Jessica - "A Welcoming Hug"
12 02
Segment #1-- November 18, 2002, 10:25pm
Before the accident Jessica was a regular Pippi Longstockings. Red-haired, blue-eyed, and full of spirit; a plucky young girl. She did everything with gusto. This rush of élan with every new experience was what would always land her in trouble. She would ride a white cob (horse) and that would not be enough for her. She would stand on its back and do scale with one foot in the air. She had no trouble holding her balance because she was selected years back at age three to be on the local gymnastics team. I've often wondered why she pushed the envelope with everything. Maybe being a middle child? Maybe she was taking after her namesake who was now in her late eighties and admirably spry and sharp? I still don't know but that's the mold from where she came. Now after the accident I see so clearly what an unusual gift she is. Back then she regularly exasperated and frustrated me.
The time of year was late August and friends were over to play and ride our horses. Amanda was the name of the white cob that Jessica had so much fun with. Hannah, who was one of the friends who had come by, put a halter and lead rope on her and tied her to a post that supported the gate to the pasture. This is where Jessica and Hannah brushed the dirty white horse on a hot lazy afternoon. The brushing and grooming took a lot of work because white horses are like white automobiles; they show off every speck of dirt. As anyone would have guessed this soon became extremely boring for Jess. She decided on her own that it would be much more fun to brush the horse if she were sitting on its back. Hannah was doing the majority of work with Jessica leaving off the chore. There she was petting her favorite horse and playing with its mane, then lying back on the cob looking up at the clouds, then back again leaning on Amanda's neck hugging it. All the while chit chatting with Hannah.
With such a long groom the lucky Amanda swooned with such a grand massage. Little by little the white cob fell asleep as Hannah brushed away. If you don't know, horses sleep quite a lot on their feet. Some horses never lie down for sleep. Amanda could do both, sleep standing and lying down. Hannah said you could see how relaxed and pretty well sound asleep she was. Her bottom lip drooped and her eyes where half-closed and glazed. It was this state that caused the danger that neither of the girls suspected because when the horse awoke, it startled, not fully sure where it was. We now believe that when Amanda woke up the first thing she saw was the fence which was very close to where she was tied. We use electric fencing and she panicked thinking that she would get zapped by it. This seems a logical guess to us, but it could have been anything in what goes through an animal's mind who suddenly wakes up rudely.
The horse pulled back sharply. Since it was tied up to the post by the gate, it couldn't go any farther backwards. The rope was extremely taut. With this initial jerk, Jessica should have fallen off, but true to her balance beam training at gymnastics, she stayed square on Amanda's back. Hannah hoped the rope would hold with the animal now panicking. The rope was no match for a nine hundred pound horse and as it snapped, Amanda catapulted backward onto her back. Jessica fell to the ground first and saw clearly the horse coming down soon to be on top of her. She said it felt like a long long time before the horse came down on top of her. She felt like she had plenty of time to get out of the way, but she didn't. In reality it all happened very fast.
Fortunately Hannah did not panic and because of her coolness Jessica lived to see another day. The horse fell on the ground with Jessica underneath. The back of the horse was on the ground with its four hooves in the air. The horse went into a stupor and would not stand up but continued to lie there on top of Jessica. Hannah grabbed the halter and pulled on it trying to coax the horse to stand up toward the right. If the horse rose up on the left, Jessica's upper body including her head would have been crushed. Hannah knew this and kept insisting that the horse rise on the right. This took several literal minutes. The halter cut into Hannah's hands giving her severe cuts in her hands but she didn't give up as the minutes passed. Finally the horse got up on the side Hannah wanted; she knew Jessica was hurt badly. The whole time Jessica screamed "get her off me!" and cried a lot. She was scared but didn't feel any pain. When Hannah got the horse off, Jessica's instinct was to run away. She tried to get up several times and couldn't understand why she couldn't stand. She didn't comprehend that she had been literally crushed from the waist down. Hannah told her not to move (smart girl). She ran to the house and told us to call 911.
While waiting for the ambulance, Jessica started drifting into shock. She wanted to sleep and was extremely tired. Her head was in Alidahs' lap. She kept saying it's going to be okay, just don't go to sleep. She tried to listen to her. When the ambulance came, they cut her shoes off. She didn't like that because her mom had bought her a new pair and they told her that "your mom will get you a new pair". But she still didn't like them cutting her shoes and started to cry. When they put her on the stretcher she didn't feel any pain and didn't cry. The only crying she did was for her shoes. Just before she went into the ambulance she looked into the sun and everything went black. This was the start of her near-death experience.
Segment #2-- November 30, 2002, 7:56pm
There was a definite division of the darkish red of having her eyes closed with the sun beaming on her eyelids and the other blackness of being physically somewhere else and the body being totally weightless. This was a literal place. There was no gravity and no weight whatsoever there. A feeling of total peace and a clear mind. In the brief seconds before the horse fell on top of her, all sorts of things ran through her mind about the day, people, etc.. In this place she didn't think about where am I? or where is my mommy or daddy or any other question or worry. She describes her thoughts as clear. In that your mind is clear with no concerns. She noticed a pinpoint of light far away and she was getting closer floating her way toward it. She felt a sense of being where she should be, like what one feels like when they arrive home only better, higher. As she floated toward the light it got larger. She floated vertical with her arms outstretched toward the sides horizontally. Her foot overlapped the other and her palms to her hands were facing toward the light. Her hair was the same color but definitely not the same texture. And its movements were about the same as hair moves when it's under water. She had a sense that her hair was extremely silky although she never touched it. Jessica described the light as extremely bright like the sun but you could look at it and it wouldn't hurt your eyes or cause them to squint or water.
The light was a personality in itself. It was perfect. She was moving very slowly toward this light, but the light also was making its way to her, at about the same pace. When it was very close to her, the light was wrapping itself around her like a big hug :) (Jessica made that smiley) A hug similar to a father's comforting and loving hug. She felt love. It felt very safe in the light. There were no other people or something to see inside the light once she got close. It was just perfect. She wanted to be there inside the light. You just knew things she says. She perceived the light as God. Once the light wrapped itself around her like a welcoming hug, then something unpleasant happened- a rude clanging voice echoed down to her. .......This disrupted the tranquility that she had been experiencing. The sound of the voices was like someone yelling down a well. This echoing in her near death experience was coming from behind her and disrupted her clear mind and when she thought about the voices behind her that's when she thought about life; about people, about mom and dad. She felt like it was her choice whether she would choose if she wanted to stay in peace or have more life here. She said God makes that decision but it's your decision; she says it's very hard to explain. Like trying to describe different colors if you never saw color (her friend Kyle is colorblind). She said when you're there it is like supertime there. There is no feeling of time. At the moment the decision was made everything went backwards or superspeed rewind and everything was rewinding with her and came into her.
The light/God was with her as she was going backwards back and into her body again. As she was superspeed rewinding her hair was blowing backwards. She was staying where she was but it looked like she was going backwards (she says maybe she was going backwards but the light was coming toward her faster than she could rewind. Actually the light was drawing itself into her like a deep breath. It felt like when a storm front moves in with a rush of wind. Very refreshing she says. It felt like a perfect feeling while going backwards. It's like when you're in a perfect day and everything is going your way and you take a cool sip of water and you can feel it go down and it's like that only its going everywhere in your body. When she came into her body it was a breath that brought her back and she was conscious of being in her body. There was a tremendous jolt of pain and she yelled at the paramedics to let her alone because she wanted to be back there and not in all that pain. When she came back it felt very weird. She explains it like when you are running on a treadmill for a while and then get off you feel like you're still running type of sensation. She then felt tickley feeling all over, which she says was the presence of the light/God still with her and she knew everything was going to be okay and that she was going to get better.
Segment #3-- December 12, 2002, 6:00pm
Since Jessica isn't around, I'll write about the after-effects in her life since the accident. At the time of the accident, she was airlifted to Madison, WI to the Children's Hospital there. She spent three days there in the intensive care unit and spent about half a month's time in that hospital before going home. The first week and a half she was sedated on Morphine and Demerol. She doesn't remember much about those days. It is a good thing, because she was in a tremendous amount of pain and at times the Morphine wasn't even enough. It was a nightmare for me and Dan to watch her suffer so. When they sent her home, she had a prescription for a wheelchair, walker, toilet lifter and the like for six months' time before she would visit with the orthopedic surgeon again. Remarkably, she ditched the wheelchair and walker the second day she came home. It was the day we visited the library, and I pushed her wheelchair up to one of the tables there and put a few books before her to look at. Then I left to find some books of my own. When I came back, her chair was empty, and I panicked thinking she fell on the floor. She wasn't on the floor or anywhere around the table! so I began searching the library for her. Finally I found her taking baby steps in one of the aisles looking at the books. Within the first week she did a cartwheel (much to my horror). Many people were saying that because of her youth she was having a quick recovery. When I took her in for the 6-month appointment, I learned that not all young people make such amazing strides in their recoveries. The waiting room at the orthopedic surgeon's was a testament to that. Many lame children were there, many that had been in their wheelchairs for a long time.
The doctor gave a note to send her back to her classes and gym class. To see her today, you would never know anything had ever happened to her. It took her a long time before she would mount a horse, but eventually she did. Nothing about her personality has changed that I can detect. There have been a few other areas that have changed since her near death experience. One is that she became a migraine sufferer. We've learned what most of her "triggers" are and can control the onset of most of them.
She also became a literal lightning rod for what I call spooky stuff. For instance, my husband and the rest of the children went on a hunting trip up north over the week just before Thanksgiving. This left me, Jessica, Thomas (5), and my eight month old baby home for a long weekend. Thomas and the baby fell asleep Friday night and I carried them both upstairs to my room and I myself decided to go to sleep with them. I went upstairs to tell Jessica that when she was off the phone to come into my room and sleep with us and shut my door behind her. (I wanted her to sleep in my room because of some of the weird stuff that happens when she's around). She said she would and I went off to my room and went to sleep with the baby and Thomas. At around 11:45, she came into my room and woke me up very frightened.
This is what she told me...She was on the phone with Kyle and talking about his girl problems when someone picked up the phone line on them and then would hang up over and over. She said the picking up of the telephone was a loud sound and that is why she thought it was someone picking up the receiver in our house. She said when the phone picked up she could hear more than one person that sounded like children laughing very quietly with an echoing whispering like air type of sound to them. She thought it might have been me trying to get her off the phone. When she looked for me, she found me sound asleep in my room. Then she asked Kyle to check at his house to see if his brother was picking up the phone. Kyle looked and no one was near his other phone and his brother was asleep. At this time Jessica decided to get off the phone.
When she got off, she heard noises coming from the next room which was the boys' room, but both of the boys were in my room sleeping with me. The noises sounded like metal toys clanking together and some falling. She looked out of her room toward the hall where the other room was and a boy walked from that room past her doorway and went through the hall. She said he was a light white color (like black and white television) with a blue (like a gas stove flame) light surrounding him. He didn't look at her but just walked past down the hall. She said his arms were flowing in their movement as he walked. It took her a while to muster the courage to go into the hall and down the steps to get to my room. When she told me this she was very frightened; I told her to lock my door and to go to sleep. She had seen this "boy ghost" one other time. Last winter she shut off the TV and was just about to go upstairs when she turned her head and everyone else was in bed or getting ready for bed, and saw this boy standing no more than two feet away from her staring at her. She said he looked very sad and confused and then his head tilted like he didn't know who she was. She covered her eyes and rubbed them and looked again and he was gone. There is more but this is just an example.
She has had dreams that come true. She has had the same dream that I have had one or two days later. It is really really strange. There is something else too. This is something she would have to explain, but she gets a certain thing that happens to her when something is going to happen, before it happens. For example, my oldest daughter and Jessica had an accident with my van. They went off the road into a creek and rolled the van. Neither of them was hurt. Jessica said just before it happened she knew what was going to happen. She got a tunnel vision type of thing happening. Sort of like looking through a scope. It zooms in quickly. It focused in on the spot that they lost control of the van and then it zoomed again in the spot where the van came to a stop and this was all before any loss of control of the van happened. This type of thing has happened three times in her life.
Before the accident Jessica was a regular Pippi Longstockings. Red-haired, blue-eyed, and full of spirit; a plucky young girl. She did everything with gusto. This rush of élan with every new experience was what would always land her in trouble. She would ride a white cob (horse) and that would not be enough for her. She would stand on its back and do scale with one foot in the air. She had no trouble holding her balance because she was selected years back at age three to be on the local gymnastics team. I've often wondered why she pushed the envelope with everything. Maybe being a middle child? Maybe she was taking after her namesake who was now in her late eighties and admirably spry and sharp? I still don't know but that's the mold from where she came. Now after the accident I see so clearly what an unusual gift she is. Back then she regularly exasperated and frustrated me.
The time of year was late August and friends were over to play and ride our horses. Amanda was the name of the white cob that Jessica had so much fun with. Hannah, who was one of the friends who had come by, put a halter and lead rope on her and tied her to a post that supported the gate to the pasture. This is where Jessica and Hannah brushed the dirty white horse on a hot lazy afternoon. The brushing and grooming took a lot of work because white horses are like white automobiles; they show off every speck of dirt. As anyone would have guessed this soon became extremely boring for Jess. She decided on her own that it would be much more fun to brush the horse if she were sitting on its back. Hannah was doing the majority of work with Jessica leaving off the chore. There she was petting her favorite horse and playing with its mane, then lying back on the cob looking up at the clouds, then back again leaning on Amanda's neck hugging it. All the while chit chatting with Hannah.
With such a long groom the lucky Amanda swooned with such a grand massage. Little by little the white cob fell asleep as Hannah brushed away. If you don't know, horses sleep quite a lot on their feet. Some horses never lie down for sleep. Amanda could do both, sleep standing and lying down. Hannah said you could see how relaxed and pretty well sound asleep she was. Her bottom lip drooped and her eyes where half-closed and glazed. It was this state that caused the danger that neither of the girls suspected because when the horse awoke, it startled, not fully sure where it was. We now believe that when Amanda woke up the first thing she saw was the fence which was very close to where she was tied. We use electric fencing and she panicked thinking that she would get zapped by it. This seems a logical guess to us, but it could have been anything in what goes through an animal's mind who suddenly wakes up rudely.
The horse pulled back sharply. Since it was tied up to the post by the gate, it couldn't go any farther backwards. The rope was extremely taut. With this initial jerk, Jessica should have fallen off, but true to her balance beam training at gymnastics, she stayed square on Amanda's back. Hannah hoped the rope would hold with the animal now panicking. The rope was no match for a nine hundred pound horse and as it snapped, Amanda catapulted backward onto her back. Jessica fell to the ground first and saw clearly the horse coming down soon to be on top of her. She said it felt like a long long time before the horse came down on top of her. She felt like she had plenty of time to get out of the way, but she didn't. In reality it all happened very fast.
Fortunately Hannah did not panic and because of her coolness Jessica lived to see another day. The horse fell on the ground with Jessica underneath. The back of the horse was on the ground with its four hooves in the air. The horse went into a stupor and would not stand up but continued to lie there on top of Jessica. Hannah grabbed the halter and pulled on it trying to coax the horse to stand up toward the right. If the horse rose up on the left, Jessica's upper body including her head would have been crushed. Hannah knew this and kept insisting that the horse rise on the right. This took several literal minutes. The halter cut into Hannah's hands giving her severe cuts in her hands but she didn't give up as the minutes passed. Finally the horse got up on the side Hannah wanted; she knew Jessica was hurt badly. The whole time Jessica screamed "get her off me!" and cried a lot. She was scared but didn't feel any pain. When Hannah got the horse off, Jessica's instinct was to run away. She tried to get up several times and couldn't understand why she couldn't stand. She didn't comprehend that she had been literally crushed from the waist down. Hannah told her not to move (smart girl). She ran to the house and told us to call 911.
While waiting for the ambulance, Jessica started drifting into shock. She wanted to sleep and was extremely tired. Her head was in Alidahs' lap. She kept saying it's going to be okay, just don't go to sleep. She tried to listen to her. When the ambulance came, they cut her shoes off. She didn't like that because her mom had bought her a new pair and they told her that "your mom will get you a new pair". But she still didn't like them cutting her shoes and started to cry. When they put her on the stretcher she didn't feel any pain and didn't cry. The only crying she did was for her shoes. Just before she went into the ambulance she looked into the sun and everything went black. This was the start of her near-death experience.
Segment #2-- November 30, 2002, 7:56pm
There was a definite division of the darkish red of having her eyes closed with the sun beaming on her eyelids and the other blackness of being physically somewhere else and the body being totally weightless. This was a literal place. There was no gravity and no weight whatsoever there. A feeling of total peace and a clear mind. In the brief seconds before the horse fell on top of her, all sorts of things ran through her mind about the day, people, etc.. In this place she didn't think about where am I? or where is my mommy or daddy or any other question or worry. She describes her thoughts as clear. In that your mind is clear with no concerns. She noticed a pinpoint of light far away and she was getting closer floating her way toward it. She felt a sense of being where she should be, like what one feels like when they arrive home only better, higher. As she floated toward the light it got larger. She floated vertical with her arms outstretched toward the sides horizontally. Her foot overlapped the other and her palms to her hands were facing toward the light. Her hair was the same color but definitely not the same texture. And its movements were about the same as hair moves when it's under water. She had a sense that her hair was extremely silky although she never touched it. Jessica described the light as extremely bright like the sun but you could look at it and it wouldn't hurt your eyes or cause them to squint or water.
The light was a personality in itself. It was perfect. She was moving very slowly toward this light, but the light also was making its way to her, at about the same pace. When it was very close to her, the light was wrapping itself around her like a big hug :) (Jessica made that smiley) A hug similar to a father's comforting and loving hug. She felt love. It felt very safe in the light. There were no other people or something to see inside the light once she got close. It was just perfect. She wanted to be there inside the light. You just knew things she says. She perceived the light as God. Once the light wrapped itself around her like a welcoming hug, then something unpleasant happened- a rude clanging voice echoed down to her. .......This disrupted the tranquility that she had been experiencing. The sound of the voices was like someone yelling down a well. This echoing in her near death experience was coming from behind her and disrupted her clear mind and when she thought about the voices behind her that's when she thought about life; about people, about mom and dad. She felt like it was her choice whether she would choose if she wanted to stay in peace or have more life here. She said God makes that decision but it's your decision; she says it's very hard to explain. Like trying to describe different colors if you never saw color (her friend Kyle is colorblind). She said when you're there it is like supertime there. There is no feeling of time. At the moment the decision was made everything went backwards or superspeed rewind and everything was rewinding with her and came into her.
The light/God was with her as she was going backwards back and into her body again. As she was superspeed rewinding her hair was blowing backwards. She was staying where she was but it looked like she was going backwards (she says maybe she was going backwards but the light was coming toward her faster than she could rewind. Actually the light was drawing itself into her like a deep breath. It felt like when a storm front moves in with a rush of wind. Very refreshing she says. It felt like a perfect feeling while going backwards. It's like when you're in a perfect day and everything is going your way and you take a cool sip of water and you can feel it go down and it's like that only its going everywhere in your body. When she came into her body it was a breath that brought her back and she was conscious of being in her body. There was a tremendous jolt of pain and she yelled at the paramedics to let her alone because she wanted to be back there and not in all that pain. When she came back it felt very weird. She explains it like when you are running on a treadmill for a while and then get off you feel like you're still running type of sensation. She then felt tickley feeling all over, which she says was the presence of the light/God still with her and she knew everything was going to be okay and that she was going to get better.
Segment #3-- December 12, 2002, 6:00pm
Since Jessica isn't around, I'll write about the after-effects in her life since the accident. At the time of the accident, she was airlifted to Madison, WI to the Children's Hospital there. She spent three days there in the intensive care unit and spent about half a month's time in that hospital before going home. The first week and a half she was sedated on Morphine and Demerol. She doesn't remember much about those days. It is a good thing, because she was in a tremendous amount of pain and at times the Morphine wasn't even enough. It was a nightmare for me and Dan to watch her suffer so. When they sent her home, she had a prescription for a wheelchair, walker, toilet lifter and the like for six months' time before she would visit with the orthopedic surgeon again. Remarkably, she ditched the wheelchair and walker the second day she came home. It was the day we visited the library, and I pushed her wheelchair up to one of the tables there and put a few books before her to look at. Then I left to find some books of my own. When I came back, her chair was empty, and I panicked thinking she fell on the floor. She wasn't on the floor or anywhere around the table! so I began searching the library for her. Finally I found her taking baby steps in one of the aisles looking at the books. Within the first week she did a cartwheel (much to my horror). Many people were saying that because of her youth she was having a quick recovery. When I took her in for the 6-month appointment, I learned that not all young people make such amazing strides in their recoveries. The waiting room at the orthopedic surgeon's was a testament to that. Many lame children were there, many that had been in their wheelchairs for a long time.
The doctor gave a note to send her back to her classes and gym class. To see her today, you would never know anything had ever happened to her. It took her a long time before she would mount a horse, but eventually she did. Nothing about her personality has changed that I can detect. There have been a few other areas that have changed since her near death experience. One is that she became a migraine sufferer. We've learned what most of her "triggers" are and can control the onset of most of them.
She also became a literal lightning rod for what I call spooky stuff. For instance, my husband and the rest of the children went on a hunting trip up north over the week just before Thanksgiving. This left me, Jessica, Thomas (5), and my eight month old baby home for a long weekend. Thomas and the baby fell asleep Friday night and I carried them both upstairs to my room and I myself decided to go to sleep with them. I went upstairs to tell Jessica that when she was off the phone to come into my room and sleep with us and shut my door behind her. (I wanted her to sleep in my room because of some of the weird stuff that happens when she's around). She said she would and I went off to my room and went to sleep with the baby and Thomas. At around 11:45, she came into my room and woke me up very frightened.
This is what she told me...She was on the phone with Kyle and talking about his girl problems when someone picked up the phone line on them and then would hang up over and over. She said the picking up of the telephone was a loud sound and that is why she thought it was someone picking up the receiver in our house. She said when the phone picked up she could hear more than one person that sounded like children laughing very quietly with an echoing whispering like air type of sound to them. She thought it might have been me trying to get her off the phone. When she looked for me, she found me sound asleep in my room. Then she asked Kyle to check at his house to see if his brother was picking up the phone. Kyle looked and no one was near his other phone and his brother was asleep. At this time Jessica decided to get off the phone.
When she got off, she heard noises coming from the next room which was the boys' room, but both of the boys were in my room sleeping with me. The noises sounded like metal toys clanking together and some falling. She looked out of her room toward the hall where the other room was and a boy walked from that room past her doorway and went through the hall. She said he was a light white color (like black and white television) with a blue (like a gas stove flame) light surrounding him. He didn't look at her but just walked past down the hall. She said his arms were flowing in their movement as he walked. It took her a while to muster the courage to go into the hall and down the steps to get to my room. When she told me this she was very frightened; I told her to lock my door and to go to sleep. She had seen this "boy ghost" one other time. Last winter she shut off the TV and was just about to go upstairs when she turned her head and everyone else was in bed or getting ready for bed, and saw this boy standing no more than two feet away from her staring at her. She said he looked very sad and confused and then his head tilted like he didn't know who she was. She covered her eyes and rubbed them and looked again and he was gone. There is more but this is just an example.
She has had dreams that come true. She has had the same dream that I have had one or two days later. It is really really strange. There is something else too. This is something she would have to explain, but she gets a certain thing that happens to her when something is going to happen, before it happens. For example, my oldest daughter and Jessica had an accident with my van. They went off the road into a creek and rolled the van. Neither of them was hurt. Jessica said just before it happened she knew what was going to happen. She got a tunnel vision type of thing happening. Sort of like looking through a scope. It zooms in quickly. It focused in on the spot that they lost control of the van and then it zoomed again in the spot where the van came to a stop and this was all before any loss of control of the van happened. This type of thing has happened three times in her life.
