Last year when I had a pulmonary embolism – it was a very scary time.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 5 October 2024 source ↗
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.
Others on this question
View all 209 →
Desmond Tutu
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
And actually now having had the advantage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and being able to look at some of the records of what the apartheid government was doing, the thing that is surprising to me is why so many of us survived. I mean, how is it that they did not assassinate more of us?
Jonnie Peacock
British athlete
When I was five and the doctors walked in and said to my mum: “I am not sure if you will be taking him home.”
Paapa Essiedu
British actor
In 2016, the moment my agent rang me to tell me I’d got the part of Hamlet for the RSC. While I was on the phone, I looked to my left and turned to the right, and a bus whizzed by and the wing mirror was so close to me that it knocked my hat off.
Laurence Fox
English actor and activist
A motorbike crash. I broke my shoulder and ribs and was so scared I didn’t ride for two years.
More from Marina Abramović
View profile →Twenty-one grams of energy goes into the universe.
Eternal happiness.
My difficulty to forgive.
That my nose and chin will touch.
To be eaten by a shark.
To have more time.
More on death & what remains
- How would you want people to remember you? 213 answers
- What song would you want played at your funeral? 178 answers
- If you had only one day left, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid? 54 answers
- What do you believe happens when we die? 50 answers
- What would you most want to leave your children? 44 answers
- What kind of death would you consider a good one? 43 answers
Also answered this
Zandra Rhodes, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Joss Stone, Jason Donovan, Pauline Black, Shakin' Stevens
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All death & what remains questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject