What happens when we close our eyes?

What happens when we close our eyes?

I am currently in the second stage of my Clinical Medicine postings or as we call it, M2. This requires us going to the hospital everyday and tagging along to our respective units. Stay in school kids.

It's not really fun, well, maybe on some days. 

One sad reality I have come to live with is the sight of dead bodies being wheeled out from the wards to the mortuary. Sometimes they are followed by sobbing, weeping relatives. Sad.

For every moment I experience that, there's this wave of sadness, and emptiness that creeps upon me like I should have been there to save them. Then just before that wave dies out, there's a crest, a part of it where I ask myself "So this is it, they are gone…totally gone, what next?"

The wave dies out and I never have enough time to think of an answer.

What happens when we close our eyes forever?

Or should the question be "What happens when we open our eyes?"... because they open right?, there's another side after death where we get to wake up. Right?

The afterlife, heaven, reality, eternity…the other side. There has to be!

I mean, this here can't really be the end.

Maybe my story will interest you.

Don't freak out, you are not dead… yet.

Let's start from the part where I opened my eyes, it was a normal feeling, just like I had woken up from a few hours of sleep but when I opened my eyes, nothing made sense. It felt like my dreams, because most times nothing ever made sense in it.

I was in the middle of nowhere, in a vast body of water that only reached the level of my knees. That did not make any sense, why would an ocean be so shallow?

I called out for help. "Help! Anybody out there! Hey! Anybody?"

The only response I got was the echo of my own voice, that didn't make sense either because there were no mountains or walls for my voice to bounce off of.

I am a "we move" kind of guy, so I started walking. I could not tell the direction I was walking in. I walked. I ran. I walked.

Though I could not tell time, I had walked over what would be an hour but then it felt like I had not really made progress.

It felt like Zeus had just switched me for the main character in a Sisyphus myth.

I was not thirsty which was weird, but out of curiosity I was going to drink from the water. Suddenly, to my left in the water, some movements caught my eye. I looked keenly, it was me.

It was me. I was standing over the lifeless body of a mother, and there was her little baby, crying. As I stared into the water, I could remember it was her gold accessories that had caught my eye, in an attempt to rid her of it…I stabbed her three times.

I was still standing but I watched the slideshow played by the water, I watched with empathy. Another video started to the right of me in the water, it showed me the consequences of my actions and what would have been if I hadn't killed that woman.

Turns out the little baby had to complete childhood in an orphanage, and made a devotion to the streets. Got addicted to drugs and shit, became a psycho, confined to a mental hospital for the rest of her life. She would have totally been a better person, different from that if I hadn't killed her mum.

A tear dropped from the corner of my eye. Her name was Jasmine.

I could no longer bear it. I moved away, I walked on. Not long after I stopped, another slideshow began.

Same sequence. To the left was my action, to the right were the consequences of my actions and what would have been if I had done the right thing.

Let's fast forward this a bit. By the time I had gone through this whole process ten times, each similar to the last. You should have figured by now but I was not much of a good person.

I could not take it anymore, my heart was heavy and the guilt was crushing. I hated that this dream or whatever it was, was beginning to make sense. 

I was going to find solace. I felt empty and I was going to look for a black hole. I laid in the water, there was enough room for what I was about to do. 

The water should be enough to quench the fire of pain that burned in me, or so I thought. I tried drowning myself. I wouldn't just die. I forcefully stayed face down in the water for minutes, and when it felt like I was to have my wish, I developed gills.

I took my head out of the water, oh, the eleventh video had started playing but then in the distance, I saw a bright light and what seemed like the silhouette of a human. It was coming close.

As the figure came closer, the light shined brighter and my eyes grew weaker. I fainted, fell backwards into the water.

I opened my eyes again, this time I was lying on a flat surface with a bright light hanging over my body. I looked around and there were bodies, dead. Dead bodies with some sort of identity tags attached to their first right toe.

It wasn't a dream. I was dead.