The actor Christopher Reeve in 1985.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of you may be at least vaguely familiar with the painfully sad story of the actor Christopher Reeve (1952-2004), a talented athlete who studied at Cornell University and at the Juilliard School, attained star status in the title role of the Superman<\/em> films of 1978-1987, and then, in late May 1995,\u00a0was severely injured in an equestrian accident that left him a quadriplegic at the age of not quite forty-three. \u00a0(He responded with remarkable courage, but he was just fifty-two when he died.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the sad story isn\u2019t limited to Christopher Reeve himself. \u00a0His wife, Dana, herself an actress and singer who was nearly a decade younger than Reeve, faithfully cared for him after his devastating injury. \u00a0After his death, she assumed the chairmanship of what was, by then, called The Christopher Reeve Foundation. \u00a0It\u2019s a\u00a0charitable organization that is\u00a0dedicated to finding treatments and cures for\u00a0paralysis\u00a0caused by spinal cord injury and other neurological disorders and, in the meantime, to improving the quality of life for people suffering from such disabilities. \u00a0However, in August 2005, Dana, who had never smoked, was diagnosed with lung cancer. \u00a0She died in early March of 2006, seventeen months after her husband, at the age of forty-four. \u00a0In 2007, on the first anniversary of Dana Reeve\u2019s death, the Foundation announced that it had changed its name to The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1980, Christopher Reeve appeared with Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer in a relatively modest little romantic fantasy called Somewhere in Time<\/em>. \u00a0I don\u2019t consider it a great film, but I\u2019ve had a soft spot in my heart for it since I first saw it at least three decades ago.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I probably haven\u2019t seen it since Christopher Reeve\u2019s catastrophic accident. \u00a0Somewhere in Time<\/em> was on television last night, though, and so I watched it again. \u00a0(I didn\u2019t do a lot of serious work yesterday, to be honest.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was deeply struck, this time around, by a scene at the very end of the film. \u00a0Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve), dramatically separated from the woman he loves,\u00a0Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), dies. \u00a0(Sorry if I\u2019m spoiling the plot for you.) \u00a0The camera looks down upon his body, which is lying upon a bed far below. \u00a0A desperate hotel employee is trying to summon help. \u00a0Manifestly, Richard is having an out-of-body experience, of a kind very commonly reported in accounts of near-death experiences. \u00a0Then, as the immediate, mundane environment fades away, the camera looks toward a light in the distance and begins moving toward it. \u00a0In the end, we see Richard and Elise embracing, clearly in heaven.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We can hope that Christopher and Dana Reeve had much that same experience on 6 March 2006.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And we have genuine basis for that hope. \u00a0Here, for example, is an intriguing account of one event during Christopher Reeve\u2019s own medical treatment following his equestrian accident. \u00a0I quote from the Wikipedia article on \u201cChristopher Reeve\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Kessler, he tried a drug named Sygen which was theorized to help reduce damage to the spinal cord. The drug caused him to go into\u00a0anaphylactic shock, and his heart stopped. He claimed to have had an\u00a0out-of-body experience\u00a0and remembered saying, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but I have to go now\u201d, during the event. In his autobiography, he wrote, \u201cand then I left my body. I was up on the ceiling . . . I looked down and saw my body stretched out on the bed, not moving, while everybody\u2014there were 15 or 20 people, the doctors, the EMTs, the nurses\u2014was working on me. The noise and commotion grew quieter as though someone were gradually turning down the volume.\u201d After receiving a large dose of\u00a0epinephrine, he woke up and stabilized later that night.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Some of you may be at least vaguely familiar with the painfully sad story of the actor Christopher Reeve (1952-2004), a talented athlete who studied at Cornell University and at the Juilliard School, attained star status in the title role of the Superman films of 1978-1987, and then, in late May 1995,\u00a0was severely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7491,900,903,960,906,7494],"class_list":["post-81594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christopher-reeve","tag-nde","tag-near-death-experience","tag-obe","tag-out-of-body-experience","tag-somewhere-in-time"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>