In My Time of Dying (book)

In June 2020, Junger was at home with his family when he felt a "sudden burning" below his sternum, incapacitating him with pain.^[a] When paramedics arrived, Junger almost decided not to go to the hospital after feeling a moment of respite from the pain. He later learned that he was in compensatory shock, which was masking the symptoms of severe blood loss. At the hospital, doctors recognized Junger's dire situation, and they determined that he required surgery to stem an abdominal hemorrhage. During surgery, Junger saw his father floating above him and offering a reassuring presence. Junger later reflected: "He was not so much a vision as a mass of energy configured in a deeply familiar way as my father".^[b] The medical team gave Junger ten units of blood, and the surgery to stop the hemorrhage was successful, despite the low probability of survival.

After recovering, Junger sought to understand his near death experience. He thought of all the details that could have resulted in his death, such as if the ambulance had not been able to reach him, and he grapples with whether the vision of his father was a result of hormones and chemicals released by the brain or something else. Junger, whose father was a physicist, also contemplates the possibility of an afterlife from the perspective of physics. While researching the afterlife, the ambiguity in quantum mechanics leads him to several metaphysical questions. Junger writes: "Our understanding of reality might be as limited as a dog’s understanding of television".^[c]

The book also contains several interludes from the medical drama of his near death experience. In these interludes, Junger reflects on death by discussing his time in combat zones and the death of one of his colleagues, Tim Hetherington. During an interview with The New York Times, Junger was asked what he hoped readers would take away from the book. Junger responded: "Every once in a while I write something that allows people to navigate a little bit better. Maybe this book will bring some comfort".^[2]

Tara Isabella Burton positively reviewed the book for The Wall Street Journal, writing that the "memoir fills us with awe, and more than a little terror".^[3] Burton liked Junger's "visceral" description of the surgery, and how his narrative makes readers contemplate their own mortality. Simon Usborne of The Guardian wrote: "Some of the subatomic stuff is inevitably harder to digest than the hospital drama, but it remains compelling in Junger’s hands."^[4]