Randy wrote a blog "Death On The Doorstep" so I'm gonna tell you about something that happened to me when I was 17.
I had just entered nursing school and Labor Day was the last holiday before school started for us nursing students, for school children and for everybody else.

Eight of us freshman students went to a popular local lake crowded with people who were swimming and picnic-ing and enjoying themselves. I didn't know how to swim, so I tippy toed in up to my knees, then up to my waist. There were people in the water all around me, so I felt safe. I advanced one more little tippy toe and stepped into deep water over my head.

I panicked and you know how they say you go under three times? Well, I did, gasping and flailing every time I came up. My short life flashed before my eyes. I went under and stayed under. Then a marvelous thing happened. My soul, my spirit, left my body like a butterfly leaving a cocoon. This spirit, IT, floated lighter than air over the lake and I could see my body under the water and the entire lake and the people below.

This spirit was perfectly content to leave the body behind; there was no desire to go back into it. Utter peace as the spirit rose higher and farther away. The next thing I knew, I was on the bank and concerned people were working on me--someone had finally noticed me in the water and dragged me out on the bank and I was coughing up buckets of water.

Since that time death itself has held no fear for me--it's just what you have to go through to get to the actual moment of death that can be bad. Pain and injury and misery to the cocoon, the body itself, is what's daunting. All I know is once you shuffle off this mortal coil, the spirit, the soul, whatever you choose to call it is at peace at being released.

susil