April 27, 2007,
Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City, Utah, 2007)
Monday I will celebrate the seventh anniversary of my death.
Seven years ago I went into cardiac arrest in the Dallas airport. Doctors later told me that the moment my head touched the ground, my chances of surviving were one in 100.
But thanks to a well-trained flight attendant, some medical people and a pro-hockey player with a heart of gold, I was literally “popped” back to life by an airline defibrillator. American Airlines later gave me a little plaque. The inscription read, more or less, “Thank you for not dying on our airline.”
Today I have my own defibrillator sewn into my chest. It cost about $40,000. It has yet to go off, but it has brought $40,000 worth of peace of mind to my family.
I probably wouldn’t be thinking about all this if a reader, David Wilson, hadn’t sent an e-mail that jogged my memory. I’m glad he did. Just as I was physically shocked back from the dead years ago, I need to be shocked back out of complacency from time to time. I need to be reminded that everything since that day has been gravy. Seven years of good luck. Seven fat cows.
Looking back, I see myself that day as a coin in the hand of God. In a sleight-of-hand move he slipped me from one palm to the other. People around me thought I’d “disappeared.” But it was an illusion. I was safe and warm in another hand.
Art Buchwald once said dying is easy, parking is hard. In my case, it is true. As I felt myself slipping away, I remember thinking, “This is OK. I hope the family realizes it’s OK.” It all felt as natural as walking from one room to another.
Death, for me, was as normal as closing my eyes.
There is a room inside of us where we go when we go to sleep. On the back wall of that room there is a door. Through that door is a passageway — the “death canal.”
Just as there’s a birth canal, there’s a death canal. In fact, I’ve come to realize that pretty much everything happens in canals — through channels.
And if the physical world relies so heavily on channels, why wouldn’t the spiritual world be the same?
God moves through channels. He shares his wishes with a person who stands — like those old water masters in irrigation days — right at the headgate. Then that person passes the spiritual news on down the canal — down the channel — until it gets to us. The world of spirit is all about channeling the “flow.”
Some think that “gatekeeper” is a preacher. Some say it’s a pope.
Some say it’s a prophet.
As for my “death day” in Dallas, once the electric paddles jolted the life back into me, I remember feeling a sense of rising — as if I were coming up, eyes open, through shimmering, cool water; as if I were coming out of the waters of baptism.
When I got to the surface, somebody called out “He’s back!” I felt like The Mummy returning from the underworld. And I remember looking up into the faces hovering above me and feeling grateful.
I feel that way again today.
I always will.