When Erika Hayaski was 13, she chose to write a research paper on the atomic bombing of Japan. After reading John Hersey’s narrative reconstruction Hiroshima, she began to wonder: “Where did those 170,000 dead souls go … the spirits whose bloated corpses clogged the Ota River? Did those people even have souls, and if so what was a soul?” Hayaski explains how her job as a journalist surrounded with stories on death fueled her fascination with death and dying. In particular, she recounts the story about a woman who was swimming when suddenly her body felt engulfed by a force of energy. When she got out of the pool, she saw on a television screen that the World Trade Center had been hit by the September 11, 2007 terrorist attacks. Her daughter worked in that building and the woman felt the surge right about the same time the building was struck. The woman was sure that her daughter’s spirit was saying goodbye. Though Hayasaki believed the woman’s story, being a journalist, she wanted proof. Hayasaki interviewed professors and scientists and gathered scientific studies, research and evidence of NDE included in this article. She also spoke to and eventually met her Uncle Richard who had a Near Death Experience (NDE), interviewed him about his NDE and documented his final days of life.
The research studies and subsequent results are clearly explained, providing numerous possible explanations for some of the sensations that NDE patients experience. One theory for example, attributes the sensation of a bright light being a symptom of lack of oxygen as the body shuts down. Also, the blissful euphoric sensation experienced could be attributed to neuro-transmitters like dopamine that flood the brain in the final moments and cause hallucinations. However, there are some instances where there are no scientific causes offered for the physical impossibilities, as in the case when a patient read the serial number at the top of a hospital ventilator as she hovered above it.
The chapters devoted to Hayasaki’s Uncle Richard reveal his visions and sensations during his NDE in addition to the coincidences in their lives even though they were strangers to one another for most of their lives. Hayasaki’s descriptions of her uncle are poetic and precise: “Tiny red and purple capillaries squiggled around his nose and cheeks like commas and ampersands.” And her observations of his final days are concisely moving and poignant: “Dying. It could be mystical. Mysterious. Life-changing. But there was very little dignity to it.” The chapters jump around a little chronologically between science and Hayasaki’s personal story and timeline with her uncle, however, the writing in each chapter is tight and precisely written.
Though Hayasaki is not able to answer the question “When we die – are we really dead?” conclusively, Hayasaki, in her observations of her Uncle in his final weeks, examines the dignity and quality of life in one’s final days. In addition, Hayasaki wonders about a mysterious attraction to this life as her uncle struggled to keep breathing: “There seemed to be something about this life that he was reluctant to give up, no matter how comforting his near-death experience had been – no matter how many times he told me he was not afraid of dying.”
Dead or Alive is a thought provoking eight chapter piece about Near Death Experiences that makes you re-think life.
Reviewed by Maya Fleischmann for IndieReader.com 2012