The question
How close have you come to dying?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
About 40 years ago I drove off an embankment and tumbled down a huge hill. I was standing in the field with my car smashed like a can, saying, “Am I dead?” because I had seen myself dead in the car. Then someone said, “Are you OK?” and I didn’t have a scratch. I believe it was an angel experience.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 August 2021 source ↗
When I was young, I was pretty reckless – my 20s were quite hedonistic. I don’t know whether I’ve been close to death, but I may have been without realising.
Where do I begin? There have been a lot.
Falling down a mine shaft in New Mexico while filming.
So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.
A really bad film for no money: the director had no idea what he was doing and I was wondering: why am I here?
People who have ghosted me for my politics.
I would have skipped the time my daughter was nine to 13, when I was in a toxic relationship.
A ring I bought at Reinstein Ross for myself after a big break-up. It was kind of shallow.
I am trying to find a little happiness at least once a day, so this morning.
A ballet dancer, and for a while I wanted to teach children with Down’s syndrome.
Sofia Helin, David Arquette, Helen George, Charles Dance, Ed Harris, Julian Sands
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