As a man’s life teeters on the brink of death, he experiences a chilling encounter: a deep, dark pit opened beneath him as his late father appeared above.
But far from feeling comforted, a feeling of horror invaded him when he realized that he was about to die and he told the doctor who was treating him: ‘You have to hurry, because right now you are losing me.’
Sebastian Junger, 62-year-old American journalist and author of The Perfect Storm, shared this harrowing near-death experience in his new book ‘In My Dying Time: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife’, where reveals how this defining moment completely altered the trajectory of his life.
Junger had been enjoying a moment of peace with his wife at a remote cabin in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the summer of 2020, when he was suddenly overcome with grief. Unknown to him, he had suffered a rupture due to an undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery and was bleeding into his own abdomen.
His body had become a time bomb, losing half a liter of blood every 10 or 15 minutes. With 10 pints of blood in a human body, Junger would die within two hours.
On a normal day in the summer of 2020, Sebastian Junger, a 62-year-old American journalist and writer, suffered a rupture due to an undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery.
Junger, known for his work in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, where he narrowly escaped death, as well as his near drowning while exploring extreme weather in ‘The Perfect Storm’, has released a memoir titled ‘In My Time to Die’ ‘.
When Junger finally arrived at the hospital, doctors struggled to save him as he fell in and out of consciousness.
It was then that he experienced a surreal near-death encounter in which he saw his late father above and a “deep, dark pit” below him.
As a doctor attempted to insert a large-gauge needle into his jugular, he described in his book how he noticed “a dark hole beneath me and to my left.”
“The well was of the purest black and so infinitely deep that it had no real depth,” he continued. “He exerted a pull that was slow but unanswerable, and I knew that if he went into the hole, he would never return.”
When he later asked doctors what was happening to him medically at the time, they estimated that he was ten to fifteen minutes away from going into cardiac arrest and dying.
During this time, Jünger also noticed that his father, who had died eight years earlier at the age of 89, was floating above him and slightly to his left.
‘My father exuded tranquility and seemed to invite me to go with him. “He’s fine, there’s nothing to fear,” he seemed to say. ‘Don’t fight it. I will take care of you,’ he recalled in his book.
But his presence horrified Jugner, who said that, while he loved him, “his invitation to join him seemed grotesque.”
“He was dead, I was alive and I wanted nothing to do with him,” she wrote.
That’s when he turned to the doctor and said, ‘Doctor, you have to hurry. You’re losing me. I’m leaving right now’.
“And that was the last thing I remembered for a long time,” he added.
As medical professionals fought to save his life, Junger experienced a surreal encounter: he saw his dead father above and a “deep, dark pit” below him.
But seeing an image of his late father brought no comfort to Jugner, who remembers feeling “horrified” at the moment (Pictured: Tim Hetherington, Daniela Petrova, Sebastian Junger arriving at The National Board of Review 2011)
He also recalled the moment during surgery when a nurse told him, “Try to keep your eyes open so we know you’re still with us,” describing the “old kind of fear” that took over him as his body realized what was happening. happening in a way that his mind didn’t.
When Jünger finally woke up in the ICU, he remembered the moment the nurse told him: “You almost died last night.” In fact, no one can believe you’re alive.
At that moment he described lying there thinking about death for the first time in his life.
“Not death on my terms (the heightened energy of a close situation, the sickening relief of a lucky break), but on its own terms,” he explained.
In the months that followed, Junger describes doubting his memory and wondering if he had made it all up.
But his wife Barbara confirmed that it had been one of the first things she told him when she visited him in the hospital and it was then that she realized how close she had come to losing him.
Incredibly, this encounter was not Junger’s first near-death experience.
In the book he also remembers a time when he almost drowned while surfing among huge waves in winter.
On another occasion, Junger, known for his journalistic work in conflict zones, narrowly avoided death when his Humvee exploded in Afghanistan.
He also describes his struggle after his friend and photographer Tim Hetherington was killed while reporting on the Libyan Civil War.
He said these moments change a person forever, possibly even driving them to the brink of “madness.”
“Almost dying and then returning to the world of the living is not the relief one might hope for,” Junger wrote.
Writer Sebastian Junger (left) and photographer Tim Hetherington (right) during an assignment for Vanity Fair magazine at the ‘Restrepo’ outpost in Afghanistan. Hetherington died while covering the Libyan Civil War, leaving Junger forever changed
In his upcoming memoir, Junger recounts his heartbreaking brush with death, which occurred on June 16, 2020, and his journey of introspection and healing that he undertook thereafter (Junger with his wife in 2007).
Junger is married to his second wife, Barbara, and they have two daughters, who were six months and three years old at the time of the pancreatic artery hemorrhage.
But getting back to normal was a challenging task.
He described how the image of his family waiting excitedly as he walked up the dirt road on his way home from the hospital brought him to tears.
Instead of feeling euphoria, he found himself “beset by a terrible, irrational fear that perhaps he had not survived.”
‘That I was a ghost and my family had no idea I was there. “When I asked Barbara to confirm that I existed, she said yes, but that was exactly what a hallucination would say,” she wrote.
“As I sank deeper into existential paranoia,” he continued, “I began to investigate the psychological effects of almost dying.”
“In literature and history, madness is not an uncommon result,” he wrote.
Her memoir delves into the psychological scars and existential questions that arose after her brush with mortality.
“I left the hospital a little devastated,” he told New York Times. “My body healed quickly, but I ended up with psychological problems that are apparently very common in someone who almost died.”
‘I couldn’t be alone; I couldn’t take a walk in the woods. Everything was evaluated in terms of how long it would take me to get to the emergency room; Like I have an aneurysm now, I’m going to die.”
Her memoir delves into the psychological scars and existential questions that arose after her brush with mortality.
He continued: ‘I I started writing things down in a notebook because that’s precisely what I do with experiences and observations. I went to a therapist for a while because after I stopped being super anxious, I became really depressed. I recognized this sequence from combat trauma, except it was much worse.
From grappling with skepticism toward organized religion to contemplating the mysteries of the universe, Junger explores life, death, and everything in between.
‘I was raised to be skeptical of organized religion. So I just sailed through life without any particular thought about spirituality, and without any particular need for it. I didn’t have a son, thank God, who died of cancer; Nothing happened to me that was so unbearable that it made me need to turn to a higher power. I was blessed. I have had a fortunate life. “It’s not easy, but it’s lucky,” he told the New York Times.
He faced the fragility of existence and navigated a delicate balance between fear and acceptance.
‘Returning to normal life meant learning to forget that we are all going to die and that we can die at any moment. That’s what normal life requires,” he told the New York Times.
“Two nights before I went to the hospital, I dreamed that I had died and that I was looking down on my grieving family.”
‘Because I had that experience, which I still can’t explain, it occurred to me that maybe I had died and the dream was that I was experiencing a post-death reality and that I was a ghost. I walked into this very strange existential drawing by Escher. Am I here or not? At one point I said to my wife, “How do I know I didn’t die?”
‘She said, “You are here, right in front of me. You survived.’ I thought, ‘That’s exactly what a hallucination would say.’ Going back to normal meant stopping thinking like that.’
He finally found peace in the act of being alive and hopes his book provides comfort to others facing similar thoughts.
‘We are all in an emotionally vulnerable place; It is simply part of being in a modern society with all its wonderful benefits. Every now and then I write something that allows people to navigate a little better. Maybe this book will bring you some comfort.’