Maybe Everyone Needs a Near-Death Experience

It tends to shake things up a bit

Joe was a New York firefighter, putting his life on the line every day he wnet to work. One day he had a nearly fatal heart attack, his life saved by an emergency triple bypass. The doctors told him he had to quit his job or it would kill him. And, they added, you need to start exercising. Reluctantly, Joe started walking. Eventually he started jogging a bit; this morphed into a running habit, which led him to some 5k and 10k races. Two years after his heart attack, Joe ran the New York City marathon. That was 10 years ago, and he has since done the marathon every year. He also trained to be a massage therapist, which is how I met him, and his story has stuck with me.

Death and dying - and the study and discussion thereof - is my vocation. It also happens to be one of my avocations - something I love to do, and I’d do it even if I didn’t get paid for it.

My kind of PSA. Fire station, Manayunk, Pennsylvania

As I was reflecting on my vacation about this death and dying stuff, though, I realized that yes, I love talking about it, but - full transparency here - I believe there’s more. I want to think and talk and write about more than just the nuts and bolts of death planning. The practicalities are really important, and I will keep on reminding you all to get your will or trust done and to pick out songs for your funeral so that someone doesn’t play “My Way” when you absolutely hate that song. I want to be there to help and support and coach you when you get stuck in the planning.

Then I thought about Joe and how his near-death was a catalyst for a total life change. Talking about death means you have to talk about life. I want to cast my net further - reaching out to learn, debate, and share how to live a thoughtful and mindful life, so that death becomes just one aspect of our time here. (Luckily, my deicsion to change things up here was not dependent on a near-death experience.)

Photo by AMIT UIKEY on Unsplash

I also want to open the conversation to others, both in the field of thanatology (the study of death and dying) and those outside - philosophers, coaches, teachers, artists - and share those conversations with you. I’m not really a podcast kind of person, but I want to incorporate others’ ideas into this space.

The more conversations I have with folks about death, the more I am realizing that the conversations necessarily include this thing we call living. When you think about what death means to you, and specifically what YOUR death means to you, it can’t help but open your eyes and your heart to how you are living right now. And I want to honor and encourage and deepen that conversation, too.

I appreciate that you’re all on this journey with me, and I hope that you continue to find things here that inspire you, excite you, annoy you, and make you go “Hmmm.”

And as always, I love the conversations that happen in the comments here, or in the emails you send me. Please keep your thoughts coming - let me know if there’s something you want to learn more about, or some aspect of living or dying that intrigues you, or stories or opinions you want to share.

So don’t be surprised when you see me write about things like this Benham chair, designed by Dr. Henry Arthur Benham for mentally ill patients in England in the late 19th century. It’s in the Glenside Hospital Museum in Bristol, England. The cushion reads: “It was created with patient safety in mind. Assesmbled with wooden dowels, the chair had no sharp corners and was too heavy to throw.” It was good for people who were nervous and fidgety, or who could get easily agitated. It also marked a shift from asylums being simply a place to house people with mental illnesses to being places of treatment where residents could actually get better and return to society.

I’d like one as a timeout chair for myself when things get overwhelming. Wouldn’t you?

Have you had a near-death experience? Or even a huge event that changed how you look at your life? I’d love to hear about it.