Just recently, I had a sneak peek into eternity. I laid in a hospital bed writhing in pain. My entire body was like a big open wound that a slight touch on the skin elicited an agonizing cry from me. My eyes were literally shut with the area where the upper and lower eyelids closed like a cut that bled. I was afflicted with a rare allergy. The doctors diagnosed me with Steven Johnson Syndrome, an allergy that has claimed lives when diagnosed late. When my physical eyes were closed, my inner eye opened. I saw my beloved mother and father who have both passed on, among other people. I still vividly remember everything else that I saw...both the darkness and the light.

Darkness. The darkness were spirits in human form seemingly gliding around me, definitely calling my attention, taunting, sneering, scaring me...crawling insects and other eerie creatures around my bed. The sight resembled a description of hell in Dante's Inferno. It was horrific. it scared the guts out of me. But i was fighting them physically with my rosary on one hand and a bottle of holy water on the other. I had to do something because they wouldn't let me sleep. They wouldn't leave me in peace. They were slowly robbing me of whatever meager strength I had left in my feeble body by making my mind as feeble. Now I know what it means to be tormented. It was mental torture. It was like they wanted me to give up, to give in. Then I asked my caregivers and nurses to confirm if they could see all that I was seeing. They consistently said "no" with a grave concern in their voices that I was delirious, as they said afterwards. I decided to believe what they said and not what I "saw", despite the overwhelmingly impressive presence of these creatures around me. Only then did I gain control over their machinations.

Light. What I saw in the light gave me an indescribable joy that made me forget the excruciating pain my body was being subjected to by the disease. The light freed me from the darkness that had completely seized my helpless mind until I made that decision to disallow it. First, I saw the beautiful blue sky lined by the rays of the sun trying to penetrate through the large blue and white clouds sprawled above. That's what they call the "silver lining". Then in an instant, it seemed that I flew from one beautiful place to another...places I longed to see but have not yet had a chance to visit. I went to see my favorite people, the ones I loved where they actually were at that specific time.

The most vivid, the most unforgettable of all, the one image that will be forever etched in my mind is this one that gave me that priceless feeling of ecstatic joy: I saw Jesus Christ, King of Heaven and Earth, coming down in all His glory surrounded by many, many angels, in the clouds...I saw the most beautiful Face ever, so beautiful I was left speechless but overwhelmed with a joy that made everything else seem trivial. I was so taken by that image that nothing else mattered. He was with His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It must have been an instant...although it could have been an eternity, if I had died. But I didn't. Slowly I healed. Slowly I returned to earth where I was before. Instead of going over the edge into eternity, I came back to my mortal life, but with a new perspective that not even a whole lifetime of lessons could have afforded me. It's a perspective that now makes me fearless about anything else that might happen to me in this life - good or bad in terms of this world...because after what I have seen in the light, nothing else matters but that I would behold that Face again...one day...when my time really comes to an end, that's where my eternity begins...that's all that matters because that is what - as I have seen, felt and experienced - has filled all the longings of my heart to a degree the most eloquent would be impoverished to express adequately. There is a much better life after this! And I am going for it!