I suddenly had a flashback and its something that I wish I could forget. Anyway, let me recount.

When Annette died, the police came tried to revive her and failed. I was devastated. The police took me to the hospital for fear I would commit suicide. I spnt if I recall 3 days. I was sent to another hospital where I was discharged.

I was alone. No hospital courtesy van to take a new widower home. It was midnight and I was praying to God that this was as dream. It was raining and freezing. The parking lot was empty. No traffic as the hospital was located in the business district.

I just stood there, completed cut off from the world. I had no one. No children, no relatives, unshaven and the smell of my own filthy body odor which I smelled.

I was a bum. Poor, unemployed with a few dollars in the bank and I stood there alone shaking like a frightened animal with no where to go. 

I wandered like a zombie in the rain, in an empty parking lot at midnight trying to think my way out. This nightmare can't be happening, I thought.

I had to hope there was enough money in the bank so I could call an UBER cab. By luck I had $10 in our bank account left. I was lucky the UBER ride was $8 dollars. With that miracle I was driven home.

I opened the door to silence and I went to our bedroom. I looked at the floor and saw it was empty. Three days before my Annette's body was there and I was flooded with my memories of me screaming to her to "please don't leave me!" I kept repeating those words over and over until my throat was so dry I could barely speak above a whisper.

With the silence that is when I realized I was alone in the world. My wife dead. My job lost and the eviction notice to our apartment stuff neatly at my door knob. I was poor (and still am). 

Right now each day is the same. Every day I am awake is hell. Every night is hell. I am unemployed still.

Only now worse, is the fact I am so bloated with fluid I can barely walk no matter how hard I try. I pretend Annette is alive. I pretend I am healthy. I pretend there's no pain whenever I walk.

I pretend because I have nothing. My unemployment is running out. I have no money to buy a suit (suits for the obese run in the neighborhood of $500 and that's cheap). 

I thought if I took a ton of pain killers, I could get through an interview without the agonizing pain of getting to the interview in the first place.

My brother has asked a doctor and a medical person who's title I can't remember to look and see if they can help. The problem is these folks are on vacation still. By the time they get back my money's exhausted. This happened before  and the result was me not eating for days and living off of tap water and packets of chinese duck sauce.

After a while not eating became easy. My stomach shrank and I found that the human body can take a beating.

So again, I asked myself: Where am I? Answer: Nowhere.

One final comment I need to make. When Annette was sound asleep, I would put my arm over her and cuddle her. I would then speak these words while she slept:

"God, thank you for this woman, please don't ever take her from me as she is the only thing on this earth that I love more than myself."

I am, as I write this living on borrowed time. My health keep getting worse and the pain of just sitting is astonishing painful. 

I know many of the folks here don't believe in the afterlife. That when we die that's it. That there's nothing but this world and that we're here to be born, live and die.

I have spoken to people who have died and were revived. And its the same story time and time again. Forget religion. They saw dead friends, lovers, family and they no longer fear death. And they had as far as they're concerned, a normal, human experience that transcends what science is only now realizing -- that we're part of a bigger picture and that the medical field is realizing something does indeed happen to us when we die -- and we've been given just a glimpse from those who have experienced death and returned -- reluctantly because they enjoyed a peace and reaffirmation that makes the world we're living pale by comparison.