I Died 15 Years Ago Today
RightGirl at Girl on the Right on Oct 31 2008 at 1:15 pm | Filed under: Feature Article
I have the unique distinction of having died on the very same day as River Phoenix. The deaths were unrelated, though both were drug induced. The young actor died on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room in Los Angeles, his body convulsing as it gave up the fight between cocaine and heroin. I passed away on a rare snowy Halloween night on an ER table at the Lakeshore General in Montreal, my heart ceasing to beat just as a doctor was shoving a tube up my right nostril and trying to get it down my throat.
I was away from this world for four minutes before they shocked me back to life. River Phoenix has been gone 15 years. I always think of him on Halloween, and how our lives ended the same day. How he had so much to live for and made a stupid mistake; how I had nothing to live for but yet I was saved. There but for a few volts of electricity go I.
Looking back over the years, I often wonder what greeted him on the far side that morning. I know what I saw, what I heard; it will have been different for him. It will be different for everyone of you who reads this.
River Phoenix was 23 years old; I was 17. Strange that I have passed the age of 23, all the way to 32 so far, and he never will. He will always be 23. He has been for fifteen years.
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