Steven LaChance Blog

I don’t talk about this very often.

It’s not because I’m trying to keep it private. It’s just one of those things that doesn’t come up in normal conversation, and honestly, I’ve never felt the need to turn it into something bigger than what it was.

I was on the operating table when I died.

Thirty eight seconds.

That doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you’re the one who’s gone, it’s more than enough. Time doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t move the same.

I remember going under. I was still me. I even joked with the doctor. I told him I was an author and if he messed this up I was going to write about it. He laughed. That was the last thing I remember before I went out.

And then I was there.

I didn’t feel myself slipping away. I didn’t feel fear. I just found myself floating in blackness. And I want to say this the right way, because people hear blackness and they think something negative. It wasn’t. It was open. Calm. There was nothing about it that felt wrong.

I felt like I was floating the way a leaf does after it lets go of a branch. Not falling. Just carried. There was a sense of movement, like air moving around me, but it wasn’t wind the way we think of it here. It was just flow.

I wasn’t afraid. Not even a little. I was content. And there was a familiarity to it that I still can’t fully explain. Not like remembering something, just knowing it. Like I had been there before in a way that didn’t need words.

And I knew I had died. Not in a panic way. I wasn’t thinking what just happened. It was more like curiosity. Just a quiet understanding of where I was.

And then I came back.

Not gently.

My spirit slammed back into my body. I felt it. Pain shot through my entire frame. Immediate. Heavy. Loud. Everything all at once after where I had just been.

And the first thought I had was almost funny in the moment. I remember thinking, I now understand why babies cry when they are born. It hurts.

And then the sound started to come in. A heart monitor beeping. Sharp and steady. The breathing machine pushing air in and out. That mechanical rhythm you recognize as soon as you hear it.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the ICU with a breathing tube down my throat, and I remember feeling upset. Not because I had almost died. Because I didn’t get to see my sister who had passed away years before. That was the first thing that hit me. How was it possible I could have gone over to the other side and not see her.

And then I heard a voice. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t overwhelming. It was calm. Clear. Just matter of fact. A calm male voice. Reassuring. You didn’t, because you wouldn’t have come back. You still have work to do.

I’ve never tried to force that into an explanation. I don’t try to prove it and I don’t try to dismiss it. I just leave it where it is, because I know what I experienced.

For a couple of months after that, things felt different. I felt more open than I had before. It’s hard to explain that part, but it was real. Over time that settled, like life tends to do, but it never went all the way back to what it was.

What stayed with me wasn’t what I saw. It was how it felt, because it was the most real I have ever felt in my life. I knew even then I wouldn’t be able to hold onto that feeling exactly the way it was. It would fade a little at the edges. It did, but it never went away.

I don’t fear death after that, and I don’t claim to understand it either. I just know that for a moment everything dropped away, and what was left didn’t feel unknown. It felt familiar.

— Steven A. LaChance