(209-211)
Renee Zamora
"As I watched, amazed, the father and one of his sons began playing checkers. The whole scene irritated me terribly. My thoughts were: Here I am, so sick that I've asked for no visitors, and these rude people come into my room and play checkers. What made matters worse was that they were talking to each other and ignoring me.
"Because I was so disturbed by the people, I decided that I would pay no attention to them. They must be figments of my imagination. I thought. Despite my trying to ignore them, they continued to stay in the room and annoy me - until the nurse came in. Whenever the nurse would enter, they would disappear.
"Unfortunately, when the nurse would depart, they would reappear. Another strange phenomemon occurred. I became aware that I knew the names of all of the individuals that were there, and I understood their specific relationships to each other. They seemed completely oblivious to my presence, continuing with their family small talk, and continuing to ignore me. It was interesting that they chattered away happily, but they did not move their mouths when they talked. Their laughs and their smiles - the expressions on their faces - denoted their states of mind, as well as their conversations.
"About the second or third time I saw them, other family members joined them. Again, I understood the relationships, and this time it was the father's father, his spouse, and other relatives. The age appearances of the family members were as if they were all in their early 20s. The father might be a few years older than a child, and his father might appear a few years older than him, but they all looked to be young adults. Yet I knew instantly who was related to whom. Other knowledge about them came to me. One person, for example, had died as a child, and I knew it.
"This knowledge came to me despite my annoyance with the whole scene. My head continued to hurt desperately throughout the experience, and I wanted the people to leave. They were not dressed in white, and this bothered me. I was not interested in learning more about them.
"This process repeated itself for perhaps twenty times over the next two or three days. Gradually, the original family was joined by so many people, always their relatives through birth or marriage, that no more people could fit in the room. When this occurred, I watched, astonished, as the wall to the room vanished - except for the main beams in the walls."
Trip to an Unusual Place
"As the wall disappeared the people in the room walked through it. They didn't even see the wall; they just walked off in the distance. I didn't want to go with them, but I had no choice. It seemed that I just floated off my bed, still in the horizontal position, and traveled with the people.
"Floating through the wall, I entered another of the hospital rooms. Looking down into this room as I floated through, I saw a frail old man in his bed. There was an oxygen tube in his nose, and his eyes were alternately open and closed.
"The people continued their journey through the hospital walls with me alongside them. When we reached the boundary of the hospital we sailed through, and suddenly it was as though we had gone to a park. I remember wondering: What happened to the city of Provo? As the thought entered my mind, I seemed to understand that the park was somehow overlaid upon the city, but slightly above it.
"It was a pretty park, with green grassy areas, and trees. My head kept aching, though, and I continued to resent having to go with the people. None of them recognized that I even existed - not that I wanted to be recognized by them. If I had been recognized, my fear was that I would have had to admit that I was dead. Moreover, I still had not seen my grandmother, the only one I would have been glad to see.
"When we traveled into the park area, I noticed people in the distance playing croquet. My thought was: Why are people playing croquet? It didn't make sense. None of it met my expectations of what I thought might happen on the other side. People were dressed in period clothes, not in white, and my grandmother was not among them. Even more peculiarly, they were engaged in activities, checkers and croquet, which to me seemed to be trivial.
"New groupings of people came to my attention, I instantly knew their relationships to the others. Looking at one young women, I understood that she was the sister-in-law's child from another group. And I knew their names. The people I identified often had an obscure and remote relationship to someone else - not a direct relationship.
"Beyond the area where the people were playing croquet was a sloping hill and a large tree. Several people were gathered near the tree, and they were having a picnic. A strange thing happened as I got near the people having the picnic; my headache left me. Again, I understood everyone's relationship, except one man who stood directly under the tree. For some reason I was not given his relationship.
"The headache pain had been so terrible that when it stopped I became very conscious of its departure. The moment that my consciousness acknowledged the
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