I Died at Midnight… What I Saw My Husband Doing in Hell Will Haunt You

I died at midnight.

Not figuratively. Not poetically.

My heart stopped beating, my lungs stopped drawing air, and my body lay cold and lifeless on my bed while my seventeen‑year‑old daughter screamed my name.

For nine minutes… I was dead.

And in those nine minutes, I saw something I will never forget.

I saw my husband in hell—still burning, still bound—for breaking our vows.

My name is Aroame Takare. I’m 52 years old, a community health nurse at Wellington Hospital. Or at least, that’s who I was on paper.

In reality, I was something else entirely: a woman who had spent years pretending she was “fine” while quietly rotting from the inside out.

Four years had passed since my husband, Henna, died.

Liver failure. Slow. Ugly. Expected.

We had been married for twenty‑three years, but the last seven of those years were a silent war. No screaming. No thrown plates. Just two people living under the same roof, bleeding inwardly where no one could see.

It started the morning he confessed.

We were in the kitchen. It was a Sunday. He couldn’t look me in the eye. He stared at the tiles, at the table, at anything but me when he said:

“I was unfaithful. Just once.”

Just once.

I believed him because I wanted to. The alternative—that our whole life together was a lie—was too heavy to carry.

So I did what a good Christian wife is supposed to do.

I said, “I forgive you.”

I meant the words when I spoke them.

But forgiveness spoken is not the same as forgiveness lived.

After that day, every time I looked at him, I saw the lie first and the man second. I stopped reaching for his hand. I stopped kissing his forehead when he fell asleep in front of the TV. I stopped asking about his day. We became polite strangers with matching last names.

When he got sick, I took care of him the way I cared for my patients: with competence, with duty, and with distance. I changed his sheets, monitored his meds, cleaned up the mess the disease made of his body. But I did not let him near my heart.

When he finally died, I did everything I was supposed to do. I cried at the funeral. I held our daughter. I accepted condolences. I wore black. I read the right scriptures.

And then…I went back to work.

I buried him.

But I also buried something else: the question I had never dared to ask him.

Did you ever really love me?

Or was I just a vow you failed to keep?

I told myself time would heal the rest. That’s what people say, isn’t it? Time heals all wounds.

They lied.

Grief ignored doesn’t fade. It settles. It sinks into the cracks of your soul. It takes root. It becomes part of you.

And on the night of November 3rd, 2021, that buried wound came calling.

It was a Wednesday. Ordinary. Quiet.

My daughter, Ka, was in her room studying for exams. I made us tea. We sat together in front of the TV without really watching. We weren’t talking much—just two people breathing in the same space.

She went to bed around eleven.

I stayed up a little longer. Folding laundry. Scrolling my phone. Avoiding sleep.

Sleep meant stillness. Stillness meant thinking. And thinking meant remembering. I wanted none of it.

My chest felt heavy, like something was sitting on it. Not enough to panic. Just enough to notice.

“Stress,” I told myself. Long shifts, bad posture, too much coffee. Typical nurse excuses.

I brushed my teeth, set my alarm for six, climbed into bed, turned off the light, closed my eyes—

And then everything stopped.

No slow fade. No tunnel. No white noise.

Just a violent, instantaneous cut to black.

One second, I was breathing.

The next…I wasn’t.

When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in my body.

I was floating above my bed.

I saw myself lying there: chest still, mouth slightly open, skin already paling. My hair splayed across the pillow like I was only sleeping.

Except I wasn’t.

“That can’t be me,” I thought, because I felt fine. I felt light. Calm. Detached. No pain. No fear. Just…awareness.

Then I heard it.

A scream.

“Mom!”

Ka.

She burst into my room, phone in hand, panic in her eyes. She called my name, shook my shoulders, slapped my face. I tried to reach out, to touch her, to tell her I was there. My hand passed through her like smoke.