Dying in A Ditch

by Paul Chattenooga

I died. In a ditch. I was driving my truck and towing a boat in Florida, and I went over a bump in the road. The chain was too taut and the boat flipped up over the trust and landed on top of me, crushing the truck. Then the truck rolled over several times off the highway. I was in and out of consciousness, but I remember coming around and trying to lift myself up, but I had no use of my arms. Everything was broken on the right side—the shoulder, my ribs. There was blood everywhere. A fireman came, and then a helicopter. I don’t remember much—I had a hematoma on the brain—and I stopped breathing for a while. There wasn’t much likelihood I’d survive—I’d lost a lot of blood. The fireman brought me back to life. They told me this after. While I was out I didn’t see a bright light. I didn’t talk to God. I didn’t see anything, but I felt warm, like the warmest bath I would ever have, the most comfortable, peaceful, and content I had ever been in my life. I knew I was dead and I was okay with it. I felt no pain and no regret and no fear and none of the things you think you’ll feel when your time comes. When I woke up, the pain started rushing in. My head was split and my whole body was shattered. And I was furious. I was furious that I was out of the warm bath, back to a life where my body was broken and needed to recover. I had been ready to die, and I don’t know that I’ll be as ready the next time. I hope I am. The strange thing is, that hematoma that almost killed me—that did kill me but not for good—they couldn’t find any evidence of it after a few months. It showed up on the CT scans twice during my rehab. Once you have a hematoma they don’t just disappear. They remain and are often a recurring problem. The doctors said to me, “this just doesn’t happen. They don’t just disappear.” But mine did. I don’t feel all that different, except I’m a lot tougher now. And I’m a lot more careful with decisions I make and what I put my body through.