my last near death experience was in palestine at the American University. my faculty housing was in a moldy basement. no heat. no hot water. no cooking gas. [no pay no telephone i had to pay the university to use my own computer in my office at school.] i had a short wave stove. i made my tea and meals in a short wave. i slept leaning against the TV, a tube TV, for its heat. by summer i was sick. i got a leg infection. for two weeks i had a 43 degree C fever, [109F] one of my students knocked down my door and found me. his father was a physician.

in the hospital nothing could fight the infection. nothing they had. the head doctor told me "be prepared tomorrow, you'll probably have a funeral" tomorrow came and the fever had gone. some sort of miracle. the palestinian doctors had really worked. the head doctor gave me a titanium walking stick. as a gift. none of my colleagues at american university even said get well soon. the palestinians are the most generous people in the world. i miss palestine. at night you hear nightingales. i don't recommend the American University.

the next time i died was 1964 at olmsted afb. still actively alcoholic. there was a ditch on the feed road to the Base BX where we'd been drinking till it closed. i was riding shotgun in a corvair. the shotgun went into the ditch. my face knocked out the winshield. my nose was ripped off.

in the ambulance was a medic whose room was next to mine in the barracks. he was short, thin, very pretty blond blue eyed and i was 100% sure he was gay. we never ever spoke. but sometimes we showered at the same time. he held my hand in the ambulance. held my hand with a soft warm friendly touch. i could say lovingly.

during the ride i left my body, into the next world. but i could see him holding a golden cord which he used to pull me back to my body. early that morning they rebuilt my face. back in the barracks a month later again he never spoke with me. i had a BF, the love of my life, who broke off with me while i was in the hospital. that hospital stay was the worst time of my life. i wanted to die. but it was too late. they'd saved my life.

later my BF jimmy and i were discharged honorably. and i never saw him again. 47 years later i am still in love with him. i developed epilepsy from the brain trauma. in 2006 i got 100% disability from brain trauma injuries from that death experience. i never have forgotten that boy's hand, like an angel in that ambulance. after the hospital stay i was too depressed to function. i always wonder why i never spoke to him.

i was 15. already alcoholic. i used fake id when nys drinking age was 18. 1958. i was in HS. working as a stable hand before and after school. one drinking buddy at my local bar had already taken me home several times at closing [2AM in NYS then] on a saturday afternoon i was hitch hiking from irvington to south tarrytown. he stopped and picked me up. then he made a u-turn saying he'd forgotten something. he parked and said "come up. it'll take a few minutes." no, i said, but he insisted.

upstairs he told me to make oral sex and i refused. i was strong. i was throwing around 200lb bales of hay at work. carrying 50 gallon cans of water. he was 29, about 200 plus lbs of muscle, no fat. he smelled of aramis. covered like a bear in hair. a plumber. i fought like hell, screamed for help like a stuck pig fighting for its life literally, but he beat me unconscious. the next day i awoke in the bottom of a dumpster in a garbage bag.

i made it to the local police station on main street. the police laughed. funniest story ever. my brother, a lawyer in nixon's law firm, when i woke up in the hospital, said "why didn't you do the right thing and just die. your hurting my career." at home nobody ever mentioned it. i didn't know until i was 60, that no one at home was ever told.

to this day Aramis makes me sick. if it had been any day but sunday i'd have been crushed in the dumpster truck.

I think the near-death experience is a "flash memory" of sorts that the brain maintains for a short period to hold it over in case your death is temporary. If you reboot, that experience merges back into your regular memory. If you don't, that experience just fades to black.

At 14 i was riding my 10-speed on my way to visit a girl that i liked and i was run over by a lincoln mk7. i remember waking up underneath the engine of the car and i thought i was in hell--of course it looked a lot like a mchine factory. i somehow escaped when i saw the passenger side tire rolling towards my head. in my mind i still see the sparks from my bike as the lincoln crushed it against the pavement.

When a toddler, my parents found me one morning in the yard, happily eating bright red poison mushrooms. I don't remember the trip to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. just my dad's telling of it. YIKES!

I buried a Buddhist body in Bangkok and it was one of the most spiritual experiences I had in SEA 68-70. The priests, family, and friends all processed up the huge temple steps & were given bundles of sticks to throw on the 3 month old unembalmed body placed in the crematoriam space at the top of the temple. Prior to burning the body, when the gold & red ornate covering was removed from the coffin, a young Thai girl dressed in jeans fainted and another American guest taking pictures caught her before she could fall to her death down the steps. The orange clad monks continued with their work with no hesitation. We processed down the side of the temple steps. Bells rang. Prayers recited. We again processed up again and were given black and white lotus pleated handkerchief sented momentoes to remember the young 24 yr old man. Two years later, I follow the lemo carrying my husband Jon's casket covered with an American flag. A lone soldier hitchhiking saluted Jon's service--KIA flying in Laos 18 Feb 70 Air America pilot.

We've all almost died, and we have all almost never been here... I had a padlock thrown at my head from a moving subway. I felt it whiz by my head and crack the tile on the first avenue subway stop. I was in such shock that I walked over to the Subway clerk and said,"Someone just threw a padlock at my head from a moving train," and I kept walking.

On New Year's Eve in 96, I was attacked by six guy in the East Village with boards, bottles, knives and razors. I survived, two other people did not. The attack was part of a gang initiation.

At lastly, my mother was a child who survived the Holocaust for twenty months in hiding in a grave, in a barn, dug by my Grandfather in Lithuania.
What were the odds that my mother would survive and that I would be here to tell the story. Sometimes, I just feel like a flesh- ghost in this world