The afternoon my mother passed away I confessed something I had kept to myself:
“You see? This is why I don’t believe in God”
That’s the last time I’ve said it, but I have a hard time believing in a being who’s constantly absent, like a stranger. You can’t have faith in someone you don’t know.
Another thing most people don’t know is being close to dying and living to tell the tale. It’s such a distinct experience, in the same way we are all familiar with what dreaming feels like, in contrast to being awake.
That’s how I know what I saw the night I thought I would die wasn’t a dream. I’m still not sure what to make of it.
It started on a Friday, when I woke up unable to breathe and with the weight of an anvil on my chest.
A few days before I had been diagnosed with COVID-19. Spain was only a few weeks into quarantine, but I had been reached by the virus that strangled the world.
At first it wasn’t more than a common cold. Had it not been for my daughter I wouldn’t have even taken the test, though I now recognize I was just afraid of being confirmed as part of something so new and sudden. Given my symptoms, I was prescribed to rest at home. “That should take care of it”, the doctors predicted.
I started self treating on Tuesday. Wednesday felt the same. By Thursday I improved somewhat, cheerfully announcing it to my family and friends on WhatsApp.
Then came that Friday. My lungs had forgotten how to breathe in or retain air, and my legs got introduced to a new kind of weakness, rendering them unable to hold the rest of my body.
I was practically dragged by my husband to the hospital, where I was isolated in an intensive care unit to spend my most fragile and terrifying hours. Like a helpless observer I saw my reality follow the script of the news stories: I was becoming another case number, free falling into the fatal side of this pandemic. As if swept by a wild tide that reduced my life into something miniscule and insignificant.
Despite the care of doctors and nurses my health continued deteriorating. By Sunday evening I was drifting away, vanishing. The best way to put it is that I was abandoning myself. I texted my husband a message that I have absolutely no recollection of writing:
“I'm not going to make it.”
I really thought so. I was convinced this could be my end, and that at some point, as my consciousness came and went, I would eventually just see blackness, without knowing what I was seeing, or who I was, or knowing at all.
I sensed it was time to text my children and let them know how much I loved them, that I would always be by their side. To remind them that, ultimately, all they have is each other.
But that also felt wrong, given they were so far away and unable to see me. Two of them live abroad, and my daughter couldn’t come visit. I refused to add to their anguish when this story had yet to play out. There was still some hope, a tiny light amidst a dense fog.
So, in the brief moments my drifting mind would allow me, I mentally said goodbye to them and those I love. One by one, I invoked them in my imagination to say thank you. I hugged them tightly and then let them go, in order to make room for the next farewell.
Then I thought of God. The one I couldn’t believe in.
For the first time in a long while, I consciously put myself in his hands. I confessed I didn’t want to leave, but that I trusted his choice would be the right one.
So I waited… waited… waited…
And eventually lost consciousness.
And then, I heard music. A noise from the hallway that opened my heavy eyelids.
Summoning all my strength, I sat up to listen. The music was sung by a crowd of voices, all female, in what seemed like some sort of Gregorian chant.
It took a few difficult minutes, but I managed to get out of bed and, panting, walk to my room’s entrance, the farthest the tube from my oxygen machine would allow me. I opened the door.
A light of incredible brightness forced me to shield my eyes. The chant seemed to reach every inch of the building. I slowly made out the image that would become seared in my memory.
There was a procession in the hallway, a long line of nuns dressed in black habits. They all carried these candles that were tall, extraordinarily tall.
Rows and rows of those candles, like towering church torches, gave away that light that dazzled everything around them. As if their flames met up in the heights and united into a great fire.
I remember with absolute clarity the warmth of that glow: overwhelming luminosity and heat, hovering over the march of these nuns.
I confess that, aside from amazed, I was also irritated. They were bothering all the patients in intensive care.
“What is this?” I protested. “You are going to wake up the entire building.”
The nuns ignored my complaint and continued the procession, one tiny step at a time. I noticed another patient, a man around my age, exit his room and also become blinded by this scene.
“Are you crazy?!” I insisted. “It’s the middle of night!”
One of the nuns turned her head to see me. Her face, sweet and kind, gave me a tender, close-lipped smile.
I gasped myself awake. The sun was out and I was back at my hospital bed.
It all seemed so uncanny. What I had seen, no matter how striking, didn’t feel at all like dreaming. And had it been a dream it’s without a doubt the most real one I’ve ever had.
I remained seated for a while, thinking about the previous night, when I heard a commotion in the hallway. I saw the hospital staff clearing out a nearby room, and quickly realized it belonged to that other patient, the one who had also witnessed the procession.
A corpse inside a body bag was then wheeled out, like trash for the landfill. I’m not positive whether it belonged to the man I’d seen, but it undoubtedly came from the same room. The pandemic, like a wild tide, had swept another life and turned it something miniscule and insignificant.
Strangely enough, I took a turn for the better that day. There was still a long road ahead to recovery, but the doctors were surprised by my improvement and sent home a week later.
I’m often told the procession was a nightmare, but even when I was back in my apartment I could sense it, occasionally in my room. At night, whether asleep or awake, my face would feel the warmth of that glow, and my sense of smell, although missing because of the virus, was able to pick up the scent of those candles on fire.
Till this this day I wonder: if this was a message from God, what was he intending to say? To reassure me of his protection? Make me feel indebted after my faithlessness? Let me know it could have been my corpse inside that body bag, or that it simply wasn’t my time? It is said one must see to believe, and I do now. But what happens when you believe yet can’t understand?
That’s why I strive to give attention to the things I believe in because I do understand them: every day is a gift, and it’s the little moments of happiness alongside those we love what matters. Life is unpredictable, and our time to love and be loved limited. We don’t know when these rivers we navigate will take a turn, speed up and head into a waterfall.
I often think of this, and in what I saw that evening. I might never know what it meant, or if it has a meaning at all. All that stays with me from that moment is what it made me feel: not fear, nor peace.
Just amazement, and that light.
