Introduction
A lady of eighty years told me this story.
“I was working as a nurse in a hospital. One day I turned a corner in a corridor, and standing there was a young man in pajamas and dressing gown. I had never seen him before, but his nurse told me he had been very ill, in fact, near death. He had made a remarkable recovery and was now just starting to walk around.”
I stood looking at him and he at me. What I can only describe as an electric current seemed to pass between us. In that instant, we both knew. Within two weeks were engaged, and in a month married. We were together for fifty-five years. Now he has left this earth, and I must wait in patience until the time I rejoin him.”
Thinking about what that lady told me gave rise to the following story.
The Story
I knew I was ill, very ill, yet I felt no pain or discomfort. There had been pain, terrible pain, but now, nothing. I felt hands touch me, and voices a long way off.
What sounded like male voice said, “He’s in a coma.”
A female voice responded, “Is he in pain?
“No, he can’t see, hear or feel anything.”
“How long?”
“Another day or two at most. Just check that drip, there’s nothing more we can do now.”
They were, of course, wrong about my not hearing. I heard, but the words had no impact. I knew they applied to me, yet it was as if they were talking about someone else.
I knew that those who had been speaking had left my room. I was alone.
I felt suspended but found it hard to define how I was suspended. Between reality and unreality? Heaven and earth? Being and non-being? Time and eternity?
A black whole opened and I fell into it. Nothing. No time, no space. Oblivion.
Suddenly I was awake, eyes wide open, all my faculties sharper than I had ever experienced before. I was still in my hospital room, but it was radiant with light. Someone was with me. I struggled to see who it was, but could see no one.
“Do not struggle my love,” a voice said. It was a female voice, soft and mellow. It seemed to come from both within me and yet outside me.
“I have come to complete the union you have longed for.”
A misty shape formed beside my bed. I could not see who or what it was at first, then slowly it resolved itself into a woman, yet none that I knew or had experienced in life. She was naked and beautiful – very beautiful. She was all the fantasies I had ever had of women, yet beyond all of them in her loveliness. Light seemed to emanate from her, giving lustre to her whole body.
Despite her words, “Do not struggle my love,” I strove to fit what I was seeing into the categories I had learned throughout my life. She seemed a spiritual being, yet had a solidity that did not fit into my concept of spiritual. The spiritual was insubstantial, having no reality beyond human self-delusion.
She gave a gentle laugh, “You will know when it is right for you to know. I have come to you to give you a foretaste of what awaits you.”
I became aware that, although I was still in my hospital bed, I was no longer covered by sheets and blankets, but lying naked. I also became aware of, and in earthly fashion was embarrassed by, an erection. I wanted to hide it from the woman’s sight, but she spoke again.
“No, now you must let go. You must let me start the union that has awaited you all your life.”
With that she moved, or perhaps floated, over me. In terrestrial terms, I would have said that she now slid my penis into her vagina, but I felt no sensation, no feeling of warmth or moisture, yet an indefinable stimulation there was. Perhaps a tingling sensation best describes it.
The thought entered my mind; “This is nothing compared to the fleshy reality of the sexual intercourse I have experienced with so many women.”
Then a convulsion. I felt my penis grasped with a vice like grip that I had never experienced before. Women had flexed their vaginal muscle round my penis on many occasions, but their grasp had been a flabby attempt compared to what I was now experiencing.
It was electrifying. It was not one flesh stimulating another. It was a melding in which two became one. It was total fulfillment, a completion of the self. There was no orgasm as I had experienced before, yet the satisfaction was perfect. It was a flawless consummation.
The figure moved away from me, yet I felt she was still with me, locked in total union.