I recently heard a fascinating dying story.

A woman told me how her elderly mother…either a scientist or an engineer (I can’t remember now, sorry) who was hours from death, drifting in and out of consciousness and totally non-lucid even when she was conscious…began to report on what she was experiencing internally, in a disembodied kind of voice.

It seems the discipline of a lifetime dies hard.

What struck us both was that the last thing she communicated was an experience of light.  She said There’s a light.  Twice.  Which seemed surprising because her mother was a firm agnostic.

The conversation paused briefly as we mused over this.  I mentioned that I’ve heard a lot about this experience of light (of course, who hasn’t?) but the scientist hanging around in my own head, while curious, has remained unconvinced  without further evidence.  The fact that her mother was a scientist and agnostic definitely carried some weight.

To which the daughter, who seemed to share her mother’s rational sensibilities, responded that it didn’t necessarily mean anything more than that her mother was having a visual experience of light.  There’s no way to know for sure what was causing it, and certainly no way to know if it was a sign of anything else.  And I got that.  There really isn’t.

But still…it comforted me.  I mean, seriously, out of all the possible experiences I can think of having to go through during my own transition, heading for light is definitely up there in the top three.  It sure beats seeing something like monsters coming to get me, or heading for a giant buzz saw, or disappearing into a gaping, empty, black void.

Light is good.  I’m all in for light.

And…if any such light turns out to be the precursor to something more cool?  Well, even the non-committal scientist in my head grins at the thought and says, IF that’s the case, then she’s totally on board, too.

Photo by Zouavman Le Zouave at Wikpedia

copyright Dia Osborn 2011