The Experience of Dying

The accompanying article was written by Dr. MacKenzie while en route from Vancouver to the soldiers’ hospital near Montreal, where he was to undergo a major operation to correct a war wound received in France, from which he had suffered for four years. The article was completed in the hospital, but he was not permitted to make any corrections or finishing touches before undergoing the last experience of dying, from which for him there was to be no return to living. He cannot relate this final experience for us, but, so far as one could judge who was present at his passing, death to him was, as he describes it in this article, ‘a pleasant, sweet release’ from a world of suffering which held out no hope to him of complete restoration to his former vigor, even if the operation were entirely successful.
Baddeck, in Nova Scotia, was his birthplace, as it was the home of another famous scientist; but the early death of his father forced him to leave home and make his own way in life. He worked his way through college, securing both bachelor’s and doctor’s degrees in science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and his friends foretold for him a brilliant career as a geologist. His intense love of country, however, impelled him to sacrifice his own interests and, along with his two brothers, he enlisted for service in the Great War. Both of these brothers were killed, and now the last of them has given his life.
For four years MacKenzie’s wound required daily dressing, and what he endured mentally and physically in consequence of his disability not even his most intimate acquaintances knew. Yet his marvelous courage allowed him to carry on when men of weaker fibre would have given in. Conscientious to the extreme in everything he did, and thinking thaf his wound did not permit him to do his full share of work, he decided to risk his life on the operating table, with the hope of improving his condition. Fate, however, was against him, and he died. His was a strong yet lovable character. He was the salt of the earth, and his passing so early in life is a serious loss to his country, to science, and to his friends.
CHARLES CAMSELL,
Deputy Minister of Mines.
OTTAWA, February 9, 1923

I

I HAVE died several times.

Two of these deaths have been sudden, and these were also entirely unexpected. By five different means, three of them violent, have I come to these deaths; and by one of these different means I have been passed into oblivion five times.

Those with a turn for mathematics will perceive that ‘several’ in my case means nine at least, which leads to the inference that, there is something feline in my tenacity of life, or, perhaps, that in assuming authorship, I am personifying a pussy-cat. I know the latter inference to be untrue, and I trust the former to be equally unfounded, because I am shortly to taste once more of this temporary (I hope) elision of life.

Though I have died a sufficient number of times to require a polygonal monument (if any), I am not yet dead. And before you weary of seemingly futile paradox and withdraw the honor of your attention, let me define dying as it will be considered in this discourse.

By dying, then, I mean the process of passing from that quickened consciousness we term life into the black borderland which, so far as we know, edges eternity. I submit that the act of dying is virtually completed when one’s consciousness of life has ceased; our sentient participation in the business is then at an end; what happens to the mere physical body thereafter is unimportant from the point of view of the mind, for that is already dead. When one’s intelligence has passed into that blank of forgetfulness from which, if one returns, one brings no memory, he is as good as dead — he is dead. Life has left the intellect, and ordinarily its departure is a signal for the beginning of those processes that end in the complete cessation of the complex reactions we call life.

Ordinarily — not always — many have gone into that black borderland, and have returned, and some of them have told us of their going. Some too, of what they found there — or thought they found; for if they had really reached the marches of the Grim Reaper, they would have no recollection of the event, nor of how he guards his hounds.

Now, dying, even in these days of a very comprehensive range of subject for comment, is not ordinarily discussed. One would think that an experience which we must all meet would excite in us a lively interest; but such is not the case. Perhaps its universal inevitability robs it of piquancy; or perhaps the subconscious feeling that it is an experience which, when met, usually ends us, inhibits general interest in what should be a subject of some concern to all. Dying has been investigated of late physiologically, and for centuries we have been terrified by treatment theological — which may be another reason for its unpopularity as a subject over nuts and wine. (This is being written in Quebec.) So far as I know, however, dying, from the point of view of an active die-hard, is a virgin field. With the statistics given above as a basis, I claim the right to turn a few sods. On more than nine separate occasions, in five different, ways and in four countries, I have survived the experience of dying, and, in each instance, had the causes of my losing hold on life operated with just a little more severity, I should have been very dead indeed.

II

My first death occurred in Boston, some fifteen or sixteen years ago. It was unexpected, sudden, violent, and rather sordid.

At that time I was earning a livelihood by a more arduous and less remunerative method than is now the case. It was also less congenial. One of my duties was to sleep in a five-story building otherwise untenanted at night; and through this great empty barracks of a place I had to go, immediately before retiring, and the first thing after rising. To ensure my attention to duty a series of stations had to be visited, from which a magnetic device recorded my presence on a paper dial fastened to a clock-like arrangement in a locked box in the basement. The edifice through which I nightly prowled, pursuing and pursued by fantastic shadows cast by an oil lantern (this was still the pre-Daylo epoch), was separated from the adjoining one by a party wall, through which were doors on every floor. On every floor, doors gave on a freight elevator-shaft immediately adjacent to the party wall, so that the one elevator served the two structures. In the building beyond, which was owned by the same institution that I served, another hireling performed vesper and matutinal rites similar to my own.

The freight elevator was of the usual sort — merely a platform slung to guides, with an overhead cross-beam to which the suspending cables were attached. Control was provided by means of a rope running the length of the elevator-well, by means of which the elevator could be started and stopped at any point, either from the moving platform or from any landing.

In strict accordance with the principle of the conservation of energy, it was the custom of my fellow-menial and myself to ride up on this elevator, and ring our boxes on the way down, we conceiving it easier and quicker to descend than to climb the stairs. Frequently, however, one of us would reach the bottom of the lift only to find the other making a slow, clanking, but effortless ascent by means of it; and on these occasions it was our custom to carry on with our round, regardless of the stairs to be climbed, we being in that happy condition of health where time is of more value than energy. Or, if the platform chanced to have been left at the top, rather than lose the several minutes consumed in its ponderous, rattling descent, we would proceed upward without its aid, and ride down. And, on occasion, other reasons constrained us to walk up and ride down rather than to reverse the procedure.

On one such night I had begun with the box under the basement floor, reached by a trap-door and a short flight of mouldy stairs (at the bottom of which I should never have been surprised to see the dog with the face of a man, or any one of the assorted banshees provided by a Gaelic ancestry), and from there went to the second floor, and so on upward. By the time the climb to the fifth story began, I remember I was cogitating on the intricacies of ‘der, das, dem, den,’‘die, der, den, die,' and other mysteries of Teutonic declensions. With my mind thus occupied on the idiosyncrasies of German grammar, I mechanically rang my highest box, situated close beside the sliding door on the fifth floor opening into the eighty-foot elevator-well. I noted that the door was not quite closed.

At this precise moment I heard my fellow watchman whistling meditatively as he approached (as I thought) through his adjacent building. Youngster-like, I thought to hide in the elevator and give him a surprise by finding me there. Watching over my shoulder the corridor in which I momentarily expected him to appear, I slid open the elevator door and stepped into — oblivion.

Oblivion, however did not last long that time. Basing my opinion on the well-substantiated gravitational formula for the elapsed time of bodies falling in air from rest, I should say that I was dead one second. From the remembrance of opening the door until I became conscious of the horrified voice of my friend, I have no slightest recollection. Recollections crowded thick thereafter, however. Abruptly I realized that, instead of being in the adjacent building, my fellow watchman had been coming up in the lift, and, fortunately for me, had nearly reached the top. My thought, much quicker than it can be set down, was that I was on top of the overhead cross-beam of the elevator with one very painful leg doubled under me, and that the crossbeam, with me on it, would very soon be trying conclusions with the sheaves and pulleys at the top of the shaft if the machinery were not stopped. I called to Jones to stop the elevator, and, with that exaggerated sense of humor that I have frequently noted at time of crises, assured him that I was not dead, and inquired how the devil I had got where I was.

Apart from a very badly bruised shin, there were no ill effects from this odd adventure.

I said above that oblivion lasted about a second, and I base this on the fact that I fell twelve or fifteen feet. Now, a second is a long interval in regard to thought, and much can be apprehended in that space of time. Yet from the opening of the door of the shaft to my realization of Jones’s voice my recollection is an absolute blank. In other words, apparently I was unconscious from the moment I began to fall. If 1 had struck on my head, I should have died then and there, and should have been none the wiser. I believe that, if my fall had been the whole depth of the shaft, I should never have recovered consciousness, and should have died without ever knowing what had happened to me. And the corollary is, that death by falling, about which there seems to lurk a peculiar horror of apprehension, is quick, easy, and painless. I am sure it is if the fall be unexpected; and I believe it is in all cases.

III

The second time I came to my death was on the Queen Charlotte Islands, slightly before the war. Like my first demise, this one also was unexpected, equally sudden and, if anything, more violent; but I do not consider it sordid. Not that it was heroic, but it was a far, far better tiling to do — I mean, way to go—than dropping like a sack of cement in an elevator-well.

On one of these islands a deposit that has been prospected for coal presents some features of special geologic interest. For the purpose of studying these features, I visited one of the tunnels driven into a hillside, one fine July day. With me were two associates, and as we lit our candles in the chilly damp air a few feet inside the portal, one remarked, ‘Here goes to get blown up.'

I carelessly replied that it was a quick way to go, never anticipating how soon I should be put to the test.

We went on slowly, examining the rock-walls in the dim light of the candles, and waiting to ‘get our eyes,’ as coal-miners put it. Presently one of our trio, who was a few steps in advance, called back that the tunnel was blocked by caved-in rock débris. We were then about eighty yards from the portal. I went up to him, and we stood side by side, looking at the heap of broken shale.

Glancing upward, I noted a low passage between the roof and the top of the pile of rocks. I called my companion’s attention to this, and without thinking, he raised his candle to get a better view. There was a point of baleful, bluish flame, and instantly we all realized that a pocket of fire-damp in the roof had been ignited. I remember an urgent thought to get away, and turning: a reverberating rumbling roar and — that was all; no fear, no shock, no pain — nothing. I was not.

As in my other resurrection, a voice was the first thing to reach my consciousness. My third companion, who was a step behind us when the gas was lit, and therefore a step ahead when we turned to escape, was blown clear because of this short distance; but we others were not so fortunate. Again, as in the other case, returning life brought pain and discomfort. I could not lift my head, my breath came with difficulty, and I soon realized that the pair of us were pinned under a mass of broken rock. How long we were unconscious, I do not know — at least, one second, but probably less than a minute.

The subsequent hazards through which our escape was finally made good need not concern us here. I wish only to discuss the act of our dying; for I maintain that to all intents and purposes we were dead; we had tasted all the experience of dying, and if the claws of Death merely raked instead of grasping us, it was only because of the lack of a few cubic feet of gas in the pocket he had filled for us, or because his rocks were too small in the cairn he sought to build over us.

So I judge that sudden and violent death furnishes a most pleasant way out of life. There is none of that horrific thrill of elemental terror with which the approach of death is supposed to be recognized, and of which we occasionally read. For while one lives, one’s thought is concentrated on how to preserve life, — not on how to avoid death, — so that dying does not enter one’s calculations at all.

There is no dying.

IV

My third was a soldier’s death. It overtook me — literally—on the slopes of Dury Hill, in Picardy, on that great day in September, 1918, when we Canadians helped break the Drocourt-Quéant line. It was not unexpected, and, unfortunately, it was lingering rather than sudden; but it made up in violence for any other lack.

The Highland battalion to which I had the honor to belong had done the job laid out for them on that dull raw morning. As usual, they had done it with a finished technique most disconcerting to Jerry Hun; but our losses, alas, were hardly less than his.

When our advance was complete and our gains mopped up, the C. O. sent me back to find some dead ground where we could assemble to continue the advance. Communicating trenches and sheltered ways were clogged with men, living and otherwise; so with two scouts I started overland for the rear. A few bullets were snapping and whimpering near us, and there was a fair amount of shelling, so we ran without haste down the low slope of the hill.

I heard that shell coming, recognized it for a long-distance one, and heard it burst. Heard, too, some of the splinters whining past us. Then I felt a colossal but painless double blow in the back, as if I had been struck with tremendous force by a load of loose hay. The blow lifted me from my feet, spun me around in the air, and I fell (I am proud to recount) facing the enemy.

I remember thinking that if this was a wound, it was a curious sensation, and immediately decided that I was in too exposed a spot for comfort, so I got to my feet and managed to make a score of yards to the shelter of a low bank. There I collapsed, but did not lose consciousness.

One of my companions went on to complete our mission, and the other applied a first field-dressing. Though I did not then know it (and this lack of knowledge doubtless kept me alive), I had been very badly hit by a piece of shell-casing, which had passed almost completely through my chest from back to front. I had had the sensation of two distinct blows, and as there was no external bleeding and no particular pain, I thought that a couple of shrapnel bullets had grazed my ribs and knocked the wind out of me, as I was breathing with great difficulty.

The thought that I might die came to me, only to be instantly rejected. And yet there can be no doubt that I was very near death. I was convinced, however, that I was going to live, though life was rapidly becoming most uncomfortable. Later, it became more so.

During the remainder of that day I lost consciousness several times. As I stated above, I had been very badly hit, and only an extremely tough constitution and a destiny for a less comely end each time brought me back to life. Now it is to be noted that I have no recollection of losing consciousness of life — only of regaining an existence that seemed not worth resuming.

The inference is, again, that the actual dying is about the easiest thing we do.

Consequent on this wound, I have died a number of times. Some of my departures have been lapses into unconsciousness due to weakness, and five have been by the chloroform route. These milder takings-off, like the more strenuous ones, yielded no recollection of the instant or of the event of departure. I was, and then I was not, and only the returning to life is memorable — not the quitting of it.

Even those anticipated endings, where chloroform, and operatingrooms, and Ku-Klux-Klan-like attendants, and various other supposedly terrifying appurtenances were involved, have lacked at the stickingpoint that elemental thrill with which they are popularly credited.

The hours immediately before an operation are not pleasant. One has almost the exact sensations experienced while waiting to go into action, which, in turn, differ no whit from those I used to have at college before a cross-country race in which I was a participant. Once away from the mark, once over the top, or when one is at last on the table, it is all the same — a rather pleasant combination of sensations, focused on the determination to extend every faculty to the utmost to attain the desired end.

But notice — such unpleasantness has nothing to do with dying. One always hopes to live through an action, and no one expects to die in a track meet; yet the anticipatory sensations are the same. But, they are sensations of living, not of dying.

On the table, the last thing you hear is the reassuring, ‘Breathe deeply now — it won’t take a minute’; and the next thing is, ‘I think he’s coming out now’ — this some hours later. Dying does n’t enter at all, consciously or subconsciously; and much less does the delightful wafting into oblivion envisage Death, though it must be his twin brother.

So I submit that the case against dying is proved. The moment of our release brings no fear; no horror; no regret. The thread does not snap; it parts as softly as a spider’s web. And this is true whether it be sudden or slow; unexpected or long-awaited; gentle or violent.

And if you want corroborative evidence listen to William Hunter, the great anatomist. As he lay dying, he said, ‘If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write down how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die.’

Yes, an easy, gentle thing; a pleasant, sweet release. There is no death.

And yet — I do not want to die!