Authors: Richard Bullivant
‘What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?’
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ari Hallmark is a remarkable child who tragically lost five members of her family to the April 2011 tornadoes in Arab, Alabama, when she was only six years old. Not only were both her parents killed during the storms but her paternal grandparents, Phillip and Ann, and her baby cousin, Jayden, were also lost. Ari, having also been tossed about in the destruction of the tornado, was very badly hurt herself and is indeed very lucky to be alive today. Julie, Jayden’s twin sister, fortunately also survived the traumatic events of that day.
Dr Lisa Redburn, a life-time educator with a PhD in early childhood curriculum and instruction, worked with Ari in the latter part of 2011 and together they created a book called
To Heaven After the Storm
which explores Ari’s experiences on the day of the tornado and its aftermath. The proceeds from the sale of the book are to go to Treasure Boxes Foundation to help grieving children and orphans deal with the issue of death.
It is prior to Ari’s near-death experience however that I feel that this story should properly start. A few months before the storms ripped through Ari’s close community, she had started to cry at school about a dream she had wherein she
knew
that both her parents were going to die and she wanted to leave school so that she could spend time with them. Ari was severely upset about this dream for nearly two months. Because of the obvious distress that she was experiencing every day, and because there seemed to be no resolution to it, she was seen by a counsellor and a nurse, but to no avail – she was persistent in her grief. Sadly, as it turned out, it would seem that Ari had actually experienced a premonition of her parents’ death which took place only a few months later.
Shane and Jennifer Hallmark tried in vain to comfort their child. They tried everything they could think of to help her forget about her dream but nothing worked as far as Ari was concerned and she continued in her insistence that her parents were going to die. Eventually they
did a deal
with Ari and it was agreed that a meeting was held with the extended family to explain their wishes just in case they were both to unexpectedly die at the same time. Ari was satisfied with this and life returned to normal.
On the 27
th
April 2011 the Hallmark family were aware that the storms were imminent and Shane and Jennifer were preparing the house to safeguard it as best they could against the forthcoming onslaught. Whilst outside securing the chicken houses, Shane noticed that the wind was blowing particularly strongly over his own parents’ house, who on that day were looking after Ari’s twin seventeen month old cousins, so he took the family over there in order that they could all then return back home together. Unfortunately by the time they arrived at Phillip and Ann’s house, they realised that they would have to stay put as the storm had become so severe. They all crammed into a small bathroom in an attempt to give themselves the best protection they could.
The EF-4 tornado hit and all hell broke loose. Shane was holding Ari tightly - so tightly in fact that her ribs were bruised - although in so doing he could well have saved her life. Ari recounted hearing trucks hitting the house, windows smashing, doors flying off and then losing sight of her family. She remembered something knocking her out.
Her next memory was of a white staircase which appeared to be going up to heaven. Ari described seeing a boy angel, her maternal grandfather (who had died some time before), her mother and father, her paternal grandparents, her baby cousin Jayden, closely followed by herself and her own female angel. They all quickly but happily climbed the stairs. Ari explained that somehow she knew that she was going up the stairs to heaven – but she was only there for a visit.
Ari seemed surprised that her daddy wasn’t wearing his glasses, which he normally always had on his nose as his eyesight was very poor, and therefore had to wear spectacles constantly. She also was surprised to find that her father had hair. It transpired that Shane had a condition called alopecia which left him with no facial hair, no eyebrows, lashes or any hair on his head. Interestingly, from the many documented accounts given both by adults and children of NDEs, it would seem it is not unusual for people whom they knew in the earthly realm to have various physical disabilities, however minor, to be all cured when they are seen on ‘the other side’.
When the family arrived at the big white diamond handled doors of heaven there were another two angels standing there as if on guard. On the way up the stairs her family were all wearing their normal garments but Ari noticed that upon reaching the doors, they were suddenly robed in ‘creamy white clothes.’ The doors were opened. She says she remembered her father talking to Jesus and asking him if he could build houses, to which he was told he could. This is actually not such a surprising subject matter as Shane was by trade a house builder and had in fact just recently completed building his own house for the family just ten days before the tornado hit. She also remembered seeing Jesus holding her baby cousin Jayden.
Ari said that when the doors were opened she remembered the light streaming in, a light such as she had never seen before. Ari recounted that she could see gold streets with lights. She also saw some deer and a robin and some trees and flowers, all of which were apparently fairly similar to what she is familiar with in her everyday world.
Her angel then said to her, ‘Let’s go, Ari, we’re going back down.’ And that’s what they did. She explained that she wasn’t sad or happy at returning, she was ‘in between.’
She came round in a field. Ari has spoken of this field ‘that all of us were found in’ and that she was discovered by a man two hundred yards from the house. She tells of this man carrying her to an ambulance and that she could hear but that she could not open her eyes. At this point she remembered passing out. Her words in her book were, ‘It was
worse
than passed out…..I don’t really know
what
to call it.’
She has been told that at some stage her heart probably stopped beating for a minute. Indeed, Ari spent some time in hospital recovering and had many injuries. She had to have about forty staples put in her head, her arm was in a cast and she had seventy stitches running across her back. She was lucky to be alive.
Ari now lives with her grandmother and says that when she grows up she wants to be a nurse like her mother (who was just about to graduate as a nurse when she died).
All things considered, Ari is felt to be doing well. What seems to have sustained her and brought her through this tragedy is the telling of this story, her near-death experience, and which does indeed seem quite remarkable, as remarkable in fact as Ari is herself.
‘Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.’
- David Searls
Benjamin Daniel Breedlove was born on 8 August 1993 and died on Christmas Day 2011 from a heart attack caused through a condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (or HCM). He was eighteen years old.
In a diagnosis of HCM the heart muscle cells become enlarged which results in a thickening of the walls of the heart and which then prevents the heart from functioning properly. Ben’s doctors did not think that he would survive past his early teenage years.
Ben was a young American who had a strong Internet presence and was well known for
Our Advice4 You
channel on YouTube, which he set up with two friends, and which examined various issues that teenagers face as they are growing up. In May 2011 Ben subsequently launched
Breedlove TV
on YouTube, where he continued his theme about dating and relationships. He lived in Texas and had a strong following of teenage fans.
Just before he died Ben created a third channel on YouTube called
TotalRandomness512
. His two part video, T
his Is My Story,
was posted on this channel on 18
th
December in which he spoke at length about his heart condition and how he had lived with it all his life. During the recording he used a series of flash cards to talk about his heart problem and the impact it had on him.
Although he is not audibly speaking on the videos to his audience, these flash cards serve to create an incredibly powerful image – and one, in view of his premature demise a few days later, of great poignancy. The videos went viral and have since had total views of over 12 million.
During the recording Ben explained that he had ‘cheated’ death on three separate occasions, the first being when he was only four years old. He explained that he did not recall a great deal about this particular episode except for the following very memorable experience.
At four years old Ben was in hospital having succumbed to a life-threatening seizure and he had vague memories of two nurses wheeling him down a hall on a stretcher, his mother by his side. He told his mother to look at the big bright light and then he pointed upwards. She replied that she couldn’t see any bright light - there were no lights on in that hall.
Ben said that he was mesmerized by the big light which was so bright he couldn’t make out what it was. He found he could not avert his eyes from the light and during this time he kept smiling with no worries at all, as if nothing mattered. He also recalled how incredibly peaceful everything was. Although Ben was just four years old at the time of this NDE, he retained this ‘vision’ and how wonderful it made him feel, throughout the rest of his life.
Ben fortunately recovered from his first brush with death and his health issues were reasonably calm until around 2007 when his heart problems became more troublesome once more and a decision was therefore made in May 2009 that he needed a pacemaker/defibrillator. The surgery was undertaken and a pacemaker fitted.
In the summer of 2011 was the second time that Ben ‘cheated’ death. He was admitted to hospital to have routine tonsillectomy surgery. As his mother and sister were sitting in the waiting room a chaplain entered and told them that they needed to pray as Ben had gone into cardiac arrest and the medical team were trying to bring him back. Fortunately he survived this further medical trauma. Ben stated:
‘It was a miracle that they brought me back. I was scared to die, but am so glad I didn’t.’
On 6 December 2011 Ben faced death for a third time. He was walking in the hall at school when he began to feel faint. He sat down on a bench and recalled that he must have passed out as the next thing he remembered was when he woke up and found a number of Emergency Medical Services personnel (EMS) around him. At this point Ben said that he couldn’t talk or move. Pads were placed on his chest and when these pads were ‘shocked’, Ben passed out again.
Ben’s heart then stopped beating and for three minutes he wasn’t breathing. Ben said in his video that when people’s bodies die the brain still operates for a little while. Ben heard the EMS say:
‘He’s not breathing, his heart has stopped and he has no pulse.’
Ben thought that this was the end. But then, as he lay unconscious, he found himself in a never ending white room without any walls and he experienced the same feelings of peace and happiness - as he couldn’t stop smiling - that he felt when he had his first NDE when he was four years old.
Ben then told us that he experienced enormous feelings of self-worth and stressed how proud he was of everything he had achieved in his life. As he listened to his favourite song standing by the side of his favourite rapper, Kid Cudi, he was told he had to go back, although he made it very clear on the flash cards that he wanted to stay where he was. So often we hear this from people who have had such experiences, in that they don’t really want to return to their physical form.
Ben finished his recording with the question:
‘Do you believe in Angels or God?’
He then replied on the final flash card with the words:
‘I do.’
A week later, on Christmas Day, Ben Breedlove tragically died from a cardiac arrest at his parents’ home.
On 27
th
December 2011 the news of his demise made world coverage on major media outlets including The Los Angeles Times, American Broadcasting Company, Daily Mail, The Independent, People Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.
On 29
th
December 2011 Ben’s funeral was held in his hometown of Austin in Texas. More than 1,500 people attended the memorial service and it was watched by many more online.
During the service his sister, Ally, spoke to the congregation about the vision that Ben had told her about and the feeling of peace he experienced, which was something so extraordinary that he found himself unable to properly describe it. She also said that her brother told her:
‘God let me feel that peace before I came back so that I would know that heaven is worth it.’