Death & what remains

How close have you come to death?

56 answers answered between 2003 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A

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The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

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Diana Athill Editor and memoirist
So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.

Recorded The Guardian, 23 September 2014 source ↗

Ram Dass Spiritual teacher and author
I was close to death, and I didn't rush into my spirit. I spent the time in the hospital just looking at the pipes on the ceiling. ... I failed because this was a trauma, a trauma, and I'm not reacting to it spiritually.

Recorded Ross Simonini, The Believer, issue 115, by Skype from Hawaii, 20 November 2017 source ↗

Jon Snow
When interviewing Idi Amin of Uganda in 1975, he shouted: “We have ways of dealing with people like you.”

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 March 2024 source ↗

Pauline Black
I fell asleep in a room that had an oil heater and it filled with carbon monoxide and, if it hadn’t been for my husband, Terry, I would have died.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 April 2025 source ↗

Roger McGough
A picnic on the beach at Seaforth during the war. Somehow I managed to wriggle through a barbed-wire fence and run across a minefield. My teenage aunt Kat bravely followed suit and rescued me.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 January 2026 source ↗

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