Belief in afterlife following near-death experience
Because of an old work-related injury, Fred Aguilar remains on pain medication for his back.
“Years ago I was working for Southwestern Bell when I hurt my back. I fell backward, tore the heck out of my shoulder and messed up the L4 and L5 in my spine.
“The first two or three years after that were the hardest because I had three major operations. I had what they called a radical 360 where they go in and put two screws in the front and two in the back. It took two years for it all to heel because they had to cut through muscle and so on from the front to get to my spine.
“The strange thing is that coming out of the surgery I had a near-death experience. When they brought me out of the operating room, they couldn’t wake me up for eight hours. The last thing I remembered was talking with my mom, who had passed away about two years earlier. She was in this beautiful field of flowers, and she told me, ‘If you want to go back, go behind that black line.’ There was this black line hanging in the air. So I started walking toward it and the flowers started fading. Just when I got to the line, I woke up.
“So I feel that my mom gave me a choice: you can stay here or you can go back. It was pretty weird. It made me believe in an afterlife, that there are good things out there waiting for you, that we do have guardian angels. That’s just my personal belief.”
— Fred Aguilar
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