Rosemary Thornton: And I looked up, and over my left
shoulder, pretty interested by the fact that I have some
sort of human esque form.
I looked up and over my left shoulder and I said, literally
with a lilt in my voice, I said, and who are you?
And the answer was immediate.
The answer was, you're the image and likeness.
I'm the original.
Rod Bland: My guest today is a Rosemary Thornton,
who is an author and a near death experience survivor.
Rosemary, welcome, and thanks for coming on the show today.
Rosemary Thornton: Thank you.
Glad to be here.
Rod Bland: Well, I'd like to start with some background
of what your life was growing up, if we could, and then
can you tell us about your near death experience?
Heh
Rosemary Thornton: a bore.
The fun stuff started later in life.
Rod Bland: heh.
Rosemary Thornton: Actually, a lot of people do this, when
they talk about near death.
And I've been a writer for, I guess, 30 years and I call it
my temporary death experience.
Near death is if you're on an airplane and it's
careening toward the ground and things are going badly
and at the last minute there's a wonderful heroic save
and it all turns out well.
That's near death.
Rod Bland: Yeah.
Rosemary Thornton: and it's true for most people who've
had the so called NDEs, I died and got to come back.
But yeah, growing up, I grew up, you know, typical person
in, in the United States, I guess, baby boomer and, uh,
you know, had a very, very thoughtful, artistic mom
and a not so thoughtful dad.
And you know, that's life.
I talk about that.
And you know, it's really interesting on other
podcasts I've done, cause I've done a lot of podcasts.
One of the most common comments I get is,
uh, is people talking about my father.
The comment I made that my dad was not really a kind man.
I get a lot of email about that.
It's very interesting.
Apparently that's not an uncommon experience.
Rod Bland: It's a generational thing, isn't it?
It's like one, one father wasn't great and that
didn't teach that son how to be a great father
and so on and so forth.
Rosemary Thornton: So yeah, I've, I've written
a bunch of books.
Well, not a bunch.
I've written 10 books.
I'd written 9 and then I had this NDE,
I guess we'll call it.
And, uh, several people asked me, was I going to
write a book about it?
And I said, Oh no, heck no.
I've written 9.
I think it was Dorothy Parker who said, I hate writing.
I love having written.
And I identify with that very, very clearly.
Writing is hard.
I didn't want to write a book.
And plus it's very private.
I You know, I'm, I'm actually a really private person.
My other books were on architectural history.
It's easy to write about old houses, but writing about,
you know, kind of a memoir of your life and, you know,
finding what you thought was a love of, of your life.
And then that ended very badly and then getting sick and
going to heaven and getting, as my friend Dale says, I
got evicted from heaven.
So there's that, it's pretty personal stuff.
Rod Bland: But you did anyway.
So, um, there's a couple of things there I wanted
to, to tease out, if you don't mind talking about it.
So there was something about, about your husband, and, uh,
your life together and then something after that as well.
I didn't quite catch what it was, but I feel like there
was, there was something there was, I was trying to
read between the lines there.
Can you tell us more about that?
Hmm.
Rosemary Thornton: well, I guess the big point of
the story is that, uh,
I met him, uh, he was my second husband, actually,
and I met him in my early 40s, and I just couldn't
believe that I had found somebody as wonderful as him.
He was handsome, educated, successful, uh, You know,
et cetera, et cetera.
And then after about 10 years of marriage, he, uh,
he ended his life one day, which there was no warning,
no, no expectation that that's how it was going to end.
In fact, we were planning to buy a retirement home
in a nearby community and, you know, live out the
rest of our days there.
So, uh, that was devastating.
To call that devastating is an understatement.
And one of my chief gripes, and I'm not going to go
too far down the proverbial rabbit hole here, but we
talk a lot about suicide prevention these days.
And I think that's unfair to people like me who've survived
the suicide of a loved one, especially on social media.
People say, if you're feeling sad, just reach out.
Well, you know, he was my husband.
And there's lots and lots of people who end their own
lives that don't reach out.
They don't want to reach out.
They just do the thing they're going to do.
And it doesn't mean it's a, a moral failure on
their loved one's part.
They, they couldn't discern it.
They couldn't figure it out.
So that's, uh, I think it's September is suicide
awareness month or something, but in, in the US, but
I've just really find that.
Very unfair.
Anyway, suicide prevention is kind of a misnomer and I
hope it helps a few people.
I kind of think that if you're young, it might help
you more than if you're you know, approaching
retirement age or somebody who's settled in life.
So I don't know, but that was very, call it hard was
an understatement, but yeah, it was, it was, uh, I'm a
sensitive soul, I'm a writer, and it devastated me, and
for 29 months I just circled the drain, kind of waited
to die, you know, I had a financial advisor take me
aside and said, where do you see yourself in two years,
and this was after his death, and I didn't miss a beat,
and said almost immediately, oh, I'll be dead by then.
Because I had no expectation I'd survive this.
I was so sad all the time, and I talked a lot about
the fact that in that time period I had three prayers
because my life was a mess.
The bank started foreclosing on my house, my marital home
that I had with him, so I had to sell it in a hurry.
Uh, I couldn't find a place to be.
I couldn't find a way to get comfortable anywhere.
So, yeah, things were very hard then, and then I said
three prayers every night.
One was, I asked God healed me or let me go?
I knew I couldn't continue on in that state.
And secondly, my prayer was no more hard decisions.
I had had to make so many difficult decisions after
his death, and they were painful, complicated.
You know, when a spouse dies, there's a lot of stuff
that has to be tidied up, but when the spouse dies
by suicide, there's even more stuff that has to be
And in my case, as is so typical, and a lot of people
don't realize this, people compare a spousal death, an
ordinary, what one might call a natural death to suicide,
and there's no comparison.
Suicide widows like me, we get questioned by the
police because we become the prime suspect in a
murder investigation.
That's kind of the last thing anyone needs to go through.
So there was a lot of legal messes.
So one of my prayers was no more hard decisions.
And then the third prayer was, I had always been a big fan of
NDEs and had read so many of them, so many of the accounts,
so many individual stories, so many books, et cetera.
And one of my prayers was when I pass on, I
don't want a life review.
I had been through this mess once.
I didn't want to see.
How I crumpled into a sad little mess after his death.
So, those were my three prayers.
Heal me or let me go.
No more hard decisions.
And, uh, spare me the life review.
Rod Bland: Did you feel in any way responsible for what
happened with your husband?
Rosemary Thornton: I think everyone goes through that.
Rod Bland: Mmm.
Rosemary Thornton: And one of the stories I shared in my
book that meant a lot to me,
I was actually in another state when this happened, and
I had to fly home immediately.
And I was a mess.
I mean, I got a phone call.
Hey, we found him,
Rod Bland: Mmm.
Rosemary Thornton: know, it was a very, very bad
way to get the news.
Probably could have been handled better than
that, but, you know, everyone was in shock.
So I ended up on a, actually a, uh, Southwest plane
headed from a northeastern state to the south where
I lived at the time.
And uh, they had one seat left on that plane.
It was southwest, so they don't have assigned seating.
And I ended up seated next to this guy that kind
of a rough looking cat.
He had tattoos all over him.
He had his hair in a braid and he was wearing a leather vest.
And, uh, but as I sat down next to him, he looked at me
and he said, uh, are you okay?
And I said, not really.
And I told him what had happened.
And he said, for somebody who's just found out that
their husband died by their own hand, he said,
you're doing really well.
And he said, whatever happens through the rest of this
experience, I want you to remember that God and the
angels are looking out for you because he said, my
mother did the same thing.
She called me one day, there was a terrible argument,
and then she ended her life.
And I thought, wow, what?
Just from a very practical standpoint, what are the odds
that I end up seated next to a guy who's been through that?
Which is, by the way, for anyone surviving the
suicide of a close loved one, that's very common
to have an argument.
It's like that extra angst or upset gives them an edge
to do this horrible thing.
So, uh, that's not uncommon at all.
And yet it does leave you with a lot of guilt.
You know, wow, if I, if I had not had that argument,
would he still be alive?
And then in time, so many of the people who loved
me would say things like, you know, this, this
isn't your fault, but then somebody explained to me in
a way that stuck with me.
They said, there's nothing you could have done to
prevent him from doing this.
And there's nothing you could have done to push
him into doing this.
You just didn't have that much power in his life.
And that was immensely comforting.
Rod Bland: Mmm.
Rosemary Thornton: so that, that was greatly helpful.
And, you know, I, I've often said that suicide survivors,
which is what we're known as, are the 21st century lepers.
We scare people and that's not just true of suicide.
That's also true of, um, anyone who loses a loved one
through a terrible tragedy.
We frighten people.
You know, I, when, when I had the visitation for his
funeral and, you know, the long line of people are coming
up to offer their condolences and hopefully say things
that are a comfort, lots and lots of people, I can't say
lots, a handful of people would come up to me and say,
I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to my Bobby.
I think I'd just lay down and die.
Not helpful.
Not helpful because the inference is that I didn't
love as much as they loved.
If only I'd loved a little more, I'd probably be
dead because I couldn't love without them.
So it's, it's pretty messed up.
And you know, people say, so what do you say?
What you say is you, you, you say, I love you.
I'm sorry you're going through this.
I can bring you a casserole on Tuesday.
You know, people say, what can I do?
Don't say, what can I do?
Say, can I show up Monday afternoon and
take the dog for a walk?
Can I show up Wednesday and cut the cat's toenails?
I mean, offer practical things that are hard to do.
That's the best way to go at it.
And sometimes just say, you know, I'm cooking a
big meal Thursday night.
Why don't I bring some over to your house for you?
Because, again, it's so typical, people who survive
this, uh, you lose the ability or interest in food.
I lost about, I don't know, 30 or 35 pounds because I
just couldn't physically eat.
So, it's pretty rough.
So, when I was, um, 29 months out from this, I
was diagnosed with cancer.
I couldn't believe it.
I was like, you know When do I get a break?
When does the bad stuff stop happening?
When do I get a break on this?
And, and yet, that's when, um, that's when I had the
near death experience.
It was a surgical thing gone wrong.
They nicked something.
Whoopsie.
I ended up, they ended up sending me home even though
I was bleeding a lot.
And then they, uh, They said, Oh, you'll be fine once
you get home and sit down.
I wish I knew the stats and I don't remember
the stats anymore, but women are too likely to
die from heart attacks.
And the reason is when we go to the hospital or we
presented the ER and we say, I'm having terrible
chest pain, I feel like I can't get enough air.
They go, Oh, it's a panic attack.
It's anxiety.
Go home and take a Valium.
You'll be fine.
Go home and die.
Anyway, I did tell the nurse I was bleeding out and they
were like, nah, once you get home, lie down, you'll be
fine, right as rain, just go back to your own little
bed and lay on your pillow.
You'll be a okay.
So I did what I was told.
I went home and I realized I was not a okay and I
realized I was bleeding out.
I, I've told this story before, but I had
really, really pretty carpet in my house.
I had this really almost white carpet.
And so, you know, when you're bleeding to death,
your number one concern is not messing up the
carpet in the living room.
So I was pretty worried about that carpet.
So I went and stood in the bathroom because I knew
if I bled on the tile, it wouldn't be hard to clean.
And, uh.
I realized I was bleeding to death.
And you know, I had thought a lot.
There's a Bible verse, Corinthians 10, 13, I think
it's first Corinthians, where it says, uh, God
will not tempt you beyond what you were able, but God
will show you the way out.
And I heard that years ago.
And I thought, this is my way out.
I have been given a get out of jail free card with
this bleeding business.
I really figured that was the deal.
God had heard my prayers.
I could die now.
And, uh, but then I also thought, you know, through
this whole process, a lot of people had worked so
hard to keep me alive.
And I thought, is it really fair now?
to just die on them.
So I was taken by ambulance to a hospital and they made
some more mistakes there and managed to grease the skids
to the afterlife for me and send me on to my reward.
You know, one of the stories I share is they gave me,
so I'm bleeding out and I have lost a tremendous
amount of blood.
Rod Bland: actually blood exiting your body Like,
you could see that you were
Rosemary Thornton: Yes, it was a gynecological biopsy.
Yeah.
So it was a lady parts thing.
And, you know, so yeah, I mean, there was.
It was messy, let's leave it there.
It was really messy.
And, uh, so at the hospital,
they, uh, they gave me a, uh, shot of a morphine derivative,
which, you know, if your blood pressure is going down,
that's, that's like, here you go, honey, let's get you
to heaven a little faster.
And it, uh, my blood pressure, my friend, I had
a friend that came with me.
I talk about him in my book and sat beside me.
So they gave me this shot of, uh, of a morphine, uh, drug,
morphine derivative, actually.
And the doctor and the nurse go out into the hallway
like, Yeah, she'll be fine.
So my friend stayed with me.
And he's, and he said, I passed out pretty quick.
I passed out because I'm almost dead.
And they give me a shot at this morphine stuff.
And then, uh, he said at one point he looked at the
blood pressure cuff and it said, uh, 32 over 25,
which is pretty much dead.
And he said, at that point, I, uh, I tried to sit up
on the gurney, which is pretty darn impressive.
And I reached my hands up.
Like I was, you know, ready for somebody to pick me up.
And he said, my friend, the witness said, you
talk to somebody that only you could see.
And he said, and after that, I flopped back down.
And, uh, that's when I went to heaven and it was great.
You know, I don't remember that reaching up stuff.
I don't remember that at all, but I do remember I had been
in a deep, dreamless state at the time of my death.
And I popped out of that body like toast out of a toaster.
It was very, very dramatic.
And having been a fan of NDEs, I knew exactly
what was happening.
I knew I was dead and floating away from my body.
I was floating away in this blackness and
floating away from my body.
I thought, this is great.
I'm out.
And I remember thinking one of my first thoughts
was it really did feel like I'd been granted early
release for good behavior.
I mean, I was pretty done with earth at this
point and because I was supposed to start chemo and
radiation in the next week.
And I thought.
Hmm, that's no longer a concern, is it?
And one of the things that I take great comfort in,
and I'm told other people find comforting, is I
remembered all that stuff.
I remember the firemen who came to the door to put
me on a gurney and hustle me off to a hospital.
I remember the friends who had shown me so much love.
And so much kindness.
I remembered that I had some bills due and I was no
longer worried about them.
And I remember thinking, that is not my problem
anymore either.
I remembered so much of my life in this
earthly experience.
And one of the first things that happened was I thought
is I'm floating away in this perfect velvety comforting
and comfortable blackness and I remember thinking
my heart has stopped and I thought how do I know that
and I thought I don't know how I know that but I know
that's right and then my is you know again still drifting
floating very peaceful gentle floating away from my body and
then I thought you're dying and then I thought actually
you're not dying You're dead.
Because when you're going on to your reward, the
most important thing is correcting your tense.
And it cracked me up.
And I thought, it was so funny, I laughed out loud.
Because, you know, I crack myself up a lot.
Talk to myself a lot.
And that was also immensely comforting because I remember
thinking, I don't think I'm, I know I don't have breath
sounds and I don't know that I have vocal cords or
lungs or the traditional accoutrements that you use
to produce voice and sounds, not to mention hearing.
And yet I can hear and I hear my own giggle.
And that was so comforting to know that even my funny
little giggle went with me.
It was immensely comforting.
And then another thing that happened very early on is
while I'm still floating, I mean this floating, I
don't know if it went on for 20 seconds or 20 minutes
or who can define such things in another realm.
But at one point I felt that I was joined by a massive, and I
mean massive, spiritual being.
And she was to my left, and much taller than
me, and very tender.
I wasn't afraid.
I was comforted by this presence.
Very comforted.
And I hadn't even thought about the fact that it
seemed like I was alone until this presence joined me.
And I looked up, and over my left shoulder,
pretty interested by the fact that I have some
sort of human esque form.
I looked up and over my left shoulder and I said, literally
with a lilt in my voice, I said, and who are you?
And the answer was immediate.
The answer was, you're the image and likeness.
I'm the original.
Oh, wow.
That's first Genesis 26 and 27, I think.
And I thought, how cool is that?
There's an original.
And I'm but the image and likeness.
So that was so cool.
And this whole thing just went on and on and on.
And I remember this piece I experienced a lot of people
talk about the love they feel when they have a, an NDE.
And in my experience, I would say the most pronounced
feeling that I had was one of peace, a deep.
Peace, because I had had the love of a good mother, but
I had never, I had always been very prone to anxiety
and upset and worry and strife and blah, blah, blah.
But this peace was almost mystical.
And I remember thinking, I always wondered what I would
look like with the absence of anxiety and worry and
angst and fears and woes.
And I thought, I like this.
I like who I am without all those fears.
And I thought, this is great.
This is really great.
And I did think about the fact, I felt like so much of
what makes me unique had gone with me in this transition,
because you always wonder, you know, what, what do we
take with us and what leaves, what do we leave behind?
And I thought about the fact that what went with
me was this peace and this deep settled calm.
And joy, so much joy.
I was so happy.
You know, my whole life I've kept a daily gratitude
list of five things for which I'm grateful.
And I kept thinking, I'm so grateful it's over.
I'm so grateful to be leaving this place.
I'm so grateful.
I was.
I really was very, very grateful.
And, and I thought, what did I leave behind?
And I left behind regret, the guilt, the worry, the woe,
and all the negative emotions.
That did not come with me.
And this experience, as I said, it just went on and
on, and then at some point I was no longer floating, and I
don't remember the transition, but I was on my own two feet.
Which is also pretty interesting, because I wish
I'd looked to see what they look like, and I didn't.
But I was on my two feet, now I was in a white room, and in
this white room there was this mist falling all around me.
And it was, uh, Almost like a pea soup fog, but the
room was very, very white.
It had white walls and white ceiling and white
floor and white everything.
And through the mist or the fog, I saw a door in front
of me, maybe, I don't know, 15 to 20 feet in front of me.
And I remember thinking, Oh, I, I know what that door is.
That door is where I exit.
That door is where I go on and I don't come back to earth.
That door is the, the line of demarcation, the
boundary where I cross over to the, to heaven.
And I pretty much felt like, okay, clear
path, doing a door.
And as I walked toward that door, an angelic being,
different from the first one, But an angelic being talked
to me, and the angelic being told me, and I don't remember
precisely the means in which this was communicated, but
the angelic being told me that if I agreed to earth,
I'd be restored to wholeness.
And she didn't say healed of this nasty disease
process or the horrible grief will be gone.
It was just restored to wholeness.
And that was like, okay, that's fine,
but I'm going to heaven.
I have a zero interest, man.
Cause you know, the other thing I thought
about, no kidding.
I thought, I thought it was kind of funny that I
had pretty much nothing to do with doctors.
And here, this was my first interaction with
the medical world.
And they killed me.
My first surgery, my first pretty much of
anything, and I was dead.
And I remember thinking there was a certain irony in
this, that here I am dead.
And I also remember thinking, won't every,
won't everyone be surprised at how this turned out?
I was surprised.
I knew everyone else would be too.
So, as I approached the door, I did ask, I mean, I
actually put my right hand up to push through the door.
I was a little mythic because the door was shut.
I thought the door should be open, you know, but the
door was shut, but I put my right hand up to push through
the door, interested by the fact, right handed on earth,
right handed in heaven.
I thought, huh, something else came with me
is right handedness.
I mean, it's just so cool that who we are does
make this transition.
And as I did this, I paused and I asked the angelic
being or the spiritual being that was with me.
Quite bluntly, I just said, is this the divine will
for my life that a medical mistake takes me out?
And I couldn't even get past, is this the divine?
I only got those words out and the answer was
seemingly to me telepathic.
The answer was like confused.
It wasn't, here are some words to answer that question.
It was like, boom, here, here's everything.
But the answer was, no, this is not the divine
will for your life.
But whatever you decide, If you decide to go back, or
you decide to go forward, you go with all of God's
grace, and mercy, and love, and kindness, and care.
And that was a pretty specific answer to that
prayer of, I can't handle any more hard decisions.
Because God was saying, actually the specific
inference was, either way, You'll be richly blessed.
And the thing I can't explain is that when you're in
that place, all you really want to do is glorify God.
And that's why I paused to ask the question.
I just wanted to do what God wanted me to do.
I didn't want to step off the path of the plan of
God's will for my life.
And so that was a big deal.
So then I thought, okay, if either way, it's good.
I'm leaving.
I'm so out of here.
I'm so done with this.
And then, uh, I was given a vision of this nurse that had
been so motherly to me while I was still on that gurney
on that little, uh, in that little cubicle in that ER.
Things weren't looking good and I remember I
grabbed this nurse's hand.
She was an RN as the doctor was attending to me and this
was before I passed out, before I got the morphine.
I grabbed her hand and I said, promise me you're
not going to let me die.
Because one thing I've read about bleeding to death is
the brain consumes, I think it's 70 percent of the oxygen.
The brain is a big energy user and when people bleed to
death, one of the Symptoms is anxiety and kind of a panic
because you can't reason.
Things aren't working like they ought to be working.
So, that nurse had taken my hand, I was crying,
lying on a gurney crying, and she took my hand and
she said, Oh, honey, we're not going to let you die.
We have many solutions for this.
And I thought, okay.
She sounds like she knows what she's talking about.
But then as I'm at this door in this heavenly
place, And I, I think, okay, if either way I'm richly
blessed, I'm out of here.
I'll take that deal.
I'm so out of this place.
But then that's when I was given a vision
of the same nurse.
And in this vision, she was sitting in a hospital
supply room surrounded by linens and other
medical supplies and such.
She was sitting in the middle of this small hospital
supply room, leaning forward on a small metal stool,
head in her hands, and sobbing uncontrollably.
And I heard her say, through tears, I promised that woman
I wasn't going to lose her.
And I let her die.
And it was almost like I was an invisible
witness to this thing.
To say it was a vision is not strong enough.
It was, I believe I was being shown a potential future.
And in this potential future, I was being shown
the pain that my death would cause this nurse.
Because a lot of people say, Oh, well, did you tell her
that after you got back?
Which they were busy in that little cubicle
trying to resuscitate me.
They were busy trying to get my heart going again.
They weren't off at a room crying.
Um.
So I saw this nurse in this vision, again it was like
being a silent witness to her sadness, and I turned
to the spiritual being and I said, you know, she's about
my age, surely she's lost patients before she'll get
over this, but I need to go.
I don't want to go back to this earthly experience.
The grief occasioned by my husband's
suicide was torturous.
The grief, the loss of friends, losing my marital
home to what started out as a foreclosure process,
it just was too much, too much for any human to bear
and ever want to go back.
So, uh, then I thought, okay, we settled that.
I want to go.
But then I was shown A different thing.
I didn't just see that nurse sobbing.
I felt her pain in my, I guess in my center of my being
the very core of my being.
And it was a wave of grief that, that deep
grief that just, just destroys you emotionally.
And I remember thinking, oh, I remember thinking if I can
spare one person that much grief and emotional agony.
I guess I need to go back and I put my right
hand back down by my side
and I was like, oh, I guess I got to do this.
And in a millisecond, I was back in that body.
There was no whoosh.
There was no going backwards through a tunnel.
There was none of that.
I was just back in that body.
And when I opened my eyes, I was like, ah, crap.
I thought we're going to have a little discussion
about this, maybe.
I didn't think we were just going to go right back, but
I don't know if it's the same nurse or not, but there was
a nurse right in my face as soon as I opened my eyes and
she said, what is your name?
And I said, Rosemary.
And she said, what year is it?
And I said, 2018.
Where are you?
And I said, a crummy excuse for an ER.
Rod Bland: ha.
Rosemary Thornton: Oops.
The fact is, uh.
I had been gone for more than 10 minutes,
and there's always the question, at what point
do you stop trying to resuscitate somebody?
And the medical belief is that after five to six minutes
without oxygen to the brain, uh, the brain will start
dying off very quickly.
And the other interesting thing, because I did interview
some medical personnel to write my book, and the other
interesting thing I learned is when somebody dies of bleeding
to death, you can't do CPR.
Because as you pound on their chest or you do chest
compressions, you're just pushing more blood out.
And as an ER doctor told me, he was very gracious
to let me interview him.
But as he said, when you have somebody that dies, I mean,
what happens is your heart stops, the heart's a pump.
And when it runs out of fluid, you're out.
But he said.
Plug the leak, refill the tank, and restart the heart.
That's the order in which they bring you
back, which I thought was pretty interesting.
So I was gone for more than 10 minutes, and you
know, according to medical ideas, I should have
been pretty compromised.
Uh, I don't think I am.
I have trouble remembering stuff sometimes.
But the other thing that happened, and it took
some time, I was in the hospital for a handful of
days, but the other thing that happened is, uh, I
went back to my oncologist and I said, Good news.
I was healed in heaven.
We don't have to worry about that chemo.
We don't have to worry about those radiation treatments.
I'm all set.
Nice knowing you.
And, uh, he wrote, uh, mentally ill on my chart.
They do these patient portal things now, so you
can go online and see what they're writing about you.
And I did.
He said, mentally ill.
Rod Bland: Ha ha.
That's it.
Mentally ill.
That was all he had to say.
Rosemary Thornton: Yeah, well, he said some other
stuff and to his credit,
he and his office called me repeatedly for the
next few weeks and urged me to begin the chemo and
radiation and said, you're going to die a terrible
death, you know, the whole, we caught it early thing.
And so I had to go, I had to find another oncologist
in another part of the state because nobody wanted to go
against this, this one doctor.
And say, yeah, we'll take you as a patient.
We'll just forget about that guy.
So I did go to another doctor and, uh, and there
was a second surgery to make sure, you know,
but she was very good.
And anyway, she was, uh, she was a remarkable doctor
and she took a lot of flesh from a lot of places.
She said she had to be sure, but she actually greeted my
friend who was again in the waiting room, waiting for
me to come out of surgery.
She, this doctor who did a second surgical biopsy,
he said she trotted up to him pretty quickly, threw
her arms around his neck and said, she's right.
There's not one cell of cancer left.
Not one cell.
She said, in fact, what she said was her flesh is so
pink and pretty and perfect.
I wouldn't believe she ever had cancer unless I'd seen
the test in the first place.
So that was pretty cool.
So, you know, a lot of people say I get all
the same questions.
A lot of people say, well, one, how do we know
you're not making this up?
My experience was so non traditional.
I didn't get a tunnel.
I didn't get a field of wildflowers.
I didn't see loved ones.
I didn't get any of the normal things that people get.
And secondly, they say, how do you know it
wasn't a hallucination?
And the way I know is because when I died, I was a mess.
When I came back, I came back different.
In fact, and this is an aside, I don't know if I've
ever shared this in a podcast before, but at the time of
my death, I had glaucoma and I had already lost 15
percent of my optic nerve.
Well, took about a year before I actually
went back to a doctor.
But he said, you don't have glaucoma and your optic nerve
is that of a young person.
So a lot of things happened in that experience.
And there's, there's a lot more, but the big healing, the
real healing for me was I felt like I was given a reset over
my husband's messy ending.
I forgave myself.
I forgave him.
I forgave the people who deserted me, the people
who just disappeared.
I was able to just really forgive everyone,
but mainly myself.
I had been so hard on myself.
I felt like I didn't deserve to live.
I just felt so terrible.
And something the angels told me was that all of
the ugliness and the mess and the difficulty of his
death had been encapsulated.
And it couldn't hurt me anymore.
And it wouldn't hurt me again.
and that was so immensely comforting because my
background is actually in architectural history and
when you're removing a contaminant from a historic
structure or a building of any kind really sometimes
it's better to encapsulate it rather than try to pull
it out because sometimes in the removal of a contaminant
you end up dispersing more of it into the air than if
you just left it undisturbed and had encapsulated it so
that's what the angels told me was this whole difficult
and horrific experience had been encapsulated
and it couldn't hurt me.
And that was huge.
And as the days went on and on, I forgave myself more and
more because I had been in the habit of hating myself.
I've been in the habit of being angry at him
and hating myself.
And even just breaking that habit when I'd say,
how could I be so stupid?
I thought he loved me.
And I would stop and I'd say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We're not gonna say that anymore.
You loved him, you loved, and that's okay.
It certainly didn't go the way you wanted.
But this life is so temporary and I think one of the
reasons, you know, we're, we're at 70 to 80 years before
we get to leave this place, as my friend calls it, the, uh,
ball shaped and insane asylum.
I think it's because we get a reset.
You know, life is hard and I, I don't, I, as I
recall, you've heard my story before, but one of the
things that happened when I was in that hospital bed.
Waiting to recover was when my friends would leave
because, you know, it's good to have friends with you when
you're in a hospital, make sure they don't, you know,
wheel you away for a kidney transplant or something.
And my friends were with me and when my friends would
step away to go get a bite to eat or to go do something,
the angels would surround my bedside and they would
sing to me and they sang me the most beautiful songs.
And I, I told them, I said, look, I'm really good with
houses, but melody and lyrics.
I'm really, I don't think I'll be able to remember this.
I don't want to forget a note or a word of what
you're singing to me.
And they said, this isn't for you to remember.
This is for your peace.
This is for your joy.
This is for your healing.
This is a thank you for agreeing to come back.
And they said, we know that life on this earth is hard.
So this is a gift for you.
And I used to say, you know, we tend to say, I'll remember
something until my dying day.
I know that I will remember that singing for eternity.
It was so incredible.
And sometimes I just heard a prayer.
Somebody sent me, I get the most, sometimes I get
really beautiful emails.
Sometimes I get not so beautiful emails,
but for the most part, they're really lovely.
But somebody said when they're feeling very alone
and very frightened, their prayer is for the angels.
I don't know who's on duty, but I need
some help right now.
And I think that's a very powerful prayer.
And one of the things I learned through this
experience is that, um, We, God doesn't just love us, but
God really, really likes us.
And we don't have to earn that love.
God doesn't say, you know, when you stop being
a weirdo and a freak, we'll talk about love.
No, you know, if I could sum up the whole experience of
dying and going to heaven and all the et ceteras that
have, that occurred in that heavenly experience, it
would be three words, which are welcome home, dearie.
I felt like I was with my tribe.
I no longer felt like a, an outlier, like an oddball.
I felt like I had found my tribe and they were so
grateful to see me again.
So grateful that I made it safely back.
So I'm really, some days more than others, I'm very
fuzzy on what I'm doing here because dying is hard.
It is a hard experience.
Was for me.
So, and this has been five and a half years, pushing six
years now since my NDE or my temporary death experience.
And people seem to think I'm some sort of shaman
or ascended master.
I am not.
I still cry the night before I go to the dentist.
I still have arguments with people I love.
I still, I still have issues.
I still have occasional nightmares, but this, the
horror of my husband's suicide was lifted off of
me and the, the sickness that came along with that.
was lifted off of me.
And one of the things I was told when I came back
from this, every now and then I'd be really, really
frightened that, oh no, what if the disease comes back?
But one of the things the angels told me that touched
me so deeply was she said, these things don't fade,
that God's things, the things of God don't fade away.
They're always there.
And I remember I was, I, you know, the first few months
after I came back from this, I did have a little panic
attacks over, you know, what if, what if I get sick again?
And I was passing this carwash and the carwash said,
clean, shine and protect.
And I heard a little angel voice say, that's what.
That's what we did for you.
You were cleaned, you got shined and buffed,
and now you're protected.
And you know, one of the things I neglected to mention
is I haven't, I haven't been on a podcast in two months,
two months or maybe three.
Uh, when I was in that white room and walking through
the room and getting to that door, there was this, this,
uh, this fog or this mist was actually swirling around me.
actively swirling around me.
And I had asked the angelic being that accompanied
me, I said, what, I feel like I ought to be able
to focus on an individual droplet of this mist.
Which, next time you're in a fog, think about focusing
on an individual droplet.
It's kind of nuts.
But what the angel told me was, um, Those are
particles of light, and your eyes haven't acclimated
to this experience yet.
But what you're seeing are particles of light, and it
was likened to a spiritual car wash that I was being
cleaned, and all the muck of the earth was washed away.
And I was told that when we go to heaven, Some people
die with such a disease process imprinted on their
soul that that muck of earth, and that was the word that
was used, was the muck of earth has to be washed away.
And, uh, I've, I liken it to a spiritual car wash and I
try to do that every morning.
I try to do my spiritual car wash every morning,
but some mornings I'm like, eh, we'll skip that today.
So it was a big deal experience.
And I'm, you know, people like, well, you must've
come back for a reason.
I don't know.
I got nothing.
I don't know why I'm here.
Rod Bland: Well, here's my experience of you coming back,
telling your story, Rosemary, is it, There was, I got to
laugh and experience some joy and I think there can never
be too much joy in this world.
So that's one thing,
Rosemary Thornton: Well, that's a good point.
Rod Bland: yeah,
um, you, you mentioned, uh, when you were floating in
the, the sort of soft velvety void, you said the, you said
she about the presence did the, that person have like
a feminine aspect to it.
Rosemary Thornton: my book and they want to go to Amazon
and write a review, please don't write the review that
says, God is not a woman!
That's blasphemy!
Because you know what?
About a dozen people already beat you to that.
Rod Bland: Right.
Okay.
Rosemary Thornton: That's the number one email I get is,
God is not a she, God can't be a she, and yet if you look
up in the Bible, there's a lot of references to God in
a maternal, motherly way.
Yes, it did feel to me like God was motherly, God was
she, using a feminine pronoun to describe God has really
rattled a bunch of cages.
I had somebody say, if you want your book to do,
if you want your book to be a bestseller, Get rid
of this God she business.
But you know, when, when I was greeted in heaven and
the answer was you're the image and likeness, I'm
the original, what do they think I'm going to see?
Some, some, some big old man?
I mean, give me a break.
So yes, I do think of God as feminine.
Well I'm
Rod Bland: glad you kept it in.
I haven't read your book, but now you've said that I'm glad
that you kept it in because as another one of my guests,
uh, Jason Janis really likes to go against tradition and
you know what was written and there's a lot of great
things in the Bible and there's a lot of things that
you could probably interpret in different ways as well.
There was something else you mentioned about the angels
who were singing to you.
And I immediately thought of my friend Nikki Allen
who is a psychic and she talks about the Seraphim.
Are you, have you heard of them before?
Rosemary Thornton: know what Seraphim is, but,
uh, I'm not familiar with, uh, that specifically
as you mentioned it.
No.
Rod Bland: Yeah, I can't say I'm hugely familiar
with them but I just, they just remind me of those,
the Seraphim are the healing angels and they sing.
The healing is done by their, through their singing.
, Rosemary Thornton: wow.
Well, that's interesting.
I, you know, that singing business, uh,
I've, I've done, I don't know, 60 or 70 podcasts.
I don't know.
I've done a bunch,
but for a long time when I would share this story,
When I would get to the part about the angels singing,
I would sob because it was such a profound experience.
I just, I mean, I still see them.
And a lot of people say, what do they look like?
And what they were tall again, but they were, um,
a human esque form and they were wearing gowns of light.
And when they sang their gowns glowed brighter, their
songs were glorifying God.
And as they sang those Those gowns of light
just got brighter and brighter and brighter.
And I remember very specifically late one night,
my friends had left, the angels were by the bedside,
a nurse walked in just to check on me or take
my vitals or something.
And, uh, when she did that, Um, I was so kind of
spiritually high, I guess, from the angels voices, that
that nurse turned to me and smiled, and it was a genuine
smile, and I burst into tears, because it was like she was
looking at me with love, and I just felt so Attuned to
love, so tuned into love that when she looked at me and
smiled, I burst into tears and she said, what's wrong?
What's the matter?
And I said, your smile is so full of love.
It's just, it's just kind of get, it's, it's getting
to me in a good way.
So I, you know, and I, I want to live in that place
all the time and I, I, maybe we're just not supposed to,
I mean, how do you live in that place all the time when
you have to deal with the IRS and the DMV and, you
know, all the frustrations of life and you take your car
in for an oil change and it takes three and a half hours.
I don't know how you live in that high holy place with the
frustrations of everyday life.
I really, I really wonder about that.
I wish I could.
Rod Bland: There is a lot of people who have had an
NDE but don't talk about it.
I've had guests that have kept their mouth zipped for 20
years because they're worried about what people might say
or they think they're crazy or they hallucinate it and
you mentioned a bit of this before so for anyone who
has not talked about their experience what would you,
what would you say to them?
Rosemary Thornton: have people in my own family who are
pretty, uh, what's the word?
They discount the experience.
And I used to be a reporter.
I had a job as a reporter for a handful of years for
a pretty big newspaper.
And if I thought somebody was talking crazy.
I would say, so what dates were you in the hospital?
What exactly happened?
What were your vitals before that happened?
Who, what was the blood work like?
I mean, I would ask questions.
I remember I was sent to interview a lady and I don't
know, I can't even remember how this unfolded, but I was
sent to interview, I think, I think I was interviewing
her because she was homeless.
I can't remember the details, but I was sent to interview
this dear old woman.
That it had a very hard life and she, as I recall, she
was living in a hotel at the largesse of the hotel
owner, but she wanted to do the interview outside.
So we're walking around in the outside and we
were under some of those high tension wires and she
grabbed me and she pulled me aside and she said you need
to stay away from those.
That's how I think it was that's how the aliens,
uh, send their signals right to our brain.
And I remember thinking, what do I say?
Because I didn't want to discount her, you know?
I didn't want to say, hey, you're just crazy.
I wanted to be loving and say, well, you know,
I think I'll be okay.
I think I'm going to be okay, but let's, let's
move away from them if you're not comfortable.
And I wish the people who had doubts would ask me
questions and just, instead of just dismissing the whole
thing, ask me questions.
Ask me what hospital I went to.
Ask me, ask me anything.
Because one of the remarkable things about
my experience is that when I died, I had cancer.
When I came back, it was gone.
When I died, I was lost in grief.
When I came back, I was better.
When I died, I just wanted.
I wanted to get away from earth and away
from human beings.
When I came back, I decided to write that book because
I wanted to share the story.
I, I did, you know, I, I guess I'm kind of,
um, what's the word?
Uh, not capricious, but kind of disregarding what this,
the point of all this is.
But after my husband's suicide, a friend of
mine shared this comment with me that I wrote on
a piece of paper and I put it all over my house.
I mean, I literally taped this comment all over the
house and it was, God, please help me heal so
I can help others heal.
And I think that's why I came back.
I think that prayer is, I hope that prayer is being
answered, is help me heal so I can help other, others heal.
And your question was, what would I say to
people who don't want to share this story?
I'd say, you know, just, just listen to the angels.
And sometimes I think you are better to keep it to yourself,
but sometimes it helps people.
I think it really helps people sometimes.
And I can't tell you how many times I've run into somebody.
Like I went into the hardware store and I had a brief
exchange with a clerk and I can't remember what I told
her, but I shared something pretty spiritually intimate
and she got tears in her eyes and she said, you have no idea
how much that helped me today.
And I think, you know, I think that's what
we're supposed to do.
I just think we're supposed to be nice to each other and kind
and good as much as we can.
You know, there's some people that won't let you be nice
to them, but I just, I really think we're supposed to be
nice to us, to people, to the best of our ability.
And sometimes that means sharing your NDE and I guess
other times we have to be protective of ourselves.
If people are just after, I know, I know
after this happened, I went and told everybody.
Can't wait to tell everybody everything about my NDE.
And I met this one guy who I thought he was my friend.
I told him about it.
And boy, that guy spent the next 30 minutes
explaining to me from a very intellectual point
of view, why I was wrong.
Why I was completely wrong and why I could
not possibly be right.
So I've become more circumspect about
with whom I share.
And I guess that's what we all have to do.
Just be a little, have some wisdom.
Wise as serpents, harmless as doves, hard to do.
Rod Bland: Wise as serpents, harmless as
doves, I've never heard that before, that's good.
Rosemary Thornton: And that's what Jesus told us.
Rod Bland: Have you acquired any, or do you have any
occurrences like, you know, angels revisiting, or have
you had any other sort of extra sensory abilities that
have stuck with you since
Rosemary Thornton: I wish I did.
I want to.
Um, honestly, no more so than I had before.
I think I was pretty tuned into the spiritual,
which is one of the reasons my husband's
death was such a shock.
You know, I remember one day, because he, he worked at, um,
he worked in city government.
And one day, He got dressed, and you know, he wore his ties
and his suits and his, you know, he's a very dapper man,
very handsome looking fellow, and he got all dressed up, and
he was heading, I gave him, I made him breakfast and gave
him a kiss goodbye, and off he goes, and he says, I'm going
to town, and, um, he walked out the door, and I very
clearly heard an angel voice say, Like it was, the angel
was standing right beside me.
So it felt like, but the angel said, prepare yourself.
The season of your life is coming to an end.
He'll be dead soon.
I was like, wait, what?
No, no, no.
That's something dark talking to me.
That's not God.
So I prayed extra hard, extra, extra, extra hard.
But I heard that message again and again.
And again, I was like, stop, stop it.
That is not.
That cannot be God's will for my life.
Uh, so I, I think I've always been pretty sensitive
to that stuff, but no, I don't have any ESP or, you
know, anything like that.
I, I do pray every day.
I ask God, I used to pray when my children would go
off to school every morning and I'd say, God, help them
realize their full potential.
And I kind of pray that for myself these days, help me
realize my full potential, you know, whatever's I'm supposed
to do, keep me pointed in the right direction.
I, that's really my, I, I even pray when I drive in my car,
I say, God, keep me pointed in the right direction.
And that means keep me from flipping over, keep
me from hitting anybody, keep anybody from hitting
me, keep me pointed in the right direction.
But no, I don't think I have any special abilities.
If I did, I, you know, I think I'd like to have
some good stock tips.
That'd be very helpful, wouldn't it?
Rod Bland: Ha, ha, don't take all
Rosemary Thornton: No, nothing like that.
Rod Bland: When you look back at the, the sort of the
events, you know, from when your, when your husband died
and your illness, et cetera, and then what's occurred since
then, does it seem like it was, there's a lot The end
point where you are now, can you sort of see the value in
how that occurred, or why that needed to happen, and what
the rest of us as humans may have missed out had Rosemary
not gone through that.
Rosemary Thornton: Oh man, that's a really deep question.
I don't know.
I know that human life is hard, and the people
who say it isn't, I don't know what they're made of.
I don't know.
I don't know how they can say that, especially now that
I get a lot of emails and I hear, I, I am not able to
respond, honestly, to most of the emails I read them.
And I always try to send up a quick prayer, asking
God to watch over them.
And I'm grateful.
I'm grateful to read them.
There's a lot of people been through some very hard
stuff and, uh, I don't know.
I don't, I don't know.
I, if my story is helping people, that's great.
I don't really know that.
I just, I honestly, I guess I think being nice
to our neighbors and being nice to the, the clerk
at the grocery store.
Maybe being nice to her husband when he snores.
Uh, who was it?
Oh, mother Teresa.
I love this quote.
She said, maybe we do, maybe we can't do great
big things to change the world, but we can do little
things with great love.
I think that's what we're supposed to do.
I think we're supposed to do lots of little
things with great love.
Mm-Hmm.
Rod Bland: I think that's true.
I had another guest, she had the life review in her NDE.
And not everybody has them.
But it wasn't the big things that she was showing,
it was these small acts of kindness and Showing
love to other people, that was what she was reminded of.
Rosemary Thornton: One thing I've started doing
because I do want to be a blessing, you know,
I'm kind of here on borrowed time, you know, I'm kind
of here on, on God's time because I'm supposed to be
out of here, but I'm not.
Once a week and sometimes two, three times a week, I
try to send a little love note, a card, you know, an
actual card or a letter and just say, that thing you
did for me over Christmas was very appreciated, and
I'm I'm so impressed with how gracious you are, and
how kind you are, and I'm grateful you're my friend.
And I try to send those out, just out to the world
as often as I can, just because we're supposed to be.
It's just, the world is a hard place.
If we can show our neighbors and friends a little grace,
I really think that's what we're called to do.
Rod Bland: I'll do that too.
So what advice would you have for 25 year old Rosemary?
Okay,
Rosemary Thornton: Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Well, I don't know.
I don't, I don't have an answer for that.
Don't know.
Rod Bland: and how do you feel about the future of your
life here on planet Earth now compared to before your NDE?
Rosemary Thornton: Uh, I don't know.
When I get overwhelmed by life, which I am
way too sensitive,
when I get overwhelmed by life, I remind myself that
this is all very temporary.
And one of the thoughts I had when I was floating away
from my body, one of the very profound thoughts I had
was, you know, that 59 years sure went by in a hurry.
You know, it just seemed like it was over like
that, you know, and it really was like awakening
from a very intense dream.
And I tell myself when I get really wrapped up around the
axle, you know, worried about stupid stuff, or even what
seems like non stupid stuff, I try very hard to remind
myself that one day I'm going to look back and say, yep,
that was all over in a hurry.
But yeah, this, this experience, some people just,
you know, human misery is not doled out in equal measure.
I wish I really wanted to have the life where I met a
guy, married a guy, and stayed with a guy for 57 years.
I really wanted that.
I thought I wanted that.
And now I, I don't know, it didn't happen.
It's not going to happen.
So I don't know.
I guess we just make the best of what we get.
And I'm very grateful to be healthy.
I promised myself when I was in the middle of all this
horror of, you know, the grief, the guilt, the cancer
diagnosis, all this stuff, that if somehow in the future
it was behind me, that I would always be grateful.
That I'd been healed.
Always be grateful that it was in my past and it
couldn't hurt me anymore.
And I need, I need to tell future Rosemary that every
day, just be grateful.
Everything doesn't, everything doesn't go perfect every day.
Rod Bland: Yeah, let's just remember what you
said about that, yeah.
So if, if people want to get in touch with you Rosemary,
I know you've said before you get people emailing
you, um, what's the best way for them to do that?
Assuming that that's possible.
And tell us about what you've got going on.
Tell us about your book as well.
Rosemary Thornton: Uh, my website is TemporaryDeath.
com,
and there's a Contact Rose tab on it.
And my book is Remembering the Light,
How Dying Saved My Life.
Took me three years to write.
I wrote it, threw out the first manuscript, wrote
it again, threw out the second manuscript, wrote
it a third time, and pretty much rewrote most of that.
So it was a pretty intense labor of love.
Rod Bland: Wow.
Rosemary Thornton: But yeah, it's, it's up at Amazon.
It's in Kindle, it's in, uh, uh, paperback, but it's
going to be out as an audio recording pretty soon.
I've done the recording and now they're
just tidying it up.
So it will be available as an audio recording, probably
within less than a month.
Rod Bland: Well, uh, it's been my great pleasure to have you
on the show today, Rosemary.
Do you have anything that you want to leave people with
before we wrap things up?
Rosemary Thornton: No, just, I guess kind of
what I started with.
If, if you know somebody who's lost a loved one to
suicide, understand that, uh, actually the American
Psychological Association came out with a comment years
ago that said losing a close loved one to suicide is one
of the most severe traumas a human being can know.
So if you know somebody who's been through that,
just Be very patient with them, be very present for
them as the, uh, as the people say, show up and help
them, show up and shut up.
They're not there to listen to your own sad story.
They're there because they're so alone.
You know, as I said before, the people who've been
through trauma and survived it are 21st century lepers,
and that shouldn't be, it shouldn't be that way.
Rod Bland: Hmm.
Rosemary, thank you for being here.
Thank you for your grace and your humor.
And for being my guest today.
Rosemary Thornton: Thank you very much.