the worst day of my life
still trying to make sense of it all
Note: I write to process things that have happened in my life. I normally don’t hit publish on writing that involves my loved ones (prefer to keep the people in my life private).
But this story from the days of the past felt important to share (because it may point to the fact that there’s a lot more going on here than we’re usually led to believe and if we can cultivate the sensitivity to sense it, then our experience of life can become quite mystical).
So read it, absorb it, and see how it lands for you?
–
I went on a family road trip with 9 of my cousins.
Only 8 came back.
1 didn’t make it.
He died on the car ride back home.
And it fucked with me like nothing else has fucked with me because:
I was the one who invited him.
My brother tried doing CPR, but couldn’t save him.
We had to look his mom in the eye and tell her the devastating news.
Fuck… was that hard.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shake that.
But what was even trippier was the moments leading up to the untimely death…
I was in another car. Riding shotgun.
With two of my cousins.
Feeling sleep deprived… tired… and eager to get back home.
So I punched my home address into Google Maps around 1:45 pm and it said I’ll be home by 6pm.
Time to kill. Time to kill.
What to do? What to do?
Not much… besides shooting the shit with my two cousins… listening to music… and staring out the window, taking in the beauty of nature (it was a beautiful drive we were on).
So that’s what I did.
For an hour or so.
Then I got bored and decided to meditate with my eyes open.
So that’s what I did.
Until things started to feel weird.
Now…
I don’t know how to best put this into words, but the best I can do is the “energy” (woo woo speak) in the car started to change and get “darker and darker.”
More specifically:
I started to witness a plethora of racing thoughts related to death move through the screen of my mind.
(Almost as if I was watching a horror movie.)
“Hmm… this is strange AF.” I thought to myself. “I normally don’t have dark thoughts like these. So this is really weird.”
But I kept it to myself…
Dismissing it as the result of “sleep deprivation” or whatever (I slept 5-6 hours the night before so it wasn’t like I was actually sleep deprived)
Then it started to get worse.
Or at least, that’s how I perceived it at the time.
It felt as if the ‘portal’ of death was slowly opening up before me (a portal that I had sensed during the death of my grandpa years prior) and it was making me uncomfortable AF.
So much so that I remember:
Telling my cousin to drive carefully because internally I just felt off/weird (and thought the feeling may be related to the possibility of getting into a car accident… the drive we were on was beautiful, but the highway was prone to quite a few tragic accidents in the past)
Doing a shoulder check from the passenger seat to check if somebody else was sitting in the backseat next to my younger cousin (the energy/presence in the car felt that extreme).
But of course…
Nobody else was there.
So again… I tried to dismiss the energy in the space… this time turning the music up in an effort to drown out whatever the F I was sensing internally.
That helped. Until it didn’t.
Moments later (could’ve been five minutes… could’ve been twenty minutes… my sense of time from this day is pretty F’d) I start to feel as if I’m about to have the onset of a psychedelic or spiritual experience (I’m 100% sober. Not even a coffee).
And I don’t want to. At all.
I just want to get home and go to sleep.
But of course… whatever is happening… is not happening in accordance with my own needs and wants.
But something bigger.
So I have no choice, but to go along with the ride (literally and spiritually).
Then something really strange happens…
A visual of my older cousin (who is not in the car with us, but in another vehicle - we had 3 different whips) appears in my field and he’s smiling and dancing and laughing (the happiest I’d ever seen him) and surrounded by bright white pearly lights/diamonds in a dimension that seems different yet awfully familiar and he says to me:
“Yo Tej! I’m kicking it. Bye bro!”
And I’m just sitting there in the passenger seat absolutely dumbfounded.
“WTF are you talking about?” I think to myself. “Where are you going? I don’t understand.”
But I get no answers to my questions.
Instead, my cousin disappears from the field as fast as he arrives.
Now:
I’m really starting to trip the F out internally.
Externally I’m still keeping it chill because I don’t want to trip out my other two cousins in the whip.
But my inner dialogue at the time is pretty much: “WTF is going on? This is the weirdest experience ever. Nothing is making sense. I really just need to get back home ASAP.”
So I try to push all this out of my mind.
And I succeed.
Then it feels as if things are slowly returning back to normal. And I’m starting to sense my “normal” reality again. “Thank God.” I think to myself. “I don’t know WTF that was, but it seems like it’s coming to an end.”
And I’m glad.
But then…
It happens. Again. Could’ve been ten minutes… could’ve been twenty minutes later… I don’t know… but the image/visual of another person enters my field.
This time it’s a visual of a woman. And I remember it vividly because her face was beautiful (pure purity) and the look on her face was one of deep compassion/concern/care.
But the weird part was I have no clue who this woman is.
I’ve never seen her before. She’s a complete stranger to me.
Yet she appears in the field and she keeps saying the same thing:
“He died… He died... He died...”
Again, I’m dumbfounded. “Who died?!” I say internally.
But again, there’s no response to my question.
So I’m sitting there, clueless AF to what is happening and feeling quite restless.
Then minutes later my phone lights up.
And the name on the caller ID shows the name of my brother.
So I quickly answer because my phone is on life support and only at 5% battery life (I forgot my charger).
And he says to me:
“[Cousin’s name] (who appeared in my field moments prior) is not breathing…”
“Whaaaaat?” I say in response.
“[Cousin’s name] is not breathing.” He repeats. “He was sleeping in the backseat for the last hour of the car ride, snoring. Then the snoring stopped at some point. And we just stopped to get gas and snacks. And I tried to wake him up to see if he wanted the snacks, but there was no response. Then I checked to see if he was breathing and he wasn’t. Then I called 911. And they instructed me to take him out of the vehicle and perform CPR. So I did. Now all the paramedics are here and they’re trying to revive him. But there’s no pulse. Get to this gas station ASAP!”
“Holy fuck...” I say in terror. And tell him we’re on the way.
Then my trembling fingers hang up the call and I put my phone down…
As soon as I do, all the dots from the last hour start to connect:
The presence of death that was in the field… the visual of my cousin smiling, laughing, dancing telling me “Yo Tej! I’m kicking it. Bye bro.”... the visual of the random lady saying “He died… He died… He died…”
And the realization of what this all means hits me as hard as a physical car going 120 miles per hour.
Then time slows down…
Things get awfully quiet…
Silent tears start falling from my eyes…
But the rest of my face and body is frozen in shock.
And in shock I stay as my cousin glues his foot to the gas pedal and races to the gas station.
14 minutes later:
We arrive on the scene and here’s what we see:
3 or 4 ambulances.
1 or 2 fire trucks.
A stretcher with my cousin on it.
20 paramedics around him.
My brother and other cousins pacing around with agony.
And as I jump out of the truck and race towards my cousin…
The “lead” paramedic in charge turns around to face me…
And as she does, I immediately stop in my tracks…
Because the woman before me aka the lead paramedic is the exact same woman I had seen just minutes prior in my mind…
The one with the look of compassion as she kept repeating: “He died… he died… he died.”
“Holy F…” I think to myself.
“How the F was I able to experience all that even though I wasn’t “physically” at the scene?”
I didn’t know and my heart was too full to try to figure it out (besides I don’t think I could), so I kept my full focus on my cousin.
Hoping and praying and trying to negotiate with God at the nth hour again.
Yet something deep inside me told me that he had already left this planet when he had appeared in my mind’s eye to say goodbye.
And that intuition sadly proved to be right.
Because even though the paramedics were able to detect a pulse again and he was put on a ventilator and induced into a coma and given the best support and care for days on end…
In the end, he didn’t make it.
Too much time had passed without oxygen to the brain.
The cause of death was a silent cardiac arrest.
He was only 37 years of age.
–
Since that day… many interesting things have unfolded… and this experience was quite a difficult one to stomach (still haven’t fully digested it).
But the comforting grace for me and my loved ones was the visual of my cousin and how peaceful, happy, and joyful he seemed (again… the happiest I’d ever seen him) as he was heading out of this world and into whatever comes next.
I inquired about it at a later date with a teacher.
She said:
“If we’re open and sensitive and have done the Work, one of the potentials that can open is the ability to access different parts of the field without physically being there. Furthermore, our loved ones can also come to us in the moments leading up to the death of the physical body as the soul is freed from the usual confinements. Maybe that’s what happened here?”
“Maybe.” I replied.
Thanks for reading.
Your friend,
/tej