THE NIGHT I DIED by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

IF THIS WAS A DREAM, WHY DON'T I REMEMBER WAKING UP FROM IT?

(The Second of 8 Major Experiences in My Life)

It was 1946. I was 9 years old, in bed for the night in the center bedroom, my bedroom, when my body began to float above the bed, then lowered. Suddenly, my heart fluttered and stopped. I tried to move, but could not; I was completely paralyzed. I tried to call for my mother, but could not. Unable to move or cry out, I lied awake the whole long night with my eyes opened.

In the morning, my mother came into my room to wake me. "Oh my God, Jimmy!" she called out to my father. He came to the bedroom door, looked in, closed it, and said, "We better call Flock's."

I was pronounced dead, taken to Flock's Funeral Home, embalmed, viewed for two days, driven to the cemetery and buried.

All of the time of this experience was in real time.

The last thing I remember, as I could hear the dirt hitting the coffin, was begging and screaming to let me out, that I was alive. I never remember waking up from that dream, if it was a dream, or how it is that I am here now in this separate reality with a sister who says the center bedroom was always hers.

That arrangement is the glaring glitch in my matrix, my continuity. Where was she then? Why are we estranged now?

November 5, 1951 my grandmother died and was taken to Flock's. I had never been there before in this reality. Yet, everything was exactly as I remembered, from the stones in the fireplace to the embalming room, where my cousin Bobby and I peeked in to satisfy my curiosity.

July 1955 to June 1958, I was stationed with the Army Security Agency in Asmara, Eritrea, Ethiopia as a Military Police Officer. One of my Army buddies had studied to be a mortician. He was amazed that I was able to detail every step of the embalming procedure from my experience.

Every so often, throughout my life, I would ask my mother, right up until the time she died in 1987, "What was that all about?" I always got the same reply -"Ohhhh!" - in a dismissive tone that tried to make it seem trivial or that it was not to be talked about.