I didn’t so much as see what happens to us as receive an impression of what happens as soon as I passed into the light. Memories flooded into me. I recalled many wonderful things. When I was returned to my body, some of those memories remained. Only traces of other memories remained. Unfortunately, I lost much more than I was able to remember. But what I do remember is very uplifting.
We go on. We live again. Over and over. Call it reincarnation if you want; although that word doesn’t explain it all. Time doesn’t exist there. I experienced no passage of time. I could have been there for years—I could have been there for a fraction of a second. I was there and then I wasn’t. The memory of thoughts were in my mind and I knew that they were from the presence of light that was in front of me—barring me from going any farther.
Is there a GOD? This question has baffled mankind for many centuries. Those religious powers that be claim we have to take HIS existence on faith. I don’t. Yes, there is a GOD! GOD is benevolent, powerful, caring, onmi-everything… Must I go on? Yes, GOD is there—and GOD is here. GOD 1S! Is GOD masculine or feminine? Yes and no. GOD is both and neither. It cannot be explained any further than that. There is no equivalent word for what I know.
When we “live” again, do we come back as ourselves, a doorknob, an animal… ? Do we come back to this place or travel on to another level? The questions go on and on. I am unable to answer them. I do know that we don’t necessarily come back to the next proceeding “timeline”. If I die today, I may not come back tomorrow; I may come back yesterday.
I do know one other thing that sticks out in my mind: The very nature by which GOD exists—solar systems, galaxies, suns, planets, our lives as we know them, should not exist! But they do—we do! That is why death itself does not frighten me. I shouldn’t exist, but I do. And I will again, when I die. We all will, because GOD wills it to be.
27 November 1995 Hello Brian,
Well, there’s so much to tell you, I really don’t know where to start. Guess I should start with what else was in the envelope. There are 3 Visiting Questionnaires. One is for Bonnie, IF she wants it! Tell her that if she decides that she’d like to see me, I’m only an hour away from the exit we took into Pleasanton when we visited her brother, Dennis, in December ’85. If I remember correctly, visits are between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on weekends. (Legal visits are allowed seven days a week at the same times.) I’ll verify that next time I go out to the exercise yard and let you know next time I call.
I just got a “Legal” letter from the legal officer—a letter from Patty that she wrote while awaiting a plane to LA. Says she gets most of her work done in airports on her laptop. (See… Everyone has a laptop. Why not me?) She told me a lot of the same things you told about having an attorney appointed to me to handle my appeal. However, I’ve been doing some legal researching of my own and have already come across some pleasant surprises. I don’t want to enumerate those surprises here, so they’ll have to wait until I see you in person. She did say that she was happily surprised to hear that I was in the Air Force (I mentioned it in my letter to her from the AC). She says that her dad was one of the Tuskeegee Airmen! (Believe it or not, I didn’t even know she was black! Jim Bland told me that when I went out to the exercise yard. But all of the times I spoke to her on the phone from jail, I never once suspected she was black. I didn’t take it for granted that she was white! I was thinking Oriental or Latin American.) But it was very interesting to find out about her dad, though. I wish I could meet him to get some first hand info on the Tuskeegee Airmen. I remember first hearing about them while I was at Lackland Air Base after my Basic Training. Anyway, she hopes to get over here to see me the first week of December. Maybe you’ll run into each other?!
Now, I told you I got three letters last Monday, the 20th. One from Ron Peterson; one from his friend in Tampa, Fla., Ken Karnig; and one from my mother. I wrote back to both Ron and Ken, sent the letters out last night, the 26th. And I answered, almost, my mother’s letter. But I’m not going to mail it! I’m afraid if I do, she’ll blow up and so will Don and the rest of the family! And I believe; I’m convinced, that they can still hurt me terribly with both my appeal and any chance for a new trial. To put it bluntly: I’m scared of what they can say and do.
As I told you when I talked to you briefly on the phone this morning, I was on the phone with Don for about an hour and a half. I was talking him through some of my diskettes so he could read them. There’s something wrong with my “Applewriter 11” program that he’s been using. It won’t allow him to scroll through my text files. He can get to the beginning and to the end but not the middle. And since I don’t have the documentation to the program in front of me, I can’t remember how to do it. He has located, however, one of the disks that has “Death.Stalks1” and “Excerpts1” on it. “Death.Stalks1” isn’t anywhere close to how much I had written on the story. Somewhere, on another disk is more of the story. I told how to boot the computer with a program that will allow him to ‘catalog’ all of the other disks to see what’s on each one. Hopefully, he will find the other copies that are more complete. But! All I had written of “Death Stalks On Four Legs” is chapter one. And it takes place only in VietNam! Chapter two was to begin in California—Perris and Elsinore area. The “Excerpts” file contains a lot of scenarios that I was going to build the story around. It’s so frustrating to be so close to all of that stuff, yet to be unable to put my hands on and pull up exactly what I know is there. At one time I had a computer print out sheet listing every single disk I had, showing each and every program I had stored on each disk.
There is a problem, though. He found my disk that has the game TAIPAN on it. Just like me, he’s gotten hooked on it. Both he and Bobby have been playing it and leaving other things undone. That was my problem. If I decided I was going to spend some time on the computer to work on a program or one of my utility programs, I had to hope that I found what I wanted to find before I came across Taipan. The lure was tremendous and there were times when I’d turn on the game and a week later I had the same game going. Fighting several hundred to a couple thousand pirate ships and selling my loads of Arms, Silk, Opium or General Cargo. Don’t get me wrong—I had enough will power to avoid Taipan and work on some program, but that temptation was always there. Bonnie used to curse that program. When I’d call up that game, she’d just shake her head, knowing that I was going to be occupied for a few hours. Before I got her initiated in using the computer to help her real estate work, she’d write me off as a lost cause whenever I sat down to the computer. But one thing she’ll have to admit to, is that no matter what I was doing on the computer, if she wanted to do some real estate work on it, I immediately got out of whatever program I was running and logged on to her real estate bulletin board and helped her with it! I never put her interests second to mine! She was always number one with me. Yet, that wasn’t good enough for her, I guess. She still left me. I’d be willing to bet that she doesn’t even know that to this date I would do anything in the world for her just to hear her say that she still loved me. If it meant that my death was the only thing that would bring happiness eternally to her, I’d do what is morally repugnant to me. I would commit suicide for her, if it was required to make her happy. And you know how I feel about suicide! (Man! I sure didn’t want to get into my feelings about Bonnie in any letter. But now that it’s written, I’m not going to retract it. Brian, please! Don’t tell Bonnie how much I still feel for her. With her being married, and with Myrtle’s death, finding out just how much I still cared for her can only bring her more pain. And more than anything else, I don’t want her to suffer more pain. She’s had enough because of me already.)