I supposed to do with the young lady. 

​

 

We started to walk in this desolate park not talking to each other.  I think she was as bewildered about all this as I was.  I looked ahead of us and saw four young men walking toward us in a loud and obnoxious way.  I thought this can't be good.  They acted like punks in a street scene in a bad movie.  The leader walked up to me and in a ridiculous tough guy voice, “Hey boy got any money?  Hand it over or were gonna jack you up!” 

​

 

I thought He doesn't know where he's at.  He still thinks he's in the real world.  I realized there were probably a lot of people who had no idea they were dead when they came here.  Maybe that's one of the things they have to figure out.  Maybe it's the first lesson they have to learn.  He took a swing at me and I ducked and jabbed him in the throat with my fingers in a straight knife thrust I saw in the movies.  He went down like a sack of potatoes.  Then his buddies jumped on me and began to wail on me.  Then something happened that I would have never expected.  Other people who were walking around the park came to my rescue.  For them I guess it was an opportunity to do something good.  They pulled the young men off me, scolded them and sent them on their way.  Kind but firm.  Spiritual. 

​

 

I have to add at this point that I would wake from this dream but when I went back to sleep I picked up right from where I left off.  This continued for two days without let up.  It didn't matter if my waking interlude was long or short.  I always returned to where I was before I woke.  That's why I kept thinking this was more than a dream.  It seemed to be more like a dimension.  A place that actually exists.  I think I was there as a warning. 

​

 

Back to the “Dream” 

​

 

After the confrontation the young lady and I continued to walk about while I kept trying to communicate to her.  She just looked down and kept silent and I couldn't tell if she could understand anything I said.  She didn't act afraid or try to run away.  At one point she even looked up at me and gave me a shy smile.  Pretty soon I knew we were tired and I looked for a place for us to sleep when I came upon a big bed.  I was surprised to find Arlette on it already asleep.  She didn't wake when I tried to rouse her.  I wanted to explain the girl before she misunderstood the situation and killed me.  Then I thought she couldn't wake because this was not her dream even though she was still a part of me and of this whole story unfolding here.  The bed was large enough for all three of us so I laid down and went to sleep. 

  

 

I still didn't know who or why the girl had been left with me although later I developed a theory as to who she was and why I was left with her. The three women were the three fates.  These are the archetypical women who weave the lives of the people of the world.  I came to the conclusion that the three fates were telling me that I had more time to live.  The young girl represented time.  She was broken and needed healing and I needed healing. 

​

 

When I went to sleep in my dream world I woke up in the hospital feeling as if I had gone from one waking state to another.  The world of my dream seemed as real and concrete as the real world.  There was no rest between those worlds. 

​

 

The next day I was still in cardiac arrest and when I slept I was still in purgatory.  When I was awake there however the young girl was no longer with me.  Neither was Arlette.  I continued to wander about when I came upon what had once been a grocery store.  I went in to look around when I found a table with comic books scattered around on the top.  They were all trashed out like everything else in this world but I recognized some of the titles which made me remember the real world.  It made me want to go back home.  I knew I didn't belong here.  I picked up some of the comics and left the store.   

 

​

As I walked out I noticed three tall men in yellow/ochre robes standing at a distance from me.  I turned and walked away ignoring them.  Nervous for some reason I looked over my shoulder to see if they were still there.  They were following me.  I started to walk at a quicker pace.  They were still following me at a quicker pace.  Dropping the comic books I began to run.  They ran after me.  They got closer and closer.  I could see they were not human.  They had red glowing eyes and huge fang like teeth.  Not the big canine teeth as in a werewolf movie but all the teeth were like big fangs dripping with saliva.  I was terrified.  I ran with all I had but suddenly felt weak and began to stagger.  Then I fell in the mud remembering that I was injured.  I was dying from a heart attack.  I could barely lift my head from the mud to see them coming to kill me.   

​

 

When I looked back I saw a fourth figure who looked like a warrior who moved fast.  He was dressed in a long black middle eastern coat and black boots which his puffy pants fit into.  He had long black shoulder length hair and a long black beard.  He was holding a long curved sword that looked like it was made of black glass or obsidian.  The sword was almost as long as his body and it was wide.  It was thick with a ridge point and looked heavy. 

​

 

This man in black was fighting with the three men in yellow.  I thought they were fighting for who was going to kill and probably eat me.  I turned and was gasping as I tried to get up but I just didn't have the strength.  All of a sudden one of the tall demon men fell to the ground next to me.  His head was no more than twelve inches from my head.  His eyes looked into my eyes with utter hatred and slowly the bright red glow dimmed and then went out.  I knew he was dead.  A few seconds later the yelling and growling stopped and then there was utter silence.  I lifted my head and turned to look.  The two other demons lay in the mud covered in their blood.  The man in black was gone.  He saved me then was gone.  I slowly got to my feet trying to understand what just happened.  I felt weak, my chest hurt and I staggered as I walked.  I soon found myself at the ruin of an old house.  I crawled under the floor through a collapsed wall to retrieve a small metal box hidden there.  Apparently I had hidden it there.  It was a stash box with little mementos from times past.  There was a bag of pot and some rolling papers in there and I started to roll myself a joint.  I was shaking so hard that I dropped the open bag and the papers in the wet mud at my feet.  I fell to my knees to pick it all up but it was all covered with wet mud and there was no way to salvage it. 

​

 

I then thought, what am I doing?  Am I nuts?  This is stupid and I tossed the rest of the rolling papers and all the stuff in my box into the mud.  I walked away and never looked back.  I've never smoked pot or anything else since that dream.  I've never even been tempted or desired or anything since August 23rd, 2004. 

​

 

I continued to wonder through this world through a second day but nothing eventful happened for the remainder of the time I was there. 

​

 

However on that second day I almost died a second time.  I was still in cardiac arrest on that second day when during one of my awake times I noticed some cracks on the walls and up on the ceiling.  It was late at night when a male nurse came in to see how I was doing.  I said I was doing OK but they ought to do something about those cracks.  He looked at me and asked me what I was talking about.  I explained that I had noticed an oval shaped area on the wall and when I looked closer at it I noticed these large black cracks under the yellow color.  Then all of a sudden the yellow oval turned red and the cracks seem to get larger and thicker.  He gave me an odd look and I asked him what was the matter, couldn't he see them? 

​

 

The next thing I knew the room started to fill up with lots of nurses and doctors.  I just laid there in a stupor and watched them run around in a frenzy.  Then all of a sudden they all left.  I looked around and thought that all of that ruckus lasted only about fifteen minutes.  In reality it had lasted two and half hours.  I was later told that my heart had gone into a-fib and I almost died.  This meant that my heart was not pumping correctly.  It was flipping around like a fish out of water.  I had been unconscious through most of it.  No one ever did say anything to me about the red and yellow oval colors over the big black cracks.  If I hadn't mentioned those cracks I would have most likely died. 

​

 

There is one last thing I want to mention about my hospital stay before I get to the reason I'm writing all this.  On the second day after my afib experience I had this moment of clarity, of absolute certainty, a knowing that I was being watched and manipulated by alien beings.  I've had so many strange “alternate reality” experiences and dreams in my life that I had enough.  I was fed up.  I knew this heart attack was part of it as well as this incredible “purgatory'” dream.  All of a sudden I knew something was going on and I was tired of it.  I wanted to know why “they” were doing this to me and I wanted it to stop.  I felt cheated by the aliens.  I was furious and knew they were there just out of sight and could hear me.  I called them cowards and every dirty name I could think of.  I knew I was right.  Soon the rage and delusion passed and I calmed down.  I felt so alone.  Abandoned.  I fell asleep. 

​

 

Early the next morning Arlette called and I started to tell her about my adventure in purgatory land.  Although I told her of the strange dreams on the first day in the hospital, I was excited to tell her of my rescue from the three demons.  As I was reciting the dream I remembered something.  I remembered where I had seen the man in black with the large sword before.  You see when I saw him in the dream there was something familiar about him but I couldn't figure out why.  It was like I had seen him before but I couldn't remember where.  So I put it off and forgot about it.  I was just happy that he saved me.  I might add at this point that I had firmly believed if he had not been there to save me those demons would have killed me.  They would have torn me apart and I would have never woke from that nightmare.  I remembered.  I remembered where I had seen him before.  I began to cry as I talked to Arlette.  I cried as I cry while I type this.  As my heart aches as I tell the rest of this. 

​

 

About nine to twelve months before this heart attack I had a strange occurrence that happened to me.  I have a routine of having a prayer session followed by a period of meditation.  I have been doing this since the late sixties.  At first it was on and off but in time I developed a good discipline and it became routine. When I do this routine I sit on a small foam cushion beside the bed on the floor.  I start with prayers.  I just pray about whatever is on my mind.  Just a simple conversation with my best friend.  I let whatever is in my heart out.  This is followed by formal prayers and then I meditate.  Back then I used a mantra to help keep my focus.  (Nowadays I don't need a mantra.) 

​

 

I believe this event occurred in the summer but I don't know exactly when.  For some reason I never made a note of this.  Maybe it was just “another” of those weird things that keep happening to me and I was tired of always thinking I was crazy.   As I sat down to begin my routine I looked up and saw a man squatting just across from me.  He sat in front of my dresser and his face was lit up.  I don't know how because there was no light source anywhere.  The room was completely dark.  Black.  Yet his face was lit up.  I could see the light reflect off the hairs on his head and his beard.  He wore a thick black beard and his hair was also black.  I could see the pores in his skin and the little lines in his muted blue gray irises with little specks of brown.  He looked to be a robust healthy man in his thirties with a youthful glow.  He was wearing a blood red shirt or tunic and on top of that a deep olive green robe with a hood.  The cloth had an uneven weave like sack cloth or burlap.  He just squatted there looking at me.  His expression was sort of a waiting look like when a father is looking at his “guilty” son with a look of “Well?” or “What now?”  Not disappointment but expectation and like a kid I'm thinking What?  He didn't say a word but I could feel his authority.   

​

 

Just then I noticed to the right of him high up in the corner of the room at what seemed a great distance, three men in yellow robes.  They were huddled in conversation.  They turned and looked toward me when they realized I was looking toward them.  I then turned back to look at the man who was sitting six to seven feet from me and he was gone.  The man that was in my bedroom that night was the same man in the long black cloak with the long sword who slew the demons in my dream.  The demons were the men in the yellow robes in the corner of my room.   

​

 

I wept as I told Arlette of my dream and revelations.  From that point on I believed that my dream was more than just a dream but a vision.  A vision that had an immediate change in me.  I had smoked pot since I was seventeen and smoked for thirty seven years.  After August 22, 2004 I never smoked again.  Not once.  I have not even been tempted to even when my friends are passing a joint around.  Nor do I have any judgment about my friends who do smoke.  I not only quit smoking I also started to learn the meaning of loving unconditionally. 

​

 

The story doesn't end here.  There is one last part.  A few years passed when Arlette ran across a book she thought I might find interesting.  The title of the book was Heaven is for Real.  The book was about a little three or four year old boy who died and was later revived.  A couple of years after his near death experience the little boy began talking about being in Heaven and meeting Jesus and other members of his family that had passed on.  I poo-pooed the book and told her I had no interest in some yuppie Christian consumerism propaganda book.  That was that.  No interest whatsoever.  Not long after that Arlette in her internet explorations ran across a story of this little Russian girl who had the art world in a spin with her extraordinary art.  What did I care about a little girl who was some art sensation when I couldn't sell my art if my life depended on it and as a matter of fact it did.  Once again no interest whatsoever. 

​

 

It happened that I was walking by Arlette when she was at her computer looking at the work of this Russian girl named Akiane Kramarik.  Arlette said to me that this painting that the little girl did of Jesus was the same painting that the little boy from the Heaven is for Real book said looked like the Jesus he saw in heaven.  The little boy had rejected all the other images of Jesus that his father showed him.  Arlette asked if I wanted to see it.  I rolled my eyes and said sure.  I looked. 

​

 

My mouth fell open.  My eyes filled with tears.  It was him.  It was the man in my bedroom.  It was the man in purgatory.  The man in the long black coat and with the long sword.  The man who killed the demons.  The man who looked at me with that look of “Well.  I'm waiting.  Well?”