For several months I have been working on depicting my near-death experience, and it is titled "Through The Tunnel" (c). I have been drawing images of Saint Michael, faces in graphite, faces in crayon, my view of my tunnel at the moment I almost died, and pears.

Going through my paintings over the last 30 plus years, pears have been a common subject when I am expressing emotion.

A well-known meteorologist helped me figure out the date of the storm that caused the lightning which had hit me and caused my near-death experience.  And my mother died.

I mention my mother because she died after I got hit by lightning, and although I am well-learned in religious belief and in the aspect of God, I have no feeling whatsoever as to where my mother is.

Right now, I am missing my mother, seeing my own tunnel, seemingly stopped in time on May 16, 2012, the date my mother died, and knowing I have to draw.

My doctor knows that I used to "hear" color instead of seeing it.  I had told him that after I got hit by lightning, color hurts.  It hurts- hurts my eyes, hurts my brain.  I had been a botanical artist, but also a colorist.  I think I now "see" as an artist, or rather in my case, "hear" in black and white or gray.  The tunnel I saw after I got hit was gray.  The lightning hit me on the right side of the head, the creative side of the brain.  My forehead and the right side of my face were damaged, including the major facial nerve on that side.

So, me, a Fine Artist, a Colorist, gets zapped, and wham, everything is gray.  It's been six years since I got hit by lightning. I've tried many ways to heal my sense of color, and I have gone through every medium that I had worked in previously in the past, and have found myself back at pencil, at graphite.