"I don't believe in an afterlife, but I'm willing to be surprised," smiles Canadian author Wayson Choy.
That newfound openness to spiritual realms and life's true meaning shines in Choy's book, "Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying," which chronicles his recovery from death's door not once, but twice.
With a spare, restrained style that makes "Not Yet" moving, not maudlin, Choy opens his book in 2001, when he is 62. After attempting to lug two heavy suitcases up a staircase, a combined asthma-heart attack hurled Choy into the nearest ER, where he lay slipping in and out of consciousness fighting for his life.
"I felt no pain. Thank you for the drugs," Choy joked Monday with Canada AM co-host Seamus O'Regan.
Four years later Choy's heart failed him a second time.
Intubated and unable to speak in both instances, Choy delivers a surreal account of the beeps from the machines that kept him alive and the voices in his head of ancestors who warned he would die alone.
As the openly gay author writes:
"One day you be old and sick and no wife be there for you, the voices scolded. For sure, you marry or no one be with you! No son! No daughter! You die alone! The voices had not stopped until, at 23, I left Vancouver to make my life my own. ....Forty years on, here I was, still single, still in Toronto, immobilized on a bed in St. Michael's Emergency Unit. But someone cared enough to stay beside me. I'm not forgotten, I thought. I can't move, but I'm not alone. My spine tightened; I teared up. With a soft tissue, the same hand blotted the corner of my eyes, a gesture so intimate, so sure, that it wiped away the ancient voices."
A ghostly encounter illuminates life's meaning
Another revelation -- one from the ghostly realms -- also surprised Choy after his first heart attack.
Raised in Chinatown where people saw ghosts all the time, Choy found himself seated in a Toronto restaurant one day where a few spirits reportedly showed up to chat.
"I don't believe in ghosts....I didn't see them. The hostess did," says Choy, who listened intently to everything the women had to say about the spirits who were now haunting him.
"I am not religious in any sense," says Choy, 69. But the ghostly encounters, plus his perilous heart attacks, made this Professor Emeritus at Toronto's Humber College question everything.
"It made me think 'What do I know about life?' 'What does it all mean?' It reminded me that life was still worth living," says Choy.
Digging deep into the mystifying intricacies of life is nothing new for this acclaimed author. In 1995 "The Jade Peony" shared the Trillium Book Award for best book and won Choy the 1996 City of Vancouver Book Award.
In 1999 Choy's memoir, "Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood," won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for a Governor General's Award.
"All That Matters," Choy's 2004 novel, scored a nomination for the Scotiabank Giller prize.
In 2005 Choy was named a member of the Order of Canada.
"I was bumping my head against life...just like the hummingbird bumps its head against a glass window," Choy said about one of the significant images in "Not Yet."
"Writing about being in a coma was hard to do and it caused a lot of flashbacks. But the best writing comes from when you're not in total control."
Before his heart attacks, "I was overworking and not listening to anyone who said I needed a rest." says Choy. But his near-death experiences taught him two invaluable lessons.
"I learned to listen to my body and to appreciate every day that comes," Choy smiles. "Everything we do here matters. You've got to live for the now."
