I was dead once. But I survived.
It happened many years ago, when I was two.
Now only what’s left is just a blurry distant memory of a bright yellow light felt like a warm embrace telling me to “go back to my parents and it was not my time yet”. Like a déjà vu, I still do recall some faint memories or perhaps maybe having a little flashback about it now and then, and here I am, still alive and kicking and able to tell you this true story.
But as for my mother, this memory is still as fresh as if it only happened to me yesterday. From her I managed to know what exactly happened in details years ago. How I was supposed to die but like a miracle I survived.
“Ma, ma… sister eat.. sister eat..”
My brother, who was only four and can barely use baby talk at that time was trying to tell my mother how he found me lying unconscious on the floor with some white frothy substances in my mouth with pills scattered all over the floor.
To her horror she immediately left all her work in the kitchen and like every mother would do, she checked my pulse, my mouth, patting my back, turned my body upside down, attempted to make me vomit all the pills by using her fingers, did everything that she could but I never once wake up. My father (now deceased) was away, he was at a church’s group prayer meeting or something so I was told, and it was in the late 80s and mobile phone was still not a thing yet, not even a landline did we own, and we lived in a rural area, where we were probably far from the hospital. My mother didn’t know how and who to call for help so she waited for my father to come back home from the church.
It was late in the evening when my father finally came back home, but I was growing weak, dying. So, without wasting anymore time, as fast as he can he immediately drove me to the hospital…
Bear in mind, it was in the late 80s, and we were in a rural area in Limbang, Sarawak, my hometown. So, there were many facilities that was lacking in the hospital, we didn’t even have an ICU, just a normal hospital bed in a normal children’s ward.
In the hospital bed I was being attended by a medical assistant (MA) a young and inexperienced one (so I was told) they didn’t immediately do what they were supposed to do which was to use the suction device to suck all the ingested medicines out of my body through my mouth, instead they repeated the same method my mother did, which was to use his finger to make me vomit! CPR? Not sure if they did perform a CPR on me at that time, because I thought maybe CPR might make the drugs go deeper in my system? I don’t know, I’m not a medical expert here.
I don’t know what they did after that but my mother told me that they were trying hard to revive me the whole night after one of the senior doctors gave the MA some earful scolding because he didn’t initially use the suction device on me, as a result they gave me an injection for the ‘final’ method before my parents called some priests to pray for me just in case… as if they were preparing for the worst…
When morning breaks, still laying there on the hospital bed with eyes shut, skin went pale and blue. Everyone, including the medical staffs had to give up on me. There was nothing else they could do, so they said.
My mother couldn’t stop crying and shaking my body, I can't imagine how desperate she was, hoping that I will get into my senses soon… my father was blaming himself for being so careless with his medicines. While I was laying there in the brink of death and the priests were praying for me, desperately, for the whole night till morning, a miracle suddenly happened!
The bluish pale looks on my skin and lips suddenly slowly turning pink as if my blood came rushing inside me again, making me look like I was coming back to life.
Behold! The child is coming back to life!
Rejoice! Everyone was rejoicing, praising the Lord!
The medical staffs were shocked, puzzled, how can this happening? But immediately examined my body.
Everyone was happy especially my mother. Crying with tears of joy, almost losing her precious daughter.
My father, happy and relieved but there was a lesson learned.
And here I am now. Having a hard time to process all the emotions while telling you this story.
Fast forward few years after the near-death incident, my father took this photo of me. My first day to school. Kindergarten, to be exact. He tore up a piece of a date from a calendar and asked me to hold it in front of the camera while he snapped a pic.
I never understood why he did what he did. But I guess, he was trying to tell something but I was too young to understand. Perhaps he was appreciating the second chance that was given to me and the second chance for him to be with me and able to watch me growing up and go to school. And that date from a piece of a calendar was just to represent “time” is precious, and we need to appreciate it while it lasts.
I was almost gone once, I guess my father couldn’t get over the trauma but still can handle it by taking this picture.
And now I am an adult, I still do think about those faint memories I had. The bright yellow light. I guess miracle do happen sometimes, like one in a million years and I was lucky to be the chosen one to experience it.
And I have always wondered was it God? Jesus? Allah? The universe? Whatever the entity was, I am extremely grateful. But how would it feel to die? Will I end up in heaven? But what if I die as an adult? Will I end up in hell because I am not as innocent as how I was when I was two? Should I have died back then when I was two because the world is cruel and afterlife was better? Many unanswered questions! Anyway, this is such a heavy topic to speak about so I might going to leave it for another time. Or maybe never.
Thank you for reading!🧡💓
