Most of us have heard that in the moments before our death, our lives flash before our eyes. What I didn’t expect is the slow march of memories that pop randomly into my mind when that death experience doesn’t appear to be imminent. There’s no flashing involved here. It’s more like a flow. These upstart images don’t even require a trigger. They just bubble up from the depths of whichever storage unit my brain has stashed them, arriving when least expected, coming up for air after years and years of dormancy.
Examples of recent memory-visits include vivid scenes from an operetta I did in sixth grade (including reliving my solos), embarrassment over mean moments from decades ago (involving people I haven’t seen since), walking through a long-shuttered hardware store I rarely shopped but now suddenly miss. These events don’t seem relevant to the life I live now.
It’s fair to say that I overthink just about everything, and not always in the most positive light. This explains my initial knee-jerk explanations for why these small moments in time keep popping up now:
I’m gonna die! Well, yes. You are. We all are. But most likely not tomorrow.
It’s the dementia coming for me! Possibly, but everything else seems copacetic for now, so why go there?
There’s something I need to fix before I leave this planet! Safe bet. There’s always something in my life I could have done better, and hindsight is really good at pointing out how badly I mishandled a particular situation. So, maybe this is a chance to review and repair. But also maybe there’s more to it than just making me feel bad.
One of the earliest documentations of that life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing comes from Francis Beaufort, a British naval officer who nearly drowned in 1790. He wrote that in the moments before death, every event from his life sped rapidly across his mind. Later stories from other near-death survivors supported his account.
Finally, a neurological study published in 2023 added a scientific element to this phenomenon. In this study, researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed EEG and ECG readings of terminal patients who had been taken off life support. When these patients transitioned into cardiac arrest, two of the four exhibited a surge in gamma wave activity at the back of the brain, a region traditionally associated with processing memory. Something was happening.
Science is also catching up with explanations for the cavalcade of memories that surface unbidden in our minds. As we grow older, our brains juggle fewer professional demands and family distractions. With less mental clutter, memory networks deep in our brains can more easily access our consciousness, giving us a chance to recall previously buried events in our lives.
Lives deserve examination. My general belief is that if an image keeps showing up, it wants to tell me something. It’s offering an opportunity to examine events a little more closely, to discover if there are any parts in them that require healing. (I’d certainly rather determine that now than during that last, very final life-review.) But there may be nothing wrong with just enjoying this personal version of This Is Your Life. I built it, after all. There are parts I’m proud of. Maybe it’s okay to occasionally sit back and remember without angst.
In her last days, my mother saw my father (by then decades dead) and a number of friends and family from her distant past in her room at her old-age residence. I’ve never seen reason to doubt what she saw.
So different and really beautiful writing. We are all going deeper
Thank you. It seems to me that if certain aspects of life don’t make us wonder, we haven’t been paying attention.
Robert, I can’t imagine doubting this. Allowing ourselves to witness and believe is a gift.