Journey Beyond: One Woman's Near-Death Experience

When Dana collapsed on a Friday night after intense headaches, she lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital. Her family was informed she had a brain aneurysm, a burst blood vessel causing severe bleeding and high blood pressure.

The year 1999, when this occurred, is one Dana won't soon forget. After being taken to Laniado Hospital in Netanya, it became clear she needed urgent transfer to the neurological department at Tel HaShomer. During the journey, the 'brain distress' began to manifest. "My husband's sister traveled with me from Laniado to Sheba Medical Center and later told me I spoke to my father, who had passed away 40 years prior," Dana recalls in an interview with 'Mako'.

In the neurology department, surgeons decided on a procedure to repair the ruptured artery. Dana remembers nothing of the surgery itself, but her clinical death experience remains etched in her memory. "I walked along a path resembling a tunnel, seeing a triangular-shaped light at the end, and realized I was headed toward what people call the afterlife," she recounts. "I went there effortlessly, feeling as though my body, which was ill, was no longer mine. Suddenly, I felt like I was flying, as if I had wings."

"Warned to look after my husband"

When she reached the triangular light's edge, she unexpectedly saw three men and two women, whose appearance suggested they were 'important people.' "They were in outfits reminiscent of judges, and it felt like some sort of panel. Without spoken words, we communicated through thoughts, like telepathy. They told me: 'You've lingered, now return.'"

Dana accepted the panel's decision—that she had to return as her time had not yet come. But the journey back to her body is unforgettable. Unlike the light and optimistic feeling she had going to the triangular light, returning to her physical form was incredibly hard. "It was extremely challenging, I barely managed to walk back."

In the midst of this, Dana suddenly remembers meeting someone with an indistinct form who had a precise message for her. "He told me I needed to look after my husband. I didn't understand why but agreed that I would protect him."

Just a few months later, Dana's husband passed away, and she finally understood what the message from above meant. "They knew, and I didn't understand it then. Normally, you'd expect to hear 'take care of your children'—I have one daughter and four sons. But they told me to watch over my husband. Today I realize life gives us signs that we don't grasp; only in hindsight, after an event, we understand. But not in the moment," she concludes.