18. Second Chance
One night, I got a phone call from my next-door neighbor late in the evening, asking if I can help him move a mattress into one of his upstairs bedrooms. His mom is ill and has a big heavy sleep number bed. I, of course, ran over to help, because they’re great neighbors. I get over there and his friend, who is also a priest, was there to help.
I helped them figure out how to separate the mattress from the bed so we could fit it upstairs. We get it all moved up and back in place when my neighbor asks if I can help them move an armoire upstairs too. I think nothing of it and we pull it out of his travel trailer and start bringing it up the front stairs of his house. This is where I died.
The front stairs are 11 steps. I was on the lower end of the armoire about six steps up when my neighbor and his friend lose a handle on the armoire and it comes crashing down on me, and I fall backward towards the pavement. At that moment, I wake up in my dining room to my phone ringing and my wife asking me if I’m going to answer the phone. This is where it really gets freaky.
It’s my neighbor asking me if I can help move a bed upstairs for his mom. I go over there and meet his priest friend again, as this is supposed to be the first time I met him. I say I can help with the bed, but I cannot help with the armoire. My neighbor was like “How’d you know about the armoire?” I then proceeded to tell them about what had just happened.
I spent the next hour talking with the priest. He was blown away, and he had so many questions. My neighbor didn’t believe it until I described the upstairs bedroom in perfect detail down to the metal mattress frame on the floor and the intricate headboard leaning against the wall. I had never been upstairs in their house before.
The priest asked me what I saw after it happened. I told him I never actually passed, and that before it happened I woke up at my dining room table.