When it comes to notions of life after death, I’m squarely in the large camp of cowards who sit firmly on the fence. My mostly empirical mind tends to conclude that there is almost certainly no afterlife, but I’m not brave enough, like all the fanatically devout atheists who are all the rage these days, to reject the idea completely.
So it was fascinating to read last week about new medical research indicating that there could be some form of awareness after death — at least for some period of time. The doctors behind the study clearly were too afraid of being snickered at by neurologists, cardiologists and especially pathologists in the hospital cafeteria for going so far as to suggest that heaven, nirvana, Valhalla or the happy hunting ground might exist.
As reported in the journal Resuscitation, researchers at the University of Southampton studied 2,060 people at 15 hospitals in Britain, Austria and the U.S. whose hearts stopped. Of the 330 people who lived, about 40 per cent reported awareness while they were clinically dead.
(On a side note, 1,730 of the patients tried to express the view — frustrated that no one could hear them as they floated, screaming, near the ceilings of their hospital rooms — that doctors really ought to spend more time studying how to save people who go into cardiac arrest, but I digress.)
Only 30 of the patients who reported “awareness” after their hearts stopped had classic near-death experiences such as seeing a light or feelings of great love, warmth, security, serenity, levitation or floating out of the body — similar to how I feel after a large glass of rye.
Just seven of the nearly dead could describe aspects of their resuscitations. One man, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph, recounted in great detail what the doctors did over a three-minute period while he was clinically deceased, including describing the various beeps, bings and wheezes of the medical gizmos in the room.
All this brought to mind my late great friend John Jacyna, who died from cancer nearly a decade ago at an inconveniently young age.
A musician and a bit of a science and science-fiction nerd, John’s time in Catholic school had accomplished what often happens to kids sent to Catholic school — he lost all interest in being Catholic. When he found out he was dying, he didn’t, like many people do, race back to his old faith. But he was still pretty frightened about death, even if he believed it only meant non-existence and not an eternity of never again having to buy a bag of Kingsford briquettes if he got a hankering for barbecued flank steak.
A psychiatrist at the cancer clinic suggested that John might get some relief from watching a documentary about people’s near-death experiences, which are almost always describe as bliss.
John asked me to take him to the clinic and watch the film with him.
It was as advertised — six people from different walks of life described similar, happy memories of death, including leaving their bodies, travelling long distance to see families members (and later describing details they shouldn’t have known) and overall feelings of joy. I know it relieved John of some of his anxiety.
But here’s where the story gets weird.
A couple of days after he died, fearful to the end, my wife and I took our then-young sons, John’s wife Alice and their daughter Robin to the Dunbar movie theatre. Just before the film started and after we had settled the kids in with drinks, candy and popcorn, I felt someone very firmly squeeze my left elbow from behind. I turned around, thinking my wife had reached around to get my attention, but she was turned the other way and there was no one behind me.
I must have jammed it between the seat backs, I thought.
After the movie, I told my wife — a criminal lawyer and possibly the most grounded and sensible person I’ve ever known — what had happened and she turned a bit white.
“The same thing happened to me!” she said, as we both felt suddenly a bit creeped out.
Alice then told us that she’d had similar experiences since John’s death. Later, other of his friends and family reported similar “visits.” The consensus opinion was that John was reassuring everyone, who knew how much he feared dying, that he was OK.
Some people will reject all this as nonsense and many scientists will explain it away as simply the group behaviour of grieving people processing a loved one’s passing. I suppose they could be right, but I’ll never forget having my elbow squeezed.
Is there life after death? Who knows. If there is, we’ll all find out in the end. I’m more interested in another question: Is there life before death?
gclark@theprovince.com
twitter.com/ProvinceEdits
Gordon Clark is the editorial pages editor of The Province. His weekly column, Gordzilla in the City, appears in the newspaper on Monday and at various times online, depending on how lazy he’s feeling. He can be reached at gclark@theprovince.com or monitored at twitter.com/ProvinceEdit.
