Why a page on dying?

At some point in everyone's life they will have thoughts about their own mortality and either be ready to move onto whatever comes next, or be really scared of the unknown.

I died following on from a motorbike crash and had to be revived. I have clear recollections of that time and I was able to share them with my mother to help to calm her when she was dying with cancer.

It helped my mother to hear what happens next, it may help others.

Why did I die?

In my case, I broke a large number of major bones in my body in a motorbike crash. When large bones break they release the contained yellow marrow into the surrounding tissue. Yellow bone marrow is substantially fat. When the body's circulation pumps this to places it shouldn't be going to, it is likely to cause complications. I'm told this is what happened to me, and it is called "fat embolism syndrome".

According to what I've been able to read about this syndrome since, it usually takes a day or two to manifest. I had the crash at 7:30 in the morning and died late the first night.

The "anti" argument

I've had conversations with various people about my experience and the feedback from some of them is, 'Oh, you would have been in a drug induced stupor from the morphine being pumped into you and what you think happened would have all been a hallucination!'

I remind them that I was in a coma, so pain relief with drugs would not have been required. Their response then becomes, 'Well you were on drugs when you finally came out of the coma weren't you? You still had a drug-induced hallucination and you also messed up the timing of things in your recollections.'

Others tell me that I wouldn't have needed to have morphine being pumped into me as the body produces it's own when it is sufficiently traumatised. They are therefore adamant that what I experienced was a hallucination.

The "pro" argument

I am not at all religious nor into any form of spirituality. I don't believe in things like astral travel or out of body experiences. My thoughts about death prior to this were that once the spark of life has left you, it was all over. Your body would either become a pile of ashes or decompose underground, but either way there was no more "you".

At no point prior to my experience had I read or heard of other people's death or near-death experiences.

Everything I experienced and recollect about being revived had matching bruising to my body.

At no point prior or since has my dying experience been based, built or enhanced by anything else I've heard about anyone else's.

So what's it like?

I was travelling about walking speed toward a wall in the corner of the room. Nothing strange about that, except I was at ceiling height. Perhaps something to normally be alarmed about, I was totally devoid of feeling or emotion.

I was just "there" and taking in what was around me. There was an empty bed below me, curtains to my left. It was not like making a mental checklist, but more like looking at something and pondering it for a while before gradually realising what it was.

I'd just got to recognising what the curtains were when there was a commotion behind me.

I slowly swung around to take in what was happening where all the noises were coming from.

There were quite a number of people fussing around the bed in that corner.

I watched fascinated by the hive of activity, initially unable to take in all that was going on.

Gradually I pieced together that one of the people was pushing up and down on the chest of whoever was in that bed. Twice the crowd backed away to allow an almighty punch to be swung into the chest of whoever was laying there.

Everyone backed away once more and I almost got to see who it was that was laying there as their body convulsed. My line of sight was blocked by the framework that went over the bed.

I moved to get a better line of sight and the huddle resumed around whoever was laying there. The pushing up and down on the chest continued and then everyone backed away once again.

I clearly saw the face of the person who was laying there.

Continued in next column.

A very slow realisation came over me.

I was looking at myself.

At the point of realising who I was looking at, I returned to the vacant body and felt it convulse with electricity once again.

I vaguely recall hearing something like, 'He's back' and thinking something like, 'Sorry to have been so much trouble', before I lapsed back into unconsciousness.