In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger review – from here to eternity

The veteran war reporter’s near-death experience during a vascular emergency forms the basis of a philosophically ambitious and questioning memoir

For what it’s worth, the week before my mother died, I was talking with a Catalan friend about afterlife. There’s no such thing, she insisted, and I posited that her kind of rationalist atheism was largely invented by white people for white people and would make little sense to most of the poor world. We both have a stake in Mexico: especially there, I argued, where almost everyone believes in some kind of “other side”. Well, not our mutual Mexican friend Lydia, retorted the Catalan; she’s a sensible woman, she’d be with me on this.

The morning after my mother died, I received a text out of the blue from Lydia: “Hola Ed, ¿cómo estás? How is your mum?” I called her immediately: “What do you know, Lydia?” “How is your mum?” she repeated, then: “Oh my God!” after I updated her, and: “But I had a dream about your mum last night. She came into my bedroom, sat on my bed and said: ‘Please look after Ed.’”

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