X-Message-Number: 29368
From: "marta sandberg" <>
Subject: My journey to cryonics   Part V
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 14:44:56 +0800

He wasn't ready to listen. He was fighting to stay alive. To him Death was 
his personal enemy and he wasn't interested in doing a backroom deal with 
Death. A warrior meets his enemy face to face and gives no quarters.

I prepared to go into battle with Helmer.

He listened and objected. I answered his objections one by one without 
shifting him.

Then I decided to use guile. As his eyesight was failing we had developed an 
'instant tradition'. I would read aloud for him every morning and evening. 
They where tender moments we shared. Feeling close and together. I used that 
opportunity and started our sessions by reading a page from some of my 
massive cryonics literature.

His objections became more factually correct.

I'm not sure when he started to change his mind. I think it was seeing me 
sitting by his bedside and knowing that if he died before I could convince 
him, I would lose him forever. It felt so futile; there might be a solution, 
but I couldn't use it because he refused to accept it.

It came to a head when he spent two months in hospital before they could 
bring an infection under control. Most of that time he was hanging between 
life and death. I would stay up as long as I could because I knew he might 
not make it through the night. Sometime past midnight, exhaustion would 
force me to bed and fear would wake me up at dawn. A brief relief in seeing 
him still alive followed by a long vigil by his bedside again. I had almost 
given up and was only trying to stay strong so I could say goodbye to him.

Finally he pulled through - once again.

I thought he had been too ill to know what was happening around him, but he 
must have felt my pain. A week after we were home he said he wanted to be 
frozen.

Oh God, I was overflowing with happiness. There is no other word to express 
it. I hugged and kissed him and then I ran to the phone to get all the 
contracts expressed to us. I think it might be the quickest sign up in the 
history of cryonics. But it had a gestation period that had begun in 
childhood and became intense in the last five years. It takes a long time to 
hatch cryonicists.

Helmer agreed to be frozen as a gift to me. That was good enough. I didn't 
care if he did it as a practical joke, as long as he agreed.

In the year that followed an astonishing change happened. It seemed as if he 
finally gave himself permission to hope. By the time that he ultimately 
died, he believed in cryonics. It had become an article of faith with 
Helmer. Part of that was probably desperation, as it was his only hope.

When he lost consciousness for the last time he refused to say goodbye, he 
would only say "au revoir".

I too have a contract with CI and one day, if cryonics works, we may be 
together again. Then we can say "hello again".

Marta

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