The first things that he noticed was that it was dark and it was quiet. Every once in a while he would here a soft voice that sounded like it was in a small cave with a small echo. Sound was the only sensation he had. He could not feel arms or legs or even the bed he assumed he was lying on. He would hear the voice ask him how he was doing but he could not answer or even nod his head. He felt tired but was afraid to slip off to sleep even though he felt like he was halfway there as it was. He decided to try to figure out how he arrived in this dark tunnel of nothingness but sound. The only sense he could come up with was a sense of moving fast and a two headlights heading straight for him. After that small memory, which was very difficult to conjure up and getting more difficult all the time, his memory jumped into the darkness.
He thought he heard his wife one time saying that she loved him but he wasn't sure if it was her or not. He was never sure when he was sleeping or when he was awake. He assumed that if heard the soft footsteps and whispering voices he was awake, but there was no way for him to verify that. He had tried to will himself to talk a few times but nothing happened. Nothing would move, no pressure on his vocal chords, his head wouldn't even move. His head was the only place where he could actually feel something as it rested on a huge fluffy pillow. As far as he knew of the rest of his body, it was gone. No arms, no legs, not even any part of a torso could he feel. Just the soft pillow under his head which he could not move.
One day as his head was lying on the people, he heard a group of voices. It was more voices then he had ever heard at one time as far as he could remember. He was having a difficult time sorting out the different voices and what was being said. He heard the mention of a young girl just five years old and her mother.apparently around the age of twenty six. From what he could make out these two people were going to be at a funeral later in the day. He laid with his head nestled in the pillow trying to sort things out. He had noticed that his brain had been slowing down recently although he could not tell how many days or nights he had been here. There was no day or night for him, just lost time that came and went. His thoughts began in a cluttered mess with the little information he had until he came to a horrific conclusion. This mother and her little girl were being buried today. His mind began to race with questions that ran into each other confusing him even more. He tried as hard as he could to ask questions of the voices but his head just lay still and his mouth kept close. He did not even think his eyes were moving. He wanted to know if this little girl and her mother were the lights heading towards him in that last memory before this non existence that he had woke up to.
Suddenly the voices stopped and the next thing he remembered was that single voice asking him how he was doing. It was taking him longer and longer to decode what the voices were saying to him. Things would come out garbled and he would have to reconstruct the sounds to hopeful get something that sounded like the words that he remembered. He felt like he was conscious less and less time between his confusing waking moments. When he was conscious, the voices were softer and more difficult to put together in his head. The blank spots between the voices became more and more frequent until one day they faded off slowly into the distance as he felt himself doze off a bit.
He had no idea how long it had been since that last time he was aware and the voices faded off. Even if he did know how long, he would not be able to recognize it as a unit of time. His head was just full of random thoughts and numbers and words. Nothing going on in his head made any sense. Then he became aware of something in his throat. It wasn't uncomfortable but was pushing air down his throat and, he figured, eventual into his lungs which he assumed were still there. He heard constant beeps coming from a source that seemed to surround his whole head.
The voices were there. They seemed far away and he could not make any sense of them at all. There seemed to be an argument of some kind between the voices as they would raise up in volume every once in a while but he still could not make sense of what the voices were saying. The voices were just more noise added to the noise of the beeps around his head. He tried to put thoughts together, to form a sentence in his mind but as hard as he tried, his thoughts and mind made as much sense as the voices that were off in the distance.
He rested his head on the pillow and noticed that things were very quiet around him now. He heard the beeping of a machine close to his head but there were no voices. He wanted to say something but he could not figure out what it would be. He wanted to ask something but again his mind was unable to construct anything that he himself could understand. He could still feel the cool air being forced down his throat when all of a sudden, it seemed that the tube quit doing it's cooling magic. The air stopped going down his throat. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain coming up in his throat and he thought he would finally be able to make a noise but the mouth remained shut. What was left of his mind became dizzy and he started seeing bright sparks of light here and there as his mind became weaker and weaker and suddenly, he found himself in nothingness. He slowly started to feel his body once again. His arms were moving and then his legs made themselves aware to him. He decided to try to open his eye and when he did, all he could see was darkness. He felt himself floating as as time passed the floating became more and more real to him.
The darkness began to lift slowly and he began to see other souls floating along. They were all silent but the floated as if looking for something, searching for something. Slowly but surely the light became as if on a cloudy rainy Saturday morning. Gray and dull but light enough to see things that were about. Suddenly there came a pull on his legs.
He looked down and saw a great ocean with sparkling beaches all around it. Millions of souls were walking in and out of the water, their souls going in gray and coming out sparkling white. The next thing he noticed was that he was standing down on that beach looking over at the sensational ocean of life giving water. He wasn't sure what he was suppose to do so he stood and observed as others made their way to the shoreline while others came back from the water, smiling and happy.
Suddenly there was a young lady and a little girl standing next to him. Neither of them looked at him but the little girl simply told him that everything was ok. The young woman began to tale a short tale to him. It was about how one night she and her daughter were driving on a two lane highway when suddenly one of the tires blew out. She had lost control of her car and the last thing she remembered of her life were two headlights heading straight for her. Next thing she knew she said was that her and her daughter had found themselves here at what is called the Ocean of Life. She then turned her head and looked at him and told him it was his turn. He had done nothing wrong and they had been waiting for him the last few days. He asked her if he could talk again and when she smiled, he felt a little foolish. She urged him to go ahead, walk into the Ocean of Life and become whole once again.
Slowly he turned and began to walk. He felt the water hit his toes and felt them suddenly jump to life. The rest of his body had the same reaction as he walked deeper and deeper into the ocean until it covered his head He found he could still breathe while under the water of the ocean. As he came out and stood on the beach once again he noticed his clothes were shiny and sparkled. He noticed that there were no aches or pains in any of his joints. But most of all, he felt happy. This wasn't the kind of happiness he had learned to know of previously but this happiness was overwhelming ans he found himself happy just to be able to walk along the beach, around the entire circumference of the Ocean of Life.
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