I Said No to Death

From: Don Krehbiel (grandps70@comcast.net)
Story type: NDE
Location: Wasington state
Source: Form Submission

Am I going to submit this kind of schmaltz on the internet? It appears so. It all happened as I have outlined here. As I write, in 2004, I am finding that this story bears as much impact as it did the night it happened. I call it:

I Said "No" to Death

This has been through more revisions than I can count. It will be a bit easier to believe than some others because it is a dream.

When you speak of ghosts, in general, you won't be able to believe my stories and I can't take yours at total face value. That's nature. Accordingly, this is just one more story that you can never be sure isn't all or mostly imaginary, no matter how real it seems to the one it happens to. To tell the truth, I am not entirely convinced intellectually. As you will see, the fact that it happened, and that it carried a message, however, was quite beyond question to me.

It only happened to me once, but gentle people, I am sure it will happen at least once more. If that's not for a very long time, it will still be soon enough, thank you very much.

I am 63, a retired electrical worker. I have known several people who have so-called "second sight". It runs in the family and the wife's family unmistakably, but had never happened to me. Because of insufficient evidence, I severely doubted if it existed.

My wife, however, had this "gift" and strongly. She said she suppressed a lot of it because it was "scary." In suppressing it she must've been successful, because I could not determine for years if her predictions were anything out of the ordinary or not.

One night she had a stomach ache. When she was sick I let her decide when to go to the doctor or hospital, seeing that she has had nurses and EMT training and I have not. As we went to bed she babbled something I thought incoherent. "There's someone else in this bed!" It seemed to her that it was my mother. She was close to mother, and I knew what this meant if it meant anything. She left the bed that night to sleep in an easy chair in the living room, thereby not to disturb me.

I turned over on my left arm and went back to sleep. I calculate from considerations of how nature engineers sleep that it was about two hours later. I was in a boat. My partner had already left the boat, and It seemed to me she had gone straight up.

There was my mother as if in silhouette. She seemed to be standing about a foot above the water. She said nothing but was holding out her hand, wanting me to take it. I did, and in that moment, while she was still Mother, she was also the grim reaper complete with eyes that burned terror right through your heart. For the moment I was dead, but it would become permanent unless I could get loose from her. I tried and I broke that hold, but it wasn't easy. As I did, I saw that part of both our hands had melted together.

As I broke free, I shouted mostly from terror I'm sure, "No, (I won't go) because you're death!" I screamed, and in this dream, I had my voice. Ordinarily when you try to scream in a nightmare, nothing but at most a whisper comes out.

This was different.

I woke in a few seconds. That's right, a few seconds. You are usually awake like a shot from a nightmare, but this was no ordinary nightmare. I knew in a trice that Mother had come for someone - Me? (This is how my family dies © A member that has gone ahead comes for them.) There wasn't a thing wrong with me that people die from. None the less, I believe she would have taken both of us had we been willing to go.

(The thought ran through my mind at this point that we had three children to take care of, that they would need us for a while yet, and it was really not feasible to leave at present. Other than stark terror, that was my real feeling at the time, no matter how anachronistic that may seem. In a word, I seem to have briefly considered the idea!)

I knew something was afoot. I knew two other things, too: First, I knew why my wife was shutting this "second sight" thing out. That sort of dream is enough to stop a heart of stone.

Second, this was the beginning of a growing realization that these visions of the future could be altered up until the time they happen. At least some of them can. This is why I post at all, to demonstrate that what you do can alter the future as it's revealed. Indeed, that is why it's revealed.

As you shall see, there are times when to act will do no harm and not to act may be regretted. Either way, you may have some explaining to do, but you just might be alive to do it. Or someone else might. This has been made abundantly clear to me, and I shall explain in more detail as this story develops.

I was afraid to go to the bathroom, but nature prevailed. Then I made my way into the living room and told my wife that I had a dream. I sat beside her, too scared to leave, and needing support at that moment more than she did. At leat I thought so at the moment. I did not mention the content of the dream.

Conversation took a random turn, and in time she said, "You look like your mother below the eyes."

I could've been shot and felt less reaction, but suppressed the outward signs of it - at least I think I did. I asked why that might be important. That's when I found out that she had also dreamed about Mother and when I came out of the bedroom, she thought I was my mother.

That was Thursday night. By Saturday, she was ready to go to the hospital. When we got there, she got quick service.

She had about 20% of a normal blood count and was still alive. She has Indian blood and wouldn't show anemic as soon as you would expect. I saw her daily and couldn't tell. But others at that hospital sure could tell.

In the next few days she got fourteen transfusions and some plasma to boot.

They operated looking for...cancer? They didn't know what to expect either. They had cut away some polyps years earlier, but none of them seemed to be the problem.

While they were operating, I was in the waiting room, waiting. (Is that logical or what?) A group was there talking about the Bible and prayer, and I joined them. An electrical worker would see that this bore no penalty, but would be less likely to believe it could help. The leader of this group of three was a leader of a group in town, and strongly believed in miracles.

I allowed that I hadn't seen a miracle, but reserved judgement concerning them. That was enough for him to put me down as a non-believer in miracles. He also perceived that something was wrong that might need a miracle. (What? In a hospital?) Accordingly the group prayed for a miracle for me.

Everyone including me said "Amen." At that very instant, the phone rang. The O. R. said they had just taken one small polyp from my wife's small intestine. They didn't say the rest, that it would've caused intestinal bleeding. They didn't have to. They also didn't say, but I knew already, that polyps of the large intestine are more often malignant; those of the small intestine seldom are.

Just maybe I had my miracle. We were increasingly confident as months passed, that this was the case.

I was uneasy the rest of the summer when I walked out back of the back fence. I still am uneasy there at night.

That was in 1987. She died in 1994 of heart trouble, the result of rheumatic fever as a child. I believe it was by my choice that I remain here with two grown sons, a daughter and son-in-law and two simply darling granddaughters. The nights are long, though....