I die.

The following is not an out of body experience and it is not an lucid dream either. But it felt so real and is disturbing my waking self so significantly that I felt I should share it.

There's been an accident. I am at the morgue, standing next to my dead body. A person wearing white gloves zips up the bag all the way, and I am horrified. I don't want to be trapped. But I'm not, I'm here, outside of it, and it doesn't need to breathe anymore.

Suddenly I reconnect with my dead body, just to perceive what it would be like inside this closed bag -- to understand what it would be like to lay eternally inside a casket six feet under the ground. Now laying inside it, and not needing to breathe, I feel as light as a feather, and as at peace as a monk in a monastery. The peace inside this small enclosed space, deep under the ground is exquisite.

Instantly, I remove myself from that fantasy, and I am standing beside the dead body again. The worker unzips the bag again, because there is something else she needs to do with the body. I'm grateful, because I want to touch her. I feel a love so big for this girl that it causes my soul to weep. This was me, once. I will never be Laura Lee Graham again. Maybe I will reincarnate, maybe I will not, but I will never, not ever, have another day on Earth as Laura ever again.

I lean down and kiss her on the forehead. There is old blood on her head, but I don't care. Her forehead feels cold. But I loved her so much. I need to kiss her forehead so I can start letting go of this.

Then I grab a pen, and I sign my boring old flowery signature, my full name, around the feet of her body. I shake while I sign, and it looks like a battered version of the real thing, but it was also an act of romance. A ritual of acknowledging the end, and saying, 'Hey, I was here.'

Suddenly someone is beside me but I cannot see their face or anything of them. But I feel her -- and she must be made of the spirit world because she's the only one that sees me. I get the sense that she's going to walk me through this transition. She's just going to stay by my side.

Because I am aware that I am dead, and aware that I didn't instantly KNOW EVERYTHING, I am curious what death will be like, where I'll go, if there will be any rapture or any peace, if I might become something else or someone else, somewhere. Immediately I begin vibrating at a great frequency, and am drawn out deep into space, deep into the stars, back to the Source, into the heart of the Universe, and I know God.

This only lasts for a couple seconds when I decide that I am not ready to go there, and I return to the same place, standing next to my unseen guide.

She asks me what I wish they would to with the body -- embalm, bury, cremate, what? I tell her I want a green funeral. I want to be wrapped in cloth and placed in the earth under a tree in the woods. I don't want to be pumped with embalming chemicals and I don't want to be in a casket that protects me from the earth when it is the earth I want my atoms to become.

We watch aghast as my body gets embalmed and placed into a casket. We sort of laugh too, because it really doesn't matter anymore, at least not to me. I am simply Not There. I'm aware of the drama that must have unfolded in my family though. Erik knew I wanted a green funeral but I never told my parents, and we aren't married yet so they had the right to decide.

Now, my guide asks me, 'Where do you wish your things would go, to whom?' and I instantly think of my sister. I always said all my things would go to my sister, that she could have it all.

But then I thought of how awful that would be for her, to be burdened with all her dead sister's stuff. To have to sort through it while she grieved, and I instantly felt agony and sadness for her. I regretted that that was what I said my whole life. The pain seared through my heart, and I wept more and more.

Then my guide asked, 'What about Erik?'

and I remembered everything. I remembered the greatest love anyone could ever have and know. I remembered how he cared for me so well, and treated me better than I could have ever asked anyone to. I found myself saying to my guide, 'Ohh nooooo, ohhhh noooooo' over and over again. I was experiencing what my Erik was experiencing over this, and it had no name. But it was filled with pain and loss, wider than the Pacific Ocean.

And I knew, because I know him well, that he should have none of my stuff, because I wanted him to move on as soon as possible and live his life and start his family. I didn't want to keep him from it not for a moment.

All the while we are discussing this, I'm aware that no matter what my wishes and desires, the Earth people will make decisions without me. And I know it is time to go.