X-Message-Number: 29377 From: "marta sandberg" <> Subject: My journey to cryonics LAST BIT Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:01:44 +0800 Oops, I got censured for too many postings yesterday. I'll try again today. The same warning applies. If you aren't interested in the topic, please scroll forwards to the next posting. I promise you this is the last installment in my saga. We had come to the bit where I was trying to convince Helmer. 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". _________________________________________________________________ Advertisement: Meet Sexy Singles at Lavalife today. Click here http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Flavalife9%2Eninemsn%2Ecom%2Eau%2Fclickthru%2Fclickthru%2Eact%3Fid%3Dninemsn%26context%3Dan99%26locale%3Den%5FAU%26a%3D25448&_t=754951090&_r=meet&_m=EXT Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29377