Snapping Back to Life: My First Wild Moments After Dying

Ryan DeJonghe
Nov 13, 2025
3 min read

Waking up alone after dying is bizarre, terrifying, and—oddly enough—a little bit funny. Here’s what it’s really like on the other side of the beep.

The first thing I noticed wasn’t a warm, mystical tunnel or the gentle hand of a guardian angel. Nope. It was an industrial-strength hum and that antiseptic smell that let you know someone else had recently cleaned the place. Opening my eyes felt like sticking my head in a freezer full of LED lights. Not exactly what the movies promised.

I was back—or at least, that’s what my sluggish brain tried to figure out.

The room: zero frills. Me, a glaring light, and those anxious beeps from somewhere nearby. I tried to move—pointless. My limbs were stage props; my own skin felt like a slightly-too-tight rental tux. That’s when I worked it out: hospital. And, to my horror, nobody else was there.

Enter the rising panic. The elusive call button was nowhere. My voice? It took a coffee break. But I had one trick left.

I snapped my fingers.

Ffip. Hardly a masterpiece.

Ffip. Ffip.

The kind of sound a bored moth might make running into glass. Then, as if on cue, the door squeaked open. A silhouette against the glaring hallway lights. Heart pounding, I clocked the clerical collar—a priest.

Well, I thought, guess it’s round two for last rites. If this was my encore, someone forgot to warn me.

When the Big Questions Kick Down the Door

The priest, as it happened, wasn’t there for the final ceremony. He was just checking in—a cosmic plot twist. Gentle, present, and mercifully not carrying a scythe. His visit opened the emotional floodgates, unleashing a barrage of questions my barely-woken-up brain was in no shape to answer.

So, what really happened here? My memories were a puddle of spilled soup, the details slippery and scattered. I was sure I’d died—there are things you just know deep down—but what led to this rerun, I had no clue.
Why am I back? If there’s a finish line, did someone hit rewind on accident? A bug in the system? Maybe the universe just loves practical jokes.
Now what? What’s my purpose? Surviving death feels like it should come with a pamphlet or, at minimum, a heads-up from above. Was I supposed to do something great, or just update my Facebook status?

These aren’t hypotheticals you noodle on over coffee—they slam in hard, like the thud of shoes dropped in the hallway at 2am.

On High Alert: When Breathing Feels Like a Gamble

The next days—weeks?—were basically a master class in hyperawareness and anxiety. My body, the same one I’d relied on all my life, now seemed ready to betray me at any moment. A weird twinge? I was convinced it was another ticket to the great beyond.

The fear? All-encompassing.

Did those hospital fries flip my switch?
Was it the two beers the night before?
Too much stress? Not enough?
Honestly, I even started worrying I was breathing wrong. (Go ahead, Google it—I did. Turns out hypervigilance is a thing and I was not alone.)

I became my own one-man detective squad: culprit, victim, and witness. If living is supposed to get easier after a brush with death, someone forgot to update my script.

There’s something about seeing death up close that makes every shadow bigger and every decision seem perilous. That blissful ignorance so many talk about? Yeah, it was gone, replaced by an overwhelming, slightly ridiculous, urge to micromanage every single heartbeat.

I didn’t have a clue where to start living again—but I wasn’t about to stop looking.