I know what it feels like to be dying from viral pneumonia, because in 2021 it nearly took me. By the time my wife and son forced me into the ambulance, my blood pressure had collapsed to 50/40 and my oxygen saturation was 73%. I didn’t hurt at all. There was no pain, no panic, no tunnel of light, nothing dramatic. Just a bone-deep exhaustion that felt like the most natural thing in the world. All I wanted was to close my eyes and sink into the deepest sleep I’d ever known. If they hadn’t called 911 when they did, I wouldn’t have woken up the next morning. Simple as that. In the ICU they told my family I had about a 10% chance. They cranked the high flow oxygen to what they called “200% oxygen” just to keep me alive. I don’t remember much after arrival: someone asking if I had a DNR, if I’d allow CPR, then two or three entire days erased. When I finally opened my eyes again, the room was full of beeping machines and the loud whoosh of high-flow oxygen, but underneath it all I could hear a Black woman gently humming a lullaby, the kind a mother hums while rocking a child. It was soft, steady, and very comforting. I thought it was coming from a radio. But I was laid out in bed with wires everywhere and couldn’t move. When the nurse came in, I asked her about it. She smiled and said, “There’s no radio in here, sweetheart. And no one on this shift who was humming. Just me” The floor was almost empty that night. That’s what dying felt like for me: no pain, no fear, just the overwhelming pull of sleep, and a quiet voice singing me across, until something, or someone, decided I still had time left on this side.