The house sits at the foot of a spring-green mountain, painted over with long cascading strokes of darker green, giving the impression of a verdant and peaceful setting. Contrast this to the brown ridge where the figure is sitting, huddled in a long sleeve jacket, hands tucked into pockets. The ridge is barren except for a single tree that is mostly bare branches with sparse pale-pink leaves.

Matthew Wong was a rising young painter who died of suicide on October 2, 2019. In a moving obituary by the New York Times, his mother explained that Mr. Wong “was on the autism spectrum, had Tourette’s syndrome and had grappled with depression since childhood.” This helps to explain the sense of isolation and longing in the painting, depicted by the solitary figure on a barren ridge, looking back at a house in lush green surroundings. The figure also appears to be physically cold, wrapped in long sleeve coat, hands tucked in pockets, with no skin showing, but is sadly separated from shelter by an icy white distance. This dynamic, amidst a landscape of majestic mountain rising into star-crowded sky, gives a sense of melancholy beauty and loneliness.

The title of the painting, “See you on the Other Side,” can be interpreted in numerous ways. Mr. Wong is known for incorporating mythical elements into his work, so is this the beginning of the hero’s journey? If the tree in the foreground is interpreted as being laden with pale pink flower buds, there is a sense of hope and promise that the figure is leaving home and will return triumphant on the other side. But the tree can also be seen as a representation of fall transitioning into winter, hanging onto a few withered leaves, as the last bright red autumnal leaf blows away. Is the figure heading away from the verdant house and mountain into winter, the season that classically symbolizes death? Does the other side refer to an afterlife? A third interpretation to consider is that the figure is not leaving the house, but actually trying to get there. In this case, on the other side would refer to crossing the vast white expanse where no path is marked and no help is in sight.

View the painting at Museum of Fine Arts Boston ➔

Matthew Wong’s Biography: www.matthewwongfoundation.org/biography
A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database.
Web image from www.matthewwongfoundation.org/

Junger’s memoir, In My Time of Dying, begins with a vivid account of that potentially fatal event. An aneurysm of a mid-sized artery in his pancreas had burst, causing unchecked internal bleeding. At the hospital, Junger slipped into hypotension, hypothermia, and semi-consciousness before surgical repair, which gave him a last minute surgical “save.”  

However, the main focus of Junger’s memoir is his experience of coming “face-to-face with an afterlife.” In the hospital, his dead father appeared to him. His father “exuded reassurance and seemed to be inviting me to go with him.” (p. 37) While this was happening, Junger recalls being awake and speaking to a doctor. Much that follows is a sustained reflection on the meaning of near-death experiences, drawing on the published literature, anecdotal accounts, as well as his own encounter with dying. 

He recounts the story of Tyler Carroll, a combat medic in Afghanistan, who was critically wounded and, as he was near death, “his whole life presented itself to him simultaneously and in great detail, as if twenty-one years of experience could exist outside linear time.” (p. 80) This so-called “life review,” is a common feature of such experiences, as well as encountering deceased loved ones, hovering outside the body, moving through a tunnel of light, and “being filled with love and bliss.” (p. 82) Junger is particularly impressed with the feelings of universal unity, often followed by a profound change in patients’ perspectives on the meaning of life. In the bibliography, he cites dozens of studies documenting the prevalence and characteristics of such phenomena.  

The author was initially skeptical, “Was I blessed by special knowledge or cursed by it?” (p. 93) He first considers the view of most neuroscientists that near-death experiences are hallucinations created by the dying brain, “The overwhelming likelihood is that our sense of another reality is just a comforting illusion that helps us live our lives.” (p. 118) He then considers the minority report, i.e. well-structured visions and thought processes, along with specific memories of external events (e.g. happenings in the room) raise a number of perplexing questions about the functioning of an oxygen-starved brain.  

We have absolutely no idea how the interior world of subjectivity arises from electrical impulses in the brain. Subjectivity exists, although nothing we know about the most basic components of the universe as we know it—quarks, electrons, waves, fields—permits it. Consequently, the belief that further research on the brain itself will yield a key to consciousness must be mistaken. Junger sums up the situation, “Our understanding of reality might be as limited as a dog’s understanding of television.” (p. 118)  

Junger points out that reality at the deepest level (i.e. the quantum world) is full of paradoxes and seeming impossibilities. It fails to answer many questions about the universe, in addition to the origin of mental phenomena. Consequently, he provisionally accepts the philosophical theory of panpsychism, i.e. “consciousness is woven into the very structure of matter” (p. 136) In other words, every component (e.g. quarks, fields) of the universe has a mental aspect, as well as a physical one. (I might interject here that panpsychism is not a prevalent theory among philosophers of mind, because they believe it raises more problems than it solves.) Given this framework, Sebastian Junger concludes that human consciousness might continue after death as part of a universal consciousness. From the text, I don’t think he believes this afterlife would necessarily retain a sense of individual identity.  

My Time of Dying is a thoughtful reflection on the meaning of life from a man who has experienced a close encounter with death. Junger has created a compelling narrative, making his memoir worth reading whether you believe near-death psychic phenomena point the way toward an afterlife, or think they are hallucinations generated by the dying brain.  

1. Van Lommel P, R. van Wees, V. Meyers, and I Elfferich. Near Death Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands. Lancet 358 (2001): 2039=2045 

2. Parnia S. and P. Fenwick. Near Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest: Visions of a Dying Brain or Visions of a New Science. Resuscitation 52, no. 1 (2002): 5-11 

In My Time of Dying
Sebastian Junger
New York, Simon & Shuster, 2024, 162 pp.
http://www.sebastianjunger.com/in-my-time-of-dying 
Web photo byu Sebastien Gabriel