From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes.
They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped.
And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my
physical body because I was somewhere else.
The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't
anything else to be felt.
I was greeted by people I'd known in the past.
I'm back home again.
Incredibly safe and felt at home.
Welcome to a bonus episode of Roundtrip Death, everybody.
We have a great guest, Mary Jo Wheeler, coming up here in just a second.
But I kind of wanted to preface it with the fact that some NDEs that we talk about are
really grandiose and long and seem to be, you know, would fill a whole book.
Others are short and very sweet and just as important as the ones that are long and, I
don't know, would turn into a great film or something.
So this one is a little bit shorter, but it is wonderful.
And it was a super special experience for Mary Jo.
So Mary Jo, welcome.
Hi.
Thank you for having me.
I'm very excited to share my story.
You're welcome.
It is so good to have you.
Before we jump into your story, tell me, have you talked about this much with very many
people?
So the first person I finally told was my mom.
This was back in 2000, and I would say 15.
She was the first person I told.
And she actually was, her response was, yes.
And I knew she was irritated with it because after it had happened, she had found my wet
clothes on the floor.
And we'll get into that whole thing of how that happened.
But I was just curious, have you told a lot of people or have there been reasons you kept
it a little more to yourself?
I had a hard time processing it for a long time, and it took a while before I started
getting into the spiritual side.
My family was raised Catholic and my fiance's family are Christian.
And so I decided to go with them and to start this church that we moved to this new town
in and was getting to know everyone.
It took about two years of getting to know everyone.
And they had this private class in the church so people can talk about things that happened
to them so that they can have a way of relieving some kind of pressure.
Some people had different problems like addiction or something going on in their lives.
And my topic was to talk about, you know, I understood God and that I believed in God.
And I had personal reasons to believe that and they had asked me why and I said, well,
because it personally happened to me.
And I told them that I almost died and that I was saved by a voice that helped me and
helped me survive.
And I was looked like I was a crazy person, like I was lying.
It makes me want to get emotional because that should be the place that you should be
able to go when you're in trouble or you need to relieve.
Sorry, I cannot believe I'm doing the crying, but it took a lot of toll on me for a little
bit.
And it wasn't until I started getting into YouTube, which is funny, that I started finding
about other things and ions and different groups and then finding different support
people that I was able to start talking about it and that relief of being able to talk about
it without any judgment was absolutely freeing and doing this today is, is immense.
Maybe that's why I'm even crying a little bit because I'm spreading a message of truth
and love.
And if anybody's having a bad day, just know that we're here for a reason.
I don't know what all those entails are as the long stories are, but, you know, I got
to find out firsthand.
I just didn't know how to process it as a kid.
And so I rebelled a little bit with things were going bad.
So you know, there's a lot to process.
All right, let's go back to when you were, you were only five years old when this happened
to you.
Would you tell us where you were living, what kind of conditions you were living in?
And then we'll get into exactly what happened.
Okay.
Well, my mom was a single mom and she had me and my little brother living in a low-income
housing in National City, California.
We lived up the street from an old bowling alley called Plaza Bowl.
It doesn't exist anymore.
It's now a shopping center, but the apartment complex still does exist.
Back in the day in the 70s, there was no fences around pools.
A lot of times I remember apartment signs saying adult only complex, no children allowed
back in the 70s in National City.
So it was no surprise that, you know, this was going to happen about safety, about people
and kids trying to go to a pool that doesn't have a fence and nobody's watching that something
could happen.
That's basically what happened to me.
And were you a good swimmer?
No, not really.
My mother never learned how to swim.
She was afraid of the water.
And even till the day she passed in 79, she never liked the water.
She was a panicker.
And so if we went to the pool, it was to sit at the stairs.
And I really wanted to swim.
And naturally I was a fish growing up.
I just wanted to swim all the time.
So I had this really strong attraction to the pool.
But you didn't know how to swim, did you?
You hadn't had lessons?
No.
No lessons, no lessons at all.
Just the pool side sitting on the stairs and playing right there by the little handle.
That was about it as far as it went.
That's so tempting for a child five years old just wanting to get in that water.
Oh, yeah.
But your mom kept you safe and kept you out of it until one night.
Well, it happened early in the morning.
My mom and my little brother were asleep because obviously it was still like maybe about two
ish or so.
I had gotten up early in the morning and I had this extreme, I don't know what I was
dreaming about or what the case was, but I had this extreme desire to get to that pool.
And so I had downstairs by myself in my apartment and I just went, climbed up the stair or not
the stairs, the couch, and I undid the lock, the chain lock off the top of the door on
the top right.
And I snuck outside.
When I snuck outside, I just ran across our parking lot and then across the way into the
grass and then there's the pool across the way.
And I just got into the stairs, sat onto the stairs, grabbed the wall.
And I was a shimming across the way just around the whole thing because I wanted to see the
deep end.
And this is just crazy, but I wanted to see the deep end.
I wanted to feel that.
And so when I got there and looking down and I'm putting my feet up against the wall and
pushing back and looking around, I let go.
And I just went down to the bottom and kids sink.
We don't because we have a lot of fat.
So we're never really going to be able to sink to the bottom like kids do.
And that's exactly what happened.
I was literally standing at the bottom of the pool and I'm looking up.
You could see the smoothest of the wall.
I could see how it's curving up and I'm looking up around up above me and I'm seeing sparkly,
but that could have been because of the light and the sun because it's early morning.
But I see things shining through.
And then all of a sudden I'm not able to breathe anymore and I'm starting to get ready to panic.
And then all of a sudden I felt this staticky.
I wasn't sure if it was because I was standing at the deep end, but I felt this static, staticky
noises in my head.
And then all of a sudden this voice took over my entire head talking to me underwater.
And I feel something behind me on my left.
It felt really huge.
I'm almost kind of scared of it because I felt like it was something and I didn't know
what to think.
But I remember feeling like it had bent down over me to kind of comfort me and he had his
right hand on my shoulder and he was leaning over to me to comfort and the voice says to
me, okay, Mary Jo, this is what I need you to do for me.
Can you jump for me?
And without hesitation, I just agreed with it and I started jumping.
And when I was with this being, I felt no more pain.
I wasn't dying for air.
I wasn't cold because the water was freezing.
I don't know anything about time or what had happened in that moment, in that time at
place.
But I was with this being and I was jumping and doing what it told me.
And I could feel this swishing happening as I'm jumping.
I would feel this swishing and the voice was male, but yet it transcended with a female
voice as well.
I don't know if it was to make me calm or if this is the way it spoke.
I think there's a couple of stories that I will talk about later that kind of resonated
with me, but I kept telling me to jump and I would do what it said.
And for some reason I knew that it was telling me I'm going over, I'm taking you across the
shallow and I kind of automatically bosses.
That's where I was going.
And as I was jumping with it, the sooner or the closer we got to the shallow side, my
head would pop out of water.
And right before I had my head pop, that's when the urge was coming that I needed to
breathe.
Like that's when all the pain was coming through so that I would jump and then my head hit
for air for just a second.
I got a quick breath before I went back under and I kept jumping.
And that's basically by the time I got to the stairs, I was jumping and getting air,
you know, underwater until I got to the stairs.
And by the time I got to the stairs, the voice was very stern, like a father.
And this said to me, now, Mary Jo, don't ever do this again.
Now you go home.
And that was it.
I ran.
I didn't look back.
Maybe I could have saw something.
I didn't want to.
Just a little girl.
I think the voice did to scare me because I was in trouble because they knew I had snuck
out of the house.
And my mother didn't know how to swim.
My mother was asleep with my brother.
So if she would have found me passed away, she would have probably drowned herself trying
to go and get me.
So there's like all of this knowledge that's coming in through the years that I was trying
to process.
So that's basically it.
That's my whole story.
But the knowing of those things at that young age was like a lesson learned, basically.
Okay.
I feel like I need to take a breath.
I've been holding my breath.
Yeah.
Kind of been holding my breath through this.
Oh, wow.
Parents' worst nightmare.
Do you remember feeling fear and you were scared or?
I was scared because the voice felt like powerful.
I don't know how to explain it, but I just remember when I heard this, the whole voice
like taking over my head, like I just interrupted the day, something going on.
And the voice was so stern.
It scared me a little bit.
I didn't know if it was the scare because it felt like a ball powerful or if it felt,
but I was scared of it for a second.
And I think maybe the female voice intertwining was to keep him calm.
And so that's all I really can say.
I just...
That makes sense.
And maybe it needed to be firm enough that you didn't try that again.
Didn't think that was fun.
Oh, yeah.
I was in trouble with the father for sure.
I really felt that because it's just as a little girl, you're filling all of these overwhelming
feelings that I'm learning a lesson at a young age of knowing all of the things that
could have happened.
Did you say that you felt something on your shoulder?
You said you felt like someone was on the right hand side.
Right.
So if I was facing my back and the person's behind me on my left, it was like they were
comforting me, comforting me, touching my shoulder, telling me, okay, Mary Jo, this is what we're
going to do.
Like just basically taking over is what I felt.
But you still had to do your part and do the jumping that you were told to do.
I had to do the free will of jumping.
I think it had a lot to do with that.
I mean, it wasn't like I was trying to commit suicide or I literally was just trying to
learn something.
I really wanted to go swimming.
That's all I really wanted to do.
And then the innocence of that and then the fact that I could have just killed myself
by going in the water without your parents or somebody there.
I mean, I literally was in that pool all by myself early in the morning.
So it's just very lucky, very blessed, very lucky.
It's a terrifying thought.
It was hard to process.
I remember even thinking about aliens for a while, just not knowing how to process this
or when my mother confronted me when I was a little girl about the wet clothes.
I could imagine, you know, that I was scared to even tell her what happened.
I mean, I knew I was in trouble.
I knew it, but...
Yeah.
Did you make something up?
She dropped it.
She just kind of got disgusted at me because she knew I had went to the pool.
I think my mom was just going through such a hard time that, you know, everything's okay.
I'm just, I'm going to move on with what I was doing kind of thing.
But it wasn't until I got older and, you know, here I am as a grown woman, a grandmother
myself and having this heart to heart talk with my mom just finally coming clean about
it.
Yeah.
I think that's that.
When did you have this heart to heart with your mom?
My mom had been sick for a while and I know she was really stressing on a lot of things
before she had passed away.
She just passed away April 23, 2023.
So we've been kind of, you know, getting ready for things.
And I just wanted to comfort my mom, but I also wanted to come clean, I guess, to tell
her what had happened back then.
And I just wanted to know if she remembered about the wet clothes and from my mom to be
so disgusted because yes, I remember, you know, just like trying to tell her, well, something
happened and I need to tell you what happened.
And that embracement, that love that my mom gave me to say that she believed me and just
saying that you give me comfort.
And I said, yes, God's real.
And she goes, I know he is.
And I said, he's very real and there's the life after death.
And that meant a lot that I got to tell her that because she died about two years later.
So she had a really bad stroke and she was getting dementia.
She was starting to lose her mobility of talking and stuff.
So everything happens for a reason.
It really does.
And just having that moment with her and then I ended going to visit her one last time and
I had her with me for three nights and we slept in the same bed and I just comforted
my mom.
And then I got the call later on after that that she had passed away.
So it was important.
It was very important to tell her that if anything.
I tried the church because I thought, OK, you know, I'm ready for this.
I'm ready to give my life to whatever it takes because I don't know.
I hear stories, you know, it's not like that.
These are manmade religions.
But I just really felt in my heart of hearts like I'm ready to give my life to God and
any work that I do is in his name always.
And that's just how I've been ever since that happened.
But the church thing kind of popped my bubble on that aspect to where it kind of shut me
down for a second.
I'm trying to get my voice back.
Tell me more about that.
Were you talking to just another member of the congregation or to some kind of a minister
pastor?
This is such an odd situation.
So the lady that runs the church, she's also a realtor and she's this and she's that.
And so it was really kind of awkward as it was kind of trying to feel comfortable to
talk to them.
And I waited a couple of years before I really came out.
So I did three years, three and a half years of Bible study with them.
But I came out about on the third year I had came out to talk about it because I thought,
you know, we've had fellowship, we've been doing things together and, you know, going
through this journey together.
So I was putting my heart of heart out there when I went to this class where we're all
talking, you know, and bringing out things so that way we can mend and move on.
And so mine was very genuine.
I have never, I think what hurt me the most was they were looking at me like I'm some
fool.
And I was just, I think that was like a dagger.
I felt so betrayed and like they're looking me like, yeah, right, lady, now you're just
doing this or you're just making this up.
And I just thought, wow, I said, you know what?
And I remember looking at them going, I swear on the souls of my very grandchildren that
when I'm telling you is not a lie, I remember even saying that because I felt so defensive.
Like you're looking at me like I'm a liar.
And I just, I was just going away.
And so I just stayed quiet talking to them for a little bit and I can tell that attitudes
were changing the, you know, the demeanor, a lot of gossiping starting to happen and
kind of being shunned away from the side a little bit.
And there was this one lady that came into a Bible study after that and she says, my
husband had a heart attack and he said he had a near death experience named Susie.
And I wanted to say, Hey, I had believed him in home on it.
And I got nudged like shush, like you cannot talk about this in church.
It's inappropriate.
I'm thinking, wow.
So then I just lost all interest after that.
I literally was so disgusted and you know, it just kind of felt like the people you were
trying to make friends.
I didn't even care if we were friends anymore.
I just, I didn't care if I ever saw them again.
It was just like, they, they took something so genuine for me that I just really, I just
don't even want to talk to them.
If I see men in store, I go the other way.
I don't know.
It's just, it changed something in me and I'm still trying to process that as well.
So.
I don't want to tell any ministers, pastors how to do their job, but I'm going to throw
in a butt here.
There's nothing wrong with listening.
Just listen.
And if someone really believes something happened to them, even if it doesn't jive with your
faith exactly, it's okay to acknowledge it and to listen to them and let them know that
you love them and, and it's okay to tell them, hey, I don't understand this.
Yeah.
Right.
Versus telling them that it's wrong and what happened to them didn't happen.
It really takes away from someone and I, I really think that it's really important to
listen to people.
You know, we hear a lot of stories all the time and I, I took my time.
I let, I dove into Ion's website.
I literally dove into there and read so many testimonies and, you know, looking up people
on YouTube and getting to see and trying to be friends with these people on Facebook because
I feel like I don't feel like I'm like, I don't belong here.
It just feels like I'm not, I'm different from everybody else.
But when I found these new people in my life that have had near death experiences, that
sense of belonging, that's a very unique feeling.
And just to have that little community of people that even if you don't talk on a daily
basis, just that little connection means so much.
It really does make a difference.
So I think what you're doing is really important and it's a message and I'm willing to take
this on regardless of what people think or the comments that might come into play about
what I'm saying.
It's coming from a genuine heart place and I just really want people to know and these
days that we are in that just take comfort in knowing that there is life after death
and that we do move on and that there's more to what we know and that they should really
probably try to look into themselves and maybe try to make some changes.
And I don't think that's in conflict with any religion that I know of.
No, no.
The fact that there is life after death.
There is a God.
Okay.
Yeah.
And if it puts it all into perspective, you really want to start doing good.
So I changed what I used to do for a living and now I take care of seniors in a senior
park and I just had a big barbecue last just over the weekend, feeding 74 people.
So it just kind of changes your life and all I want to do is just continue on this path
until my end of days and I'm fine with that.
I'm just trying to find my way through this.
I'm trying to look into meditation right now because I feel like I need to find a special
place to do that.
So that's the next thing I'm going to start trying to practice myself is some meditations
and stuff.
On this same line of the advice that I just didn't give to religious leaders.
Yeah.
How about for those people and especially for parents?
If something like this happens to your child or a small or a child that you know that has
been through something like this and is willing to open up and tell you, how should they deal
with it?
What should they say to this child?
What would have been good for you way back when you were five?
If my mom went not a brushed off the fact that there was wet clothes and the fact that
it was early in the morning and the fact that I went outside at the house, unlocked the
door and went outside, I really think she should have dove in there more and asked me
some questions because I know I would have told her.
I would have said, well, I got saved by the voice.
I would have told her what had happened.
I would have been completely honest with my mom and just having even if it was 48 years
later that I'm telling my mom the story, she asked questions and she asked me, well, did
you even, she's asking me questions like, well, what were you doing?
Were you in a lot of pain?
What was happening?
And I said, well, at first, yes, I wasn't in a lot of pain because I was needing to desperately
breathe air.
And I said, I was feeling like I was saying I was giving up kind of thing like, okay,
and being a little girl and realizing you're going to die, that was kind of a different
story too.
I think just having comfort and love to your child, let them talk about it.
I don't necessarily think to ever recommend taking them to a priest or anyone to talk
about that, but just the love and comfort of a family member to talk to and maybe find
them resources for near death experiences because I and they do have a place about children's
death.
So that's where I placed my story to read other children's experiences of death and
near death experiences.
And so I think I would recommend people look into those sources for sure.
Well, Mary Joy, I appreciate you being on with us today.
I know it's still not easy to talk about.
I hope you found this a place that is safe and trusting and that you can talk and that
it helps to talk about it.
It really does, Eric.
And you're the first person that I've done this story to tell you my story.
And I cannot tell you how thankful I am to have met you, Eric, and I am grateful that
you are taking the time to listen to me because it means the world to me.
And I know that God will shine on you too for taking the time to do this for people.
It means a lot.
It really does.
Oh, you are so sweet.
Anything last thing that you'd like to say to everybody?
Just keep doing good.
Keep doing good to others.
Try to show love.
That's what God's all about is love.
And if we could just take the time to stop being so angry and letting politics and everything
else get in the way, we need to mend.
We need to love each other and we need to find a way to respect each other.
That's what I would say.
Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast.
If you've had a roundtrip test experience, we would love to hear from you.
Send an email to eric at roundtriptest.com.
Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.