There is no light at the end of the tunnel

Someone asked me tonight about death.

Well, I have died a couple of times. I know what you're thinking. No, it's not just a delusion. I actually died.

Here's what happened...


When I went to basic training, I was a pansy. Really. I weighed 143 pounds at 6 feet tall. I took my first physical fitness test about a week into it. I could only do 11 push ups, 25 situps, and run 2 miles in 25 minutes. If you think that's not so bad, do 10 pushups. See how long it takes you.

I'll wait.

Didn't take very long, didn't it? It took me all two minutes to do 11. I tried to do another one, but my arms gave out, and I hit my face on the ground.

Anyway, to the point of my story.

One day, we were in the classroom doing an inventory of our gear, and also cleaning it. Since it wasn't instruction or physical training, people were talking. A lot. And loudly. Our Drill Sargent warned us to keep it down. He didn't care that we were talking. He just didn't want to have to yell over the crowd.

Finally, he had had enough of the noise, and told everyone to get outside. We all got up, and went outside. He ended up taking us to "The Pit". Every basic training has something like this. Ours was a 75 foot long by 45 foot wide shed that was only open on one end. The floor of this shack was 3 inches of loose dirt and bark.

If they wanted to punish us, they took us out to The Pit, and made us work out. Push ups, sit ups, running in place, other various exercises. When you get 50 people running in place in the dust, and there's very little ventilation, it tends to get difficult to breathe, which was the case on this day.

We were doing crab walks, bear crawls, etc. The dust got so thick that you couldn't even see past the doorway. I could barely breathe, and was already exhausted from the exercises, that I started feeling pretty woozy. Our DI (drill instructor) saw that I was having problems, and called us into formation. I tried to get up, but my arms were jelly. So, I rolled over, and tried to get up, but I couldn't. One of my friends grabbed my hand, and helped me up.

I fell into formation right in front of our DI, and did my best to keep standing. He told us to go upstairs, get cleaned up and come back to the classroom.

When I got upstairs, I went into the bathroom to wash up, when suddenly, my vision started closing in. Yup. I'm gonna pass out. So, I grabbed the sink, to try and hold on to some sort of reality, but to no avail. I remember it going black, and then nothing.

I came to on my bunk, and bolt upright, breathing heavily. There were several people around me, a couple of which seemed completely terrified.

I asked them what happened, and they pieced it all together for me. Apparently, I had stopped breathing because of all the dust in my lungs, and passed out in the bathroom. I hit the back of my head on the tile floor because I fell straight backward. This could have been a contributing factor to what is next.

I stopped breathing all together.

For 10 minutes.

I know you probably think I'm full of shit, but that's what they told me. They tried doing rescue breathing on me, and an ambulance was on the way. However, after that long, the rescue breathing just isn't going to work. So, they were basically just waiting for the ambulance to take me to the hospital and declare me dead.

That's when I sat up in bed, and scared the shit out of them. The paramedics got there, checked me out, and said that they didn't hear anything wrong with my lungs. I had a slight concussion from hitting my head on the tile, but other than that and being disoriented, I was in good condition.

So, I went back downstairs like nothing happened. I ended being one of 5 people who got promoted at the end of Basic, and the DIs told me that because of my help, my platoon was "Honor Platoon" in the company. Which, in turn, made us "Honor Company", which also in turn, made us "Honor Battalion". I also had the best run improvement time they had ever seen. I went from running 2 miles in 25 minutes, to 13 1/2. Not bad, eh? I couldn't do it again, mostly because I smoke.

Anyway, the point I that I'm making, I think, is that I didn't see anything when I was "dead". No tunnel, no light, no choir of angels, no burning inferno, no blackness, no heaven, no hell. Nothing. Is that weird?