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.
Probably when I didn’t sleep for a week on drugs in 2009. I’d had a lot of meth and my heart felt like it was giving out. I remember climbing over balconies really high up, and I thought I was going to die, until I eventually fell asleep in someone’s garden.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 March 2022 source ↗
One of these days I will encounter what Henry James called on his deathbed “the distinguished thing.” I will not be conscious of the moment of passing. In this life I have already been declared dead. It wasn’t so bad. After the first ruptured artery, the doctors thought I was finished. My wife, Chaz, said she sensed that I was still alive and was communicating to her that I wasn’t finished yet. She said our hearts were beating in unison, although my heartbeat couldn’t be discovered. She told the doctors I was alive, they did what doctors do, and here I am, alive.
I got stabbed in the neck with a light tube during a wrestling “death match” two years ago. It was scary. I thought I was dying: your life does flash before your eyes.
On a school trip to Wales when I was 12. My canoe capsized and got stuck upside down next to a rock. I was underwater for about 30 seconds but it felt a lot longer.
When I was three and had meningitis.
The last time I held my children and every time before that. They’ve been my salvation.
Jake Shears, Bryan Adams, Yann Tiersen, Kate Nash, David Hasselhoff, Rita Wilson
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