What Dying Taught Me About Love, God, and the Meaning of Life with Kimberly Clark Sharp

Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.

Kimberly Clark Sharp 0:03
I was walking out of the DMV, and as I stepped out, I collapsed, and my dad tried to catch me, but dead weight is heavier than a live weight, so he broke my fall, but couldn't stop me from hitting the ground. There happened to be a uniform nurse passing by. She ran over determined that I didn't have a pulse, I didn't seem to be breathing. Now, 1970 this predates barely the whole 911, emergency response system. So at that time, two phone calls were made by somebody, one to St Luke's Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, which was actually the closest er to my body, big er. And then the Shawna mission department of volunteer firefighters, and they arrived first again, according to my dad, they didn't think I was breathing either. They had new portable ventilator. My dad said they had to remove the packaging. They put it on my face, turned it on, and this particular portable ventilator had two features. One was to ventilate, which is what you want, but another to vacuum, because sometimes people get objects caught in their throat and they can't breathe, which sets up the drama of almost dying. That's why we say to our kids, you know, don't run with candy in your mouth. Or, in fact, if this happens while eating, it's actually called a cafe coronary. Well, anyway, I didn't have any objects in my throat, but when they turned on the machine, it was on vacuum mode, so whatever oxygen was left in my body, so they apparently immediately knew it was wrong, flipped the switch. Air entered my body, but I guess my lungs had come in partial contact with themselves. Our lungs are sticky suckers, and they do suck to it their own tissues. So the blast of air that came into my body could not be accommodated, apparently, by my lungs, so the air found its way, ultimately, to my skin, which is called epidural emphysema, and really hard to recover, and I was inflated like a really bad balloon, a flesh I was just full of fear. They turned to my dad and said, I'm sorry. There's nothing more we can do. At that point, a man came out of what I guess now is a crowd, and moved everyone out of the way, plucked the firefighters off me, and started what we now call citizen CPR. He did mouth to mouth and chest compressions. And I'm going to interrupt myself right now to say one does not have to do mouth to mouth anymore. If you see someone collapse who was breathing, put your hand a little below where in a woman that the breast would be and press to the tune of staying alive. And that's all so which is so ironic. And then he gave up, and apparently he was a swearing man, so had some choice things to say. But then my dad's memory ends picks up again. When ambulance arrived, cheered in the audience, which I'm calling an audience, because, again, I have no memory of that, but it was crowd, and I was breathing on my own, but unconscious. My body was thrown into the not throat, and it was placed carefully, I'm sure in the back of the ambulance, my dad jumped in off we went to the hospital. Something went haywire in the emergency room. But I hate to give away the ending of a good book, but she lived after all that, I still managed to live, by the way, I pulled my medical records when I wrote after the light, because I didn't want a journalist reading what I hadn't, and it was pretty interesting. You can't chart like that anymore, but it was my admitting notes. Were, you know, cause of collapse? Question mark, simple, faint, question mark, cardiac question mark. The problem was the snafu with the ventilator. And I read that and thought, I'm a snafu. My life is reduced to a snafu. So that's what killed me. Death by snafu. About an hour and a half passed from the time we stepped out of the DMV to the ER, and I want to clarify that I had air during that time, because that's not sustainable. I'm guessing that the air that was inflating me was just seeping back in, keeping my brain going anyway. That's the physical side of things. Now, what I remember is a woman's voice to my left, saying, I'm not getting a pulse. I'm not getting a pulse. And I turned to her and said, Not noting that I couldn't see her, but I said something to the effect, of of course, you're getting a pulse. Otherwise I wouldn't be talking. I thought I was being patient. She was ignoring me. So did I get into what like a near death snit or something? But at some point, I let go, and that's key in a way that I don't understand, but it was key. I found myself without traveling anywhere, in an environment surrounded by warm fog. It was wonderful. I knew I wasn't alone. I just couldn't. See through the fog to figure out who else was there. I also felt very comfortable and very calm and anticipatory, again, in a calm way, like my metaphor and everything's a metaphor, my metaphor is, it's like I was at the gate at the airport, boarding pass in hand, just waiting for my row to be called. It was that kind of a feeling. And then my role was called big time, because what I call God showed up. And when I say God, I don't mean that in any religious sense at all. I It's just three little letters in a big word. But I say my Creator, I don't know, but we have a consensual agreement that God means the Supreme Being, the creator, whatever. So I'm gonna say God, but without a gender or a face or anything. It was in the form of a light. Well, I've never stared at a million sons. I've never stared at one son, but it was like a million sons. It was so indescribably bright, and it exploded underneath me, what I perceived as me. I had eyeballs, something I have not settled on yet. How could I see that eyeballs? Eye? But it happens. It blew away all the foggy material, and it was made of nothing but love, just again in an immeasurable way and in an ethical way. And that's one of the problems with the Near Death Experience the ineffability, which means there are no words, and there really aren't but nonetheless, I'm going to use words. This light went out in all directions I could turn and see, and somehow understood that I was looking at linear time and it was eternal. I was beholding eternity. It figured that. And then at the same time, this light was doubling endlessly back on itself, and I somehow understood that to be dimensions. Now, for a girl from Kansas, this is pretty high falutin stuff, what was I thinking? But yet it all was so, like I said, anticipated and calm, and I was so loved, and it was personal. I got to ask questions. I didn't use words like I am now. But yeah, communication was perfect, and it was in the form of math and music. And when skeptics say, oh, near death experiencers just get what they're expecting, it's like, I can't add, subtract, multiply or divide to this day, and I can't listen to my voice. I can't sing. I mean, in church, I was asked to lip sync. I mean, it's that bad. So here I am, yet communicating perfectly with God. I asked more than I can really remember, but I do remember asking, you know, why are we born something to that effect? And the response was, you know, you wanted it. You wanted to be born so you're born again. It sounds so simplistic, but I understood it at the time. As I recall, asked about pain and suffering. There's a good question. Again, where was I getting all these questions from? It wouldn't be me normally to ask stuff like this, but it was, you know, again, basically, it's our way back to God. It's, you know, prayer or whatever. But then I heard what I didn't want to hear, which was that I had to go back, and I begged not to. I was with love. I mean, why not? Like, I had a hard life, but I didn't want to leave, but I was sent back. And then, of all things, at the DMV, I had actually had to renew a driver's license and get an automobile license because I wanted to buy a car, and I flunked though the parallel parking part of it. I couldn't get closer to the curb than three feet, six feet, maybe I mean a distance. So I'm sit back and I miss my body by the same amount of space that I recall missing the curb just what I felt moments before and after such a profound spiritual experience, all I could think of to say was, I can't even part myself. I mean, it was like so self critical right from the get go, Okay, I'm back and I'm going to criticize myself. I wasn't scared, but I could see through something, I'm guessing, legs, a man I didn't recognize, bent over me, and the moment his lips touched mine, I went back through him and into my body. And as I was going through him, I knew everything about the guy, at least emotionally, that he was actually scared, feeling somewhat of an idiot, and loved me. And it was a form of love that we call compassion, which is a very strong form of love anyway. So I figured this guy was like a magnet, kind of like my Lighthouse of love, so to speak. If I just been with the greatest love of all, I would gravitate towards it anywhere and due to this day. So I was back and hating it. I was fully conscious, but in my body again, I could see, but it was dark and cold and damp and icky. My admitting body temperature in the ER was 86 degrees, which is wonderful for a summer day or a swimming pool temperature, but not so great for our bodies. It was cold. So I beg God to take me back. And I had said, in the presence of this little. Light from the get go. I said the words homey home, which I learned from my parents later, is what I used to say when I was learning language. I don't remember saying that, but I did, apparently, go home. Homey home. Well, that's what I said in the presence of this love and light. So what I said when begging and whining to go back, was I wanted to go back to homey home. That was where I really wanted to be. And again, Alex, I didn't have a hard life. I mean, I was loved. I was well, you know, getting an education. I felt safe and secure, but I can whine, and I can even wear down God, because I was that kind of a whiner. So please take me back so then, and I'm going to paraphrase God right now, but it was basically a writer, right you insist. And this window opened to my right, or portal or something, and there was my heaven. And again, to skeptics, what I saw looked like a Kentucky calendar photo. And I've never been to Kentucky, but apparently Kentucky is my heaven, or at least at that time, because it was just endless, long, waving grass off in the distance, a white sort of fence and small growing shrubs or trees, I don't know, but the grass wasn't green. It was green and the sky wasn't blue, it was blue. Everything was just electrifyingly alive, not only in hues and colors, but I could receive consciousness in that grass, and I loved it, and I wanted to go. And I was told that if I went through that, that was my border, you know, I wouldn't be coming back. So I couldn't get out of there fast enough, like, okay. But then off to my side, there was a flash of light, which caught my attention. And I was told, if I chose to live. I would be living in this place, and no map, of course, but it was all I remembered. Was where mountains meant water meant nothing to me. It wasn't Kansas. Then I ignored it. Then another flash of light as I'm about to go through to my heaven. And it was like a gallery of people, and I was told that if I chose to live, they would be significant in my life, but they were strangers. When I cared so off, I'd go to Kentucky, and then there was another light, and I saw myself being of service, and I said Cool. Well, who knew God was a hippie. When I said cool, I meant it as an adjective. God took it as a verb and as an affirmative, an agreement that I would go back and I was back. I had to recover because my body took a hit, but again, I lived, and I went off to pursue that where mountains met water, and after many wonderful adventures in the ultimate god road trip, I swear, I wound up in Seattle, Washington, where, indeed, mountains met water, everything fit and by the way, since landing here all those many years ago was 1970 still, I've never applied for a job. I've been asked to apply for everything I've ever done in this life to earn money. And it's not that there isn't work within those doors, but when I was sent back to serve, which is what I call it, I wasn't sent without any tools. I have had guidance, often visible to me, especially in the past, all kinds of visibilities. Life changed completely, but I stepped into trust, and I've never looked back. I've had a wonderful life. People have asked me a lot, you know. So how do I find my purpose? And it's just draw a breath and breathe it out. Everything else falls into place, but one's first purpose should be breathing followed by being nice to everybody. We haven't spent a lot of time on the life review, but that's really good advice I just gave your listeners, because life reviews happen eventually, and I want a good one. So I want to be nice to everybody again with those boundaries, and I want everyone to be nice, because there is a payoff. But the payoff should happen before death. The payoff should be the reward of being nice should be unto itself, just be nice.