As his beloved husband, Jon, suddenly and unexpectedly passes away, Ken, left behind and pleading to go with him, is attended by angels as he finds himself in a most indescribable place, realm or state of consciousness; “The Void”… or a place of nothingness.

Ken writes:
“I met my soulmate on Sept 1, 2007, when I moved to Denver for a company I worked for at the time. I was part of a team opening a new market in Denver. Jon was there for the same reasons. At first sight he felt so familiar. With the next coming weeks we had gotten closer and moved in with each other. I had realized he was the man with no face in my dreams going all the way back to High School.”

“In my dreams, I felt so much love that when I would awake, I wanted to go back to sleep to be with Jon. That was his name in my dreams, too. Short story. We were together almost nine years. Everyday my love for Jon grew stronger. Jon and I married on Feb 13, 2015. That was the happiest day of my life. We went through a lot of ups and downs in those years but we always stuck together.”

“In 2014, he was diagnosed with an incurable disease. He was given two years to live. We were so close that we could never sneak up on the other because we’re so connected, we could feel it when the other one was near. The night before Jon passed, we brought him home to San Antonio from a hospital three hours away, where we used to live. He was in so much pain on the trip home. The hospital gave him nothing for the pain.”

“Well, we made it home where we shared an apartment with Jon’s best friend and his husband at the time. Hospice was there waiting for us when we arrived home. Jon seemed fine. I thought it was just another bump in the road we would hang on to each other while we got through it and life would be better. Even the hospice nurse thought there was a chance Jon would survive. That night, Jon and I slept next to each other in bed. I didn’t know that it would be the last time.”

“The next evening around 4:30 pm, Jon was in so much pain. He was crying and asking me to make it stop. I had Jon leaning his back against me. I set Indian style on our bed holding Jon while his Granny held his hand from the side of the bed where she stayed the whole time. Then… it happened. Jon’s eyes rolled back and foam came from his mouth. I kept hitting his chest to wake him up. The nurse got back and we did CPR. The nurse pumped Jon’s chest and it took every ounce of air in me to blow it in Jon’s lungs.”

“After the first attempt, black fluid came up on me. The nurse stopped and looked at me. I cried, “Don’t stop. Keep going!” We continued until the paramedics arrived. Then, they took over and worked on Jon until I heard one if them say ‘it’s been 24 minutes.’ As hard as it was for me to get the words out of my mouth, I told them to stop, saying, ‘If you bring him back he won’t be him and he wouldn’t want that.’ They called time of death after 27 minutes. That happened on June 11, 2016 – 2 years ago today.”

“As they left the room and Jon lay on the floor of our bedroom with a tube out of his mouth, I dropped to the floor laying over him, crying and shouting for him to come back to take me with him and that I couldn’t live without him. Over and over I told him that.”

“Then… something happened to me.”

“There was a lady I had seen in my dreams before, in fact, my whole life. She stood on my right side, while someone came behind me, holding me. In the moment of my deepest grief, I went somewhere. There was no feeling of pain, love, happy or sad. I was just numb. I saw these images of blurred people quickly slipping past me. I had seen them before in dreams, too, when I was a child.”

“The next thing I knew, I was laying on our bed faced against the wall. To this day, I don’t know how I got there. No one could tell me either. I woke up yelling, “No, no, please come back! Take me back with you!”

“For the next month, everything I looked at had a different texture to it. I could almost see writing on the blank pages of Jon’s notebooks. Only two other people could see the writing, out of the many, I showed the books to.”

“One day, I was on the elevator in the apartment building we lived in. I was telling Jon once more, “Please come get me. I can’t do this without you!”  Just then I heard Jon say, “You have to make sure Roger is okay, then give it a year, baby, and I will come get you.” Roger was a close friend to both of us. But that’s how Jon always got me to commit to something. He would tell me to give it a year, knowing when the new year came, I would have learned to deal with his death better.

Commentary- One of the most perplexing experiences one can have in this life is the undeniable feeling that you already know someone you’ve never met. To add even more intrigue, is to have previously dreamed of them once, twice or several times as Ken had with Jon. 

Ken and Jon knew each other on a soul level. That’s for sure. Their paths were destined to cross in the physical realm. By this, we know that at least a part of their story was already written. How much of it? It’s hard to say, but this is commonly the case for people who have an experience of familiarity with someone they can’t recall meeting.

Losing a loved one is never easy. In many cases, we plead that our life be taken, as it is just too painful to continue to live in a world without them. But here we stay, as it’s not that easy to die on command. What’s more likely is… you don’t naturally leave this planet until it’s your time to do so.

What Ken experienced is an actual place, realm, state of consciousness or however you choose to look at it. It is what some people call “The Void.” Although there are different interpretations of what “The Void” actually is. Some say it’s good. Some say it’s neutral. Some say it’s bad. I call it a place of nothingness. 

So… is this a good nothingness or a bad nothingness? That’s the thing. It’s neither. People who are not in this place can’t quite imagine it as there are no existing paradigms, no descriptions because there are no biases in this space… only a healthy dose of nothingness. I guess, if I have to describe it in the best way possible, I would say that it’s a vacation from… well… any and every thing.

Nothingness (No thing)

I’ve interviewed people who have experienced true nothingness. Some have experienced it through yoga, meditation, vigorous self-inquiry and out-of-body experiences, just to name a few. Thinking back on the experience of nothingness, It often occurs as an interesting state of awakening that is difficult to articulate. I’ve experienced this myself. Trust me… it’s pure nothingness. You know it when you are there. Well, actually… by contrast… you are more likely to know it when you’re not there anymore.

Ken experienced this state of nothingness with his will to leave his body in order to go where Jon had gone. It is possible that, part of our journey of crossing over is to go through this place. There are people I’ve talked to who claimed to have gone to “nothingness” during a near-death experience, but did not experience making it to the tunnel or the light before they returned to their bodies. There are others, who, in their near-death experience found themselves in the state of nothingness, only to move to the tunnel or the light. I recognize it at this was part of my own near-death experience.

There are some people who claim to go to a “bad” nothingness, but just the label means that it was more likely what some people call “Hell.” Many of us have known that place where our thoughts have the ability to torment us. Hell could be described as the nothing with nothing but bad experiences. One the other side of it, Heaven could be described as the nothing with nothing but good experiences. No, true nothingness is not either of these places. It’s just nothingness.

Something happened to Ken. Comforted and supported by Guardian Angels, he was allowed to have a mind boggling, but healing experience. In having an other-worldly spiritual experience, one tends to return with special abilities. In Ken’s case, he was able to read Jon’s writing on blank pages. He also noticed that everything had a texture to it. Generally, in time, these anomalies gradually fade, but the vividness is sure cool enough to be remembered and talked about for a lifetime. Ken may have even experienced part of a Shared-death experience. This is experienced when a living person goes part-way with their dying loved one as they cross over. Many times they do not get beyond a certain point because in doing so, they might not be able to return. There are many different experiences out there of how far into the different realms shared-death experiencers do actually get.

It’s been two years since Jon passed away. Although missed terribly by Ken and his friend Roger, they have been healing the pain caused by the loss of their dear one, Jon. In Ken’s story above, do you remember that he was pleading on the elevator for Jon to come and get him? Remember what Jon told Ken? Ken literally heard Jon’s voice directing him to take care of Roger, to make sure he was okay. Jon also said to wait a year, hoping Ken would be healed enough by then to want to live out his natural life. Perhaps something good would be coming on the horizon.

Waiting that year, and then another, was powerful and wise advise. Jon must have known the gift of companionship he was giving to Ken and Roger at the time. Now, two years after Ken and Roger were left in their sorrow to deal with Jon’s passing, they found love with each other and are happily engaged to be married. On this day, I think Jon has an especially big smile.