A Ticket to the Circus by Norris Church Mailer Page A

died. Running back and finding the maid in the rubble of his quarters was horrific for Larry.
    He also told stories of being out in the field for weeks, living in a tank without a shower or clean clothes, so constantly wet in the rainy season that when they finally came in to base and took off their boots, their skin came off with the socks. They always had to be alert, even when asleep, and they never could trust anyone. The man who gave you a haircut in the morning could be the one setting out booby traps at night. The Vietcong even strapped bombs to children begging for food, who would then explode in the middle of a group of men handing out candy bars. Someone might leave a lighter on a bar top one night, and the soldier who picked it up and flicked it on would have his hand blown off. No one can live like that and be the same person he was before. Larry was not one to display his emotions, even to me, and Vietnam stayed buried deep inside him, where it gnawed a big ragged hole, one he tried to ignore.
    Not long after he came home, his mother died. She’d had colon cancer and had worn an ostomy bag for quite some time, but it was still a shock for us. She was a funny woman, always cracking jokes and making fun of her bag, trying to make the best of things. She had raised nine children on a farm, and was a tough old bird. She’d had a soft spot for Larry, her baby boy, and he loved her a lot.
    We and several other members of the family were in the hospital waiting room, taking turns going in to sit with her. Matt was a baby, and I was trying to amuse him while we waited. The doctors had toldus Larry’s mother didn’t have long, but somehow we couldn’t accept that—as one never does, I suppose. Her daughter was in the room with her, holding her hand when she died. It was frightening, and of course the daughter ran out into the hallway calling for the nurses and doctors, who came running with the crash cart, put the paddles on her chest, and shocked her back to life. It was so insane. They knew she was going to die, she had no hope, but they just wouldn’t let her go. Doctors seem to look upon every death as a personal failure, when it is just simply nature. We don’t play God when we take terminal patients off life support; we play God when we put them on it.
    After she came around, we all crowded into the room, crying and nervous, but she was calm and peaceful. “I lifted up out of this bed and went to the most beautiful place,” she told us, with a faraway look on her face, “where there were flowers in colors I never saw before, and there were trees and creeks that were like the ones here, except a hundred times better. I can’t even describe them. I was on a path walking through this beautiful country, and I felt so good. I didn’t have any pain at all, I had a lot of energy. I felt young. Across the path was a fence, and behind the fence were my mother and daddy and my relatives and all my friends who have already died. They were so happy to see me and I was happy to see them, and just before I got to the fence, I was jerked back here. Please don’t let them do that to me again. I want to go back. I’m not afraid. I want to go.”
    We were all dumbfounded. I had only ever heard of one other near-death experience. They weren’t widely written about yet, and the other person I knew who’d had one was my uncle B.F., my daddy’s brother, who said almost the same thing when he was on the operating table having heart surgery. His heart stopped, and he saw his mother, and he was never afraid of dying again after that.
    It was strangely comforting for all of us, what my mother-in-law said. A couple of days later she died again, and this time they let her go. Her death opened up a whole new world for me, if what she said was true, and I do believe it was. Death wasn’t the scary hell and judgment scenario the preachers had always told us about. It was lovely and loving, just as I’d always hoped it would