Brush with death informs Junger's standing-room-only City Hall talk (2024)

Sebastian Junger, a longtime war reporter and best-selling author of the Gloucester-based “The Perfect Storm,” wakes up every day with gratitude.

Not for anything specific. But perhaps a gratitude for life having faced death during a rupture of a rare undiagnosed aneurism in a pancreatic artery during the pandemic.

The topic of death did not steer residents away from attending his recent book talk and signing with a standing-room-only crowd at Gloucester City Hall. His latest book, “In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face To Face With The Idea of an Afterlife,” was released in May. This was the third stop on his book tour.

“A lot of people are anxious about death and I like to think people see me as a trusted reporter and wonder what does he have to say — what does he have to say about the big one,” Junger said in an interview. “I don’t have an agenda. I’m not peddling an idea of a heaven. I’m a reporter to my last breath.”

After his talk, he was open to questions that ranged from the nature of insanity for those who have faced death to those who wondered if he was still an atheist.

More than 200 people attended the talk in Kyrouz Auditorium, with some people sitting on the floor around the hall. When the event turned to the book signing, the line wrapped nearly around the interior of the auditorium.

“People want to talk. They have stories to tell and questions they ask me,” Junger said. “Often when I had a book talk for my book ‘War,’ I always stand instead of sit because you never know when someone is going to walk up and share that they lost their son. I stay standing and the same thing happened at this event.”

Many attendees told Junger about their own near death experience or the death of a loved one, from children to parents.

“It was the same feeling when the book ‘War’ came out. But it wasn’t veterans coming to talk. It was just us people — we all go through hard things. I’m amazed how common and prevalent these experiences are,” he said.

“People recall what happened to them or how they watched a parent die or heard the person talking to a dead person that only they can see. It is a mystery out there that we don’t understand. I’m still completely an atheist but it all does make me realize there is a lot that the physicists don’t understand.”

Gloucester’s Charlee Bianchini introduced Junger and highlighted the work he did years ago when he wrote “The Perfect Storm.”

“He did so well that it continues to this day to give an almost mythic significance to our city and its people. Indeed, it feels like yesterday that a 10-year-old version of myself attended his first ever reading here in Gloucester, and asked him advice on how to be a writer,” she recalled.

“In the years since, Junger has seen much of the world that many of us will only hear or read about in stories. Those of us familiar with his work will recall his account of traveling and frequently coming under fire with a unit in Afghanistan in his book ‘War.’ Or, in one essay in ‘Fire,’ traveling through war-torn Sierra Leone and documenting the horrible realities of the diamond trade.”

Junger’s work gives voice to the complexities of being human, said Bianchini.

“In all of his books, and most especially his new work, ‘In My Time of Dying,’ Junger explores the depths of a part of being human any of us can relate to: trying to make some meaning of our lives. This time, it is in his home, among his family on the frontlines inside his physical self, as he suffers and survives a ruptured aneurysm,” she said.

Rockport’s Jamy Madeja found the talk empowering, in part, because Junger brought out a topic not often spoken about outside of religion.

“There are universal needs and uncertainties that everybody can’t avoid having about life and death but they don’t always acknowledge that they’re having them,” she said. “(Junger) brought that right into the room and talked about what it means to be alive and what it means to not be alive — and the connections between these two things. He acknowledged that he didn’t know what to do with that reality.”

For Madeja, a lawyer and law professor, the most interesting take away was Junger’s discussion about the connection between life and death.

“The talk was energizing. It’s so rare to have these conversations and they often happen within the confines of a church or temple when someone is being memorialized in a structured way with an institution,” she said.

Blood and blessings

During his talk, Junger, 62, spoke frankly about the trauma he faced at having survived nearly bleeding out, and the irony that he faced so many close calls covering wars, but yet he would face death at home. He later learned that he was just minutes away from death when he arrived at a hospital an hour later, where soon after in the trauma bay, he saw his dead father, a physicist and atheist, hovering over him.

“I’m not culturally prepped for seeing things that aren’t there and I’m not particularly accepting of them when they show up,” he said. “But there was this black pit and it was exerting this unstoppable gravity and pulling me...I sensed that if you go into the infinitely deep black pit, you are not coming out. I started to get really scared.

“I didn’t know I was dying but I knew something was happening that I couldn’t reverse and suddenly my father appeared above me saying don’t fight it...I was horrified at the idea of joining the dead, and I said to the doctor you have to hurry. You are losing me.”

In essence, Junger said the frontlines had come to him.

“It never occurred to me that something could happen inside of you and you’d be dead by dinner,” he said. “I went to my own frontline of mortality and came back. Did I come back with sacred knowledge or not? I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The question is if you almost die are you seeing the truth? Does the truth bring clarity or make you insane? For some people it is too much to bear.”

Junger knew he needed to talk to someone.

“I had a wicked anxiety disorder and then wicked depression — things I never had experienced in my life,” he said. “My wife, ever passionate and practical, said you’re getting a little hard to live with. and I got help. I needed the counseling and it helped as did the passage of time.”

As to the question of whether the knowledge that comes from a near-death experience is a blessing or curse, Junger said it took two years to answer that question.

During his incessant ruminations, he turned to etymology and found in one instance that “blessing” stems from to consecrate with blood in Anglo-Saxon.

“The idea being there is no blessing without blood or sacrifice, and it is often part of a greater blessing. So maybe in my mind it means there is no wound without a blessing,” he said. “So the answer to the question, of course, is both. If I had to choose one, I’d go mad.”

He recounted with great detail the last crucial attempts to stop the bleeding. The usual procedures failed and he recalled the doctors pondering what to do next in a last-ditch effort before cutting him open to find the source of the bleeding — and it worked.

“I was conscious at the time and in incredible pain,” he recalled.

Ever thankful for the life-saving efforts of the doctors, he readily shares his reflections and new knowledge in this book. He also notes that he is a regular blood donor because without the 10 units of donated blood he received, he would have died. He urges others to do the same.

“You may well save the life of a child, or a parent,” he wrote, “and one day you may need blood yourself.”

Gail McCarthy may be contacted at 978-675-2706, or gmccarthy@northofboston.com.

'; var element = document.getElementById("sub_message"); element.appendChild(subMessage); console.log("Code Loaded!"); } else { var subMessage = document.createElement('div'); subMessage.id = 'sub-message-top'; subMessage.class = 'panel panel-default'; subMessage.style.backgroundColor = '#eee'; subMessage.style.borderRadius = '5px'; subMessage.style.padding = '10px'; subMessage.style.marginTop = '25px'; subMessage.style.marginBottom = '25px'; subMessage.innerHTML = '