There Is A Connection

It is easier for me to imagine someone else's terror than to recall my own.  I am also surprised to find that when I think of a moment of terror and a moment of reverence, the emotions are not dissimilar.  On September 10th, 1999,  when I lay in the ambulance, heading to the hospital,  a feeling of blissful calm came over me. In the darkness (that we later realized was a symptom of the cerebral aneurysm bleed that was happening to me),  I felt myself in a lighted place where the compassion of others was gathering to carry me forward into those unknown waters. It was a feeling of certainty that all was as it should be and for that I was grateful and reverential. 

A moment of terror that I am remembering, came a few weeks later, when a feeling came into my body as if  I was having another aneurysm rupture and by then I knew enough to know that the chances of surviving a second time would be slim to none. There was that breathless, heart throbbing, blood-turning-cold feeling of helplessness, of pure terror.  How can I explain why these two emotions feel so similar?  Reverence/terror.  Instead of being at two separate ends of a line that measures experience, that line is bent into a circle, bringing the two side by side. Both are indescribable, both lead to the unknown.  Both bring one to tears.  The next time I know terror, I hope I remember that reverence is only a step away.