II. Adjusting

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It would be several weeks until the pronounced feeling of bliss dissipated. For a week after my experience, I barely left my bedroom. This worried my parents who noticed I wasn’t my normal self. I only briefly spoke when someone asked me a question, I only ate or drank when food or beverage was brought to me (and then, very little), I moved only to go to the bathroom, and spent most of the day and night sitting up with my eyes closed, still enjoying the afterglow of the remarkable event. 

 

Free from the pressures of worldly life, my face took on an almost angelic appearance of absolute serenity. My friends would come over, but would soon leave due to my seemingly listless response. I didn’t want to play frisbee, go to the community swimming pool, or even watch TV. I just wanted to sit, continuing to sip the sweet nectar from within.

 

Having taken my temperature and showing no symptoms of being ill, my mother began to get concerned. She carefully inquired, “Victor, honey, you’ve been acting different lately. Is everything okay with you?” checking to see if my forehead was warm, eyes dilated or palms sweaty.

 

“I’m fine, Mom. Sorry. Really, I’m fine.”

 

Most parents would have followed up with more questions, curious to know if their child had taken something they shouldn’t have, or received something from a stranger. They might have called the parents of the friends to see if their boys were demonstrating similar behavior. As a last resort, they might have taken their child to the family doctor to get a complete examination. 

 

But the absolute calm emanating from me was contagious. Each time my mom, dad, or sister entered my room, their concerns would magically be assuaged as they felt a wave of peace flow over them. Sure, my behavior was odd for a goofy and extroverted 14 year-old boy who normally had difficulty focusing, sitting still, and frequently found himself in trouble. But to be with me, as my sister later told me, was to experience a strange and rare comfort.

 

Of all the family members, my sister was most supportive. She would come to my room and we would just both sit in silence together—for which she had no problem. There was never a sense of awkwardness between us that I felt with the others, whose answer to stillness was constant fidgeting. Later, my sister would begin to ask me questions, as if she, too, was looking for some kind of an experience; some kind of escape from the monotony of a hum-drum existence. 

 

She wanted to know every detail about what happened to me that day, and had her own hypothesis about death, believing that nothing ever dies, that everything in this world is recycled—even that part of us we cannot see. It was our conversations that I missed most after I left home. It was my sister who was totally accepting of what I had become.

 

On the other hand, my church-going mom, to make herself feel more comfortable with my sudden shift in temperament, would tell all the family and any of the faithful that I must’ve had an encounter with Jesus that warm summer day lying on the grass. “What else could explain my son’s sudden saint-like behavior?”she would ask. It was then, that she started to read about the lives of famous Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart, St. Catherine and St. John of the Cross, and warned me about the “dark night of the soul.” 

 

As days passed, my old sense of self slowly returned and I began to try to integrate myself more with family and friends. But others noticed something different about me. When I started school again that fall, all my old buddies remarked how I had changed. I was no longer the pestering, restless kid, trying to impress his friends by drawing obscene pictures and passing them around, or giving a quarter to anyone who would lick the tetherball pole in the dead of winter. Nor would I any longer go around bothering the older girls by pulling at their pony tails, or snapping the back of their training bras.

 

I would kick around a ball with some of the other guys just to pass time, but no longer was the life of the party. Most of my friends would eventually abandon me, wondering where the old Vic had gone. My social status plummeted and I could now sometimes be found playing tether ball by myself before school started, or sitting alone on a bench having lunch when Nick wasn’t around to keep me company. 

 

Ironically, it was the same girls I used to tease that I now preferred to share company with. With the girls, I could at least talk about my new passions that included painting and learning to play the guitar. Ever since the day of my death experience, I had gained a greater appreciation for the arts. I could now experience both with a clarity and delight that was absent before. I asked my parents to sign me up for oil painting classes and when my grandmother asked what it was I would like for my birthday, I told her the soundtrack to the recently released,“Star Wars” movie, which was written and conducted by the great cinema composer, John Williams. That was my introduction to orchestral music, and the beginning of a life-long interest in musical composition.

 

My eighth grade teacher was pleasantly surprised to see that I had a more serious side, although, she often found me in a day-dreaming stupor. Other than that, my grades were good and when called on in class, I would always give thoughtful answers. I also became very curious, began to read a lot, and even enjoyed some writing. All in all, a complete turn-around from what I used to be.

 

My adolescence quickly passed by. Looking back, it all seems like a dream. Childhood, elementary school, the long summer afternoons in New Hinton—they feel real, yet strangely weightless, as if they belonged to someone else. I sometimes wonder if I had truly lived those events. I remember growing up, but did anything really change?

 

I was now in the second year of that precarious time in life when every high school teenager aimlessly walks the aisles of the identity marketplace trying on various masks to see which one might fit. Fortunately, I never saw the point of it all. Isn’t a mask for covering up something?If so, what is it that everyone is in such a hurry to cover up? I wondered. In contrast, I was trying to remove the mask my parents, teachers and society had already put on me, not acquire a better-fitting one.

 

However, my self-esteem struggled in other ways. I now found it almost impossible to connect with the other kids. To me, high school was a strange state of limbo where young men and women were too clever to remain children, but still too stupid to become responsible grown-ups. I was astonished how most of the students behaved—the cliques, the gossip, the fads, the makeup, the struggle for status, the fear of losing out, the insane-emphasis on sports… the fascination with drawing male genitalia on everything.

 

Unlike some kids who find themselves friendless due to lack of social skills, I became a “loner” by choice and elected to spend my lunch break in or around the library, far away from the jocks, preppies, stoners, and goths. The other kids thought I was a bit odd and reclusive, but for the most part (much to my satisfaction), ignored me. I never wanted to stand out, and if I had had a choice, would’ve preferred to never be seen or known. I even asked my mom if I could do home study—a proposal that was immediately shot down. 

 

Only the teachers really knew me. They all thought I was a very sensitive, inquisitive and curious student with profound questions regarding the meaning of things. Depending on the teacher, I was encouraged to go onto college and study either biology, physics, psychology or law. But in spite of my good grades and few, but solid relationships, all through high school there was a certain longing I couldn’t ignore. I never forgot what happened that one summer day in front of my parent’s house, when I had witnessed a certain innate essence. 

 

During lunch time and in my free time, I searched for answers to what I might’ve experienced. I scoured the library for books that would confirm that others had experienced the same. Along the way, I discovered Heraclitus, Marcus Aurelius, Bento de Spinoza, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, just to name a few. But my search was mostly fruitless and I had nobody I could trust to even share my experience with who might be able to help me make any sense of it. I was on my own, alone in unknown territory. 

 

I had a compass, but no map.

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Continue to Part III: "A Nice Place to Live"

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