Back from the world of the dead
How do I understand what you are telling me about your experience? What do you see when looking at the same thing I am looking at? Our minds speak a language that is uniquely ours. To share what’s in your world takes work, patience, and respect. And sometimes, even that isn’t enough.
Last week, my friend since childhood, Rudi, called me and told me he had died. Of course, I was shocked, and even more so. Rudi, what are you saying is you died, like died, then who am I talking to? Rudi responded immediately. I died and then I came back to life. More than that all of me came alive. I will tell you all about it when we get together.”
An emergency ambulance discovered Rudi lying in the vestibule of his apartment house, not breathing, and his heart had stopped. A half-eaten brisket sandwich lay on the floor next to his head. The medics loaded him into the ambulance and decided to bring him to a nearby hospital instead of the morgue. He was still dead while lying on a gurney in the emergency room of Beth Israel Hospital…… later, he wasn’t dead anymore. Rudi threw his legs over the side of the gurney, coughed, and asked whether someone could bring him a glass of water. He then heard all of the sounds of the emergency room not as random bits of noise but as music. He laughed aloud at what he called his emergency room symphony. The staff in the emergency room were astounded that he was sitting up, smiling.
Rudi sat for a moment and was overwhelmed by what he heard and saw. Everything around him was so clear and sparkly. His toes tingled, and his nose itched; colors were vivid. Even his imagination crackled with dramatic scenes and memories. Rudi could see the origins of the universe. It was in the form of mathematical ideas set to music that produced ideas, energy, that generated swirling gases, and then the scene stopped. Rudi sat stunned, then got up and left the emergency room.
Rudi and I were a pair of bookends. As kids who lived on the same block in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York City. It was a neighborhood that was home to many German refugees. In nearby shops, you could get unusual cold cuts like the disgusting, delicious Schwartenmagen, gooseberries, plum tarts made with virtually no sugar, which meant that your tongue would form an intimate relationship with the back of your mouth.
By the eighth grade, we had lost most of our German accent and no longer pronounced words like length as lengsss. We went to the same high school and then went our separate ways, but always kept in touch with each other. I went to Penn and became a physicist, and Rudi was accepted at Princeton and became a talented mathematician. Rudi was always a depressed loner. That didn’t stop him from making some important contributions to the world of Mathematics. By the time he was 23, he had discovered a mathematical theorem that eventually bore his name. Most mathematicians I have known march to their own unusual drummer, and Rudi was no exception. Gifted Rudi never married and instead drifted from one relationship to another. I guess he never came up with a perfect woman that matched a mathematical equation.
After graduate school, we both ended up in New York. We would often meet over coffee, chess, and chatter. My wife was the one who would sometimes invite him to dinner. Rudi was great with our 2 young daughters, always playful and ready to play imaginative games. They would get excited when they heard that he was going to join them for dinner. What a contrast to his usual depression that never seemed to go away.
Won’t ever forget the day that I got a call from Rudi, who told me he had died and come back alive. He added that the experience was the beginning of his metamorphosis.
“Kurt, this is Rudi. Been a while. Now that you have tenure, you can keep your head in the clouds while watching the ebb and flow of energy passing gas through the Milky Way. Perfect, or as we used to say in German, Prima. Always loved that as a way of saying great, using a German word designed by an Italian. I have to tell you, of all people, you still are my favorite physicist. Kurt, I came alive I saw in my mind the origins of the universe. Ideas in the form of mathematical equations became the basis of the shape of our universe. I saw ideas translated into action. Does this make sense to you, or maybe you see all this as rarified bullshit?”
Kurt thought that Rudi may have come back from the world of the dead and come alive crazy, a bizarre new Rudi. Everything seemed different even the sound of his voice.
Rudi remarked. “This last week I’ve been…up — floating above it all. And no, it wasn’t drugs.”
“Rudi, you sound like you are floating in space, unattached to the earth, not your usual grounded gloom, and you say you didn’t do drugs like acid. ”
“Kurt, you’re right, this last week I am up and have been very up like this, floating above it all, my life before death, and no, this is not a chemically induced high.”
Kurt responded, “Oh, Rudi, are you really my friend, Rudi? Maybe you’re an impostor. Rudi, ok, how do I know this is the Rudi I have always known? Kurt giggled. Question. Rudi, “What was the name of your third-grade teacher who often asked your mother to come in and see her because you did another bad thing like….and what was the name of that teacher, and what was the worst thing you did that made her go ballistic. “Rudi laughed. That’s easy, the teacher’s name was Ms. Mitchell, and she was pretty but mean, and she really lost it when I put my hand down her blouse.
Kurt replied, “Bingo, you are Rudi.”
“Kurt, I repeat, I died a week ago, yes, died, like for real gestorben.”
Kurt replied, “Come on, you didn’t mean that. Did you mean died as a metaphor? “
“No, Kurt, I died and was dead for a while and then came back to life in the emergency room at Beth Israel. I experienced being dead, and while dead, I had all sorts of revelations that have changed my life. You said I sounded different to you, and that is because I am different. I have experienced revelations with all the trappings. Would you have time for us to get together, like tomorrow, maybe late in the afternoon so I can tell you more? We could meet at one of our old go to cafés, café Leopold, one of the only landmarks from our old neighborhood.
Kurt immediately agreed.
“How about 4 o’clock at Leopold’s tomorrow afternoon?” Rudi asked.
“You’re on,” Kurt said.
Today came a day after yesterday, and it was 4 in the afternoon and when Rudi and I met at Café Leopold. Kurt walked up to me, gave me a hug and we then sat down at an outdoor table. The neighborhood had changed. The German refugees had long since left the area, and Dominicans took their place.
“Well, Kurt, 179th and Broadway isn’t what it used to be, and aren’t you surprised that Leopold’s has survived?”
Kurt smiled, “But I bet not for much longer, and don’t you miss Bloch and Falk, where we get the best fatty, awful, wonderful cold cuts that could also be used as a hand cream. Oh well.”
“You look great, Rudi,” Kurt said. “Tell me everything — your death and rebirth. Is ‘rebirth’ the right word? Resurrection? No — too religious. You tell me. What happened a week ago? But first, let’s order.”
The waiter in a frayed Leopold vest came over. “Gentlemen, what can I get you?”
Kurt ordered black coffee and a streusel. “What about you?”
Rudi asked the waiter, “Do you still have spritztorte? And a cappuccino to go with it.”
Kurt blinked. “A cappuccino? Since when?”
Rudi laughed. “Consistent with my new life habits.”
While the waiter disappeared, we traded the usual updates — Rudi about his current girlfriend, a mature woman; Kurt about his dazzling young daughters. “I worry they’ll be charmed by some creep,” Kurt said. “But now tell me — the big news. What shall we call it? Your resurrection into the land of the living after having died?”
“First of all, at the beginning, when I came alive in the emergency room, all the sounds and sights were especially vivid, overwhelming. It was like having cataracts removed not just from my eyes but all my senses. The staff in the emergency room stared at me with their mouths open, stunned.”
One nurse said, “We need to examine you thoroughly after that ordeal.” I held up my hands and announced, “No. I’ll save my examination for another day. I have to get out of here now. Thanks, but no thanks. I must start using my trivia and bullshit cleanser.”
I walked quickly towards the exit. One of the doctors stood in my way and said, “You can’t leave without being examined.” I walked around the doctor, and as I left I sang, “I’m late! I’m late! I’m late for a very important date!”
And that was the start of my adventure into the unknown.
All my senses flooded me with experiences so vivid they were sometimes overwhelming. It wasn’t only perception that had changed — the images on my mental screen were clearer, crisper. I began to remember everything, in no particular order: sharp, bold, alive memories. I’ll give you one example that involves you — your history, as you told it to me.
You told me about your great-grandfather as an 8-year-old hidden in Kippenheim, circa October 1940. His parents asked a neighbor to take care of him. The Kippenheim Jews were marched down the main street of the village to a waiting truck. They were all being deported to a concentration camp called Gurs in Vichy, France. You told me that your great-grandparents couldn’t risk waving goodbye to your grandfather for fear of having his presence discovered by the police. That is the last time he saw his parents alive. The picture of that scene was amazingly clear to me. I saw villagers standing watching as their neighbors were carted away. The soundtrack was silent. No one did or said anything. I could see that 8-year-old being held back from running out the door towards his parents as they were climbing into the truck. What did the townsfolk remember when they saw their neighbors disappear forever? How do they make that scene a comfortable memory? What does the little boy, as an adult, remember seeing his parents disappear into the back of a truck? What did he make of his neighbors standing watching passively? Did he recall the policemen in charge? Was his memory blurry, distorted, transformed, maybe as seen through milk glass lenses? I think I told you when you told me your story that my great-grandparents ended up in the same camp, Gurs, and also never emerged alive.
Kurt leaned forward. “I figured God — if there is one — is a mathematician controlling a whole set of complex equations, a blueprint for conceiving our universe. I saw the universe as an enormous bundle of energy fields generated from equations. Patterns of energy, including patterns in the form of ideas, generated our world. Ideas produce energy; patterns of energy produce reality. Think of E = mc²: energy and mass are fundamentally the same. People think of mass turning into energy, but why not think the other way — energy creating masses? Isn’t that the core of the Big Bang idea?”
Kurt blurted out, “Wow. Your imagination has leapt to the border of fantasy. I’m not laughing — just stunned. The Big Bang is the leading account of the universe’s start, right?”
Rudi responded. “Of course, I know the Big Bang. But how intimately do we really know it — enough to go beyond its outlines? It’s like asking how much the little boy in Kippenheim appreciated what was happening, or how much the watching neighbors appreciated that they were part of a deportation. Would you help me find hard evidence for my formulation — stepping-stone descriptors of energy patterns, something less abstract?”
“Oh, Rudi this is a lot in one sitting. Need to think about, think about whether I would risk being nuts with you.”
Kurt picked at the streusel. “Speaking of nuts — these are awful. The pastry’s stale. Maybe Leopold outsourced to Tasty Cake. I bet Café Leopold won’t last much longer.”
Kurt was confused, and with good reason. What should he do? Help Rudi — but how? My wife Liz had warned me. “I think your friend Rudi has lost it. Is he crazy? Maybe he’s somewhere you can’t reach.”
Maybe that’s as good a way to put it as any. I can’t reach him — not the place he’s gone. Some people travel to regions impassible to most others: musicians composing in their heads, artists seeing things you can’t see even when you stand beside them. Call it the other-mind problem. Still, I won’t abandon Rudi. I’ll listen and do what I can.
When we met next — not at Leopold’s — we picked up where we had left off.
“Rudi,” I said, “I thought a lot about our last talk and the stale pastry. I thought much more about how can I possibly travel back to my great-grandfather’s experience that day in 1940? I can taste the abstraction, but how do I get my mind to go there and appreciate what he saw?”
“Oh Kurt,” he said, smiling, “maybe the answer is that the struggle to understand each other — that struggle itself — is the point. One thing we did share last time was stale pastry. We understood that together. Beyond that, who understands us? You do, I guess, because we shared some life experiences. I don’t feel comfortable being alone, but I guess I have to get used to it. Oh, I also am now without my girlfriend Lisa. As she kissed me goodbye, she said, “I can’t have a real relationship with a recently dead boyfriend, just can’t and I don’t get it.”
Kurt thought about what Rudi said. “Maybe that is just one more struggle dealing with being alone, and maybe we are always alone with experiences that are vivid for us but for no one else, like my image of the Big Bang theory of the universe. I am not even sure that I convinced you and all those others in the emergency room that I really did die and then came alive again. It is almost a cliché to point out that we are all different, our minds, our experiences, our view of the world around us. We try and tell each other all sorts of things, knowing that we are all different. We have similar backgrounds, so we can describe what Schwartenmagen tastes like to each but to a stranger? By the way, I can’t really understand some of the mathematical equations that are admired by some but are beyond my comprehension. Oh well. Maybe all we should expect is that we appreciate each of our journeys in the minds of others. I listened to your tale of dying and then coming alive again. I still can’t understand your experience.”
