The Andys and I had been in Haiti for more than two months when AZ became ill. He took to his cot under the stairway with typhoid fever. It was the first crack in my sense of personal invulnerability. AZ had incredible physical and psychological endurance, but as I watched him slip in and out of delirium I saw how close death could come to any of us. In our concern, and as his state worsened, we agreed to allow the Sisters to take him to the hospital. I was gratefully relieved when he recovered.

A short time later we had a sort of dinner party for a group of our American friends. It was a night of disinfecting in the pool and enjoying what we dubbed “Haitian stew” – a medley of eggplant and whatever vegetables, covered with thick-skinned protection, we could get at the market.

I had been noticing a pain in my head for some time, and this night it reached a crescendo. I left the party to crawl under my mosquito netting upstairs. One of our friends, an American doctor, followed me up. She confirmed what I suspected: I had come down with viral meningitis, a fever of the brain. The discomfort increased until it became impossible to move even my eyeballs without excruciating pain. Days passed as I lay feverish on my mat. I elected not to go to a Haitian hospital, assuring the Andys that I would be all right left alone while they worked. I could do nothing but lie under the netting as motionless as possible. Then one afternoon I was overcome by a wave of sadness and melancholy. I felt I might not make it home. My heart ached to see my daughter. What if I never saw Cindy again?

I was suddenly startled by a chorus of Angelic voices behind me, each intoning my name in a fantastic harmony. Before I could react, a single voice called my name commandingly. I was instantly drawn out of my body through the top of my head and upward to a cloudlike resting place, where I could just barely hear the chorus echoing my name fade out. The pain was completely gone. I was aware of a brilliant light, although there was no glare, and an indescribable, all-encompassing peace. It was as if the very substance of the space was embracing me in unconditional love and peace.

It felt timeless and at some point I noticed an opening below me; looking down, I recognized the United States. Then a voice came to me, clearly stating that that was where my work was. I was entranced with the brilliant peacefulness surrounding me. I silently asked or thought, “Can’t I just stay here?” I was instantly thrust back into my body with a jarring resurgence of pain. As I opened my eyes I saw a bird hovering in the window the way hummingbirds do, although it was larger, and then it flew away. It seemed somehow significant. Perhaps the sense of being observed further confirmed what I had experienced.

That afternoon, when the Andys came home, I told them what had happened. I asked them to feel the palms of my hands, which felt like burning circles of heat, as did my forehead just above my eyes. One of them touched my palm and said, “It’s hot enough to fry an egg on!” I drifted in and out of consciousness as my fever peaked. AB sat up with me all night, holding my head in his lap and comforting me.

By morning my temperature had dropped to slightly below normal and, except for weakness, I felt well. I was able to get up and take a shower for the first time since I had become ill. I was barely out of the shower when I heard a knock on the door downstairs. It was a group of Mother Teresa’s nuns, demanding to take me to the hospital. I was able to go downstairs and stood in the middle of the room while a dozen little women in white saris circled around me. “Cherril, ve take you to de hospital,” sister Carmeline, the head nun, stated emphatically. But I told them the fever was gone, burned out through the night. They looked at me in disbelief, as did my friend the American doctor, when I went back to work the following day. “I must have made a mistake in my diagnosis,” she stated. “Otherwise, you couldn’t possibly we well.”

But well I was, and very aware that I had come back from death’s door. With all the death and illness I had witnessed among the Haitians, my understanding of what they felt had now shifted from observation to experience. I had also learned much about myself. Coming from a society where many people are ill-prepared to accept their own mortality, I felt I had come to terms with my own. I had never really feared death, and now I could actually look forward to it as a beautiful transition when the time came.

The vision from my near-death experience had a strong impact. I would be forever grateful for all I had seen and been a part of in Haiti, but I knew it was time to return to the United States.

Cheryl Canfield, CCHT, 2024