The Man Who Died Twice
by Bill Russo
James Olbrich died for the second and presumably final
time in 2019. According to all reports,
it was a normal death and it is expected that Mr. Olbrich will not be returning
to the beaches of St. Augustine Florida that he so dearly loved in his first
two lives.
It was just after a visit to America’s oldest city
several years ago, that Mr Olbrich’s initial passing occurred. He drove back to
his home in Orlando after spending a day in the storied city of St. Augustine,
founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers.
Nothing unusual had happened. He
had not been in an accident. He didn’t
hit his head on anything and was not a victim of a falling coconut.
But something did happen.
He didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but he knew that he was off the
beam. After Jim had driven the two hours
back to his home in Orlando, he felt odd but chalked it up to being tired. He went to bed and found that he couldn’t
sleep, had trouble rolling over and just wasn’t able to get into position for
sleep.
During the night it seemed that invisible hands pulled
him out of bed. Making his way to the bathroom, he found himself
stumbling. His head hurt just behind his
right ear and the left side of his body was beginning to go numb. Banging into the walls, he struggled to get
to the bathroom, crawling the last few yards. He remembered lying face up on
the floor for a long time.
He did not remember that ultimately help came and he was
transported by helicopter to a hospital. A cracking noise inside his skull woke
him up. He was on a bed in the intensive care unit. “I have a headache”, he mumbled to a nurse
who replied, “I’ll get you a couple Tylenol.”
By the time she returned Jim had lapsed into a coma. In
the operating room the surgeons worked for hours to save the life of their
patient. As dawn came, they faced the fact that he was dead.
A while later his corpse was moved to the morgue. An
attendant was assigned the job of putting a tag on the big toe of the lifeless
body. With a body bag close by, the nurse was placing the tag on Jim’s toe, but
the elastic band became entwined with the hairs on his big toe. Quickly yanking on the rubber band to free
it, she was shocked to hear an “Ouch” come from the lips of the dead man.
Screaming in fear, she ran for the nearest exit, but
missed and crashed into a wall, knocking herself out. Jim Olbrich meanwhile was conscious, but was
partially paralyzed and had to wait for the nurse to regain consciousness
before he could get help.
Soon, he was wheeled to a hospital bed. Spending many weeks in recovery, Jim regained
partial use of his limbs. He was able to
walk, but his left side was still partly paralyzed so when he walked his gait
reminded people of Frankenstein shambling along as he did in the ancient film
from long ago.
Jim Olbrich did not complain though. He made the best of the situation and was
thankful for his second life. Over the
years his condition continued to improve by slight degrees and he had a number
of good years between his first and second deaths.
He passed away for the final time in late 2019 at the age
of 70 and right up to the end he said that he was very happy to have led two
lives.
My Notes:
I can’t verify all points of this story. I am able, however, to certify that Mr.
Olbrich’s second death did indeed occur on the first day of December in
2019. I have seen the obituary
notices. I can further stipulate from
the same sources that his birth date was January 28, 1949.
The details of his stroke and subsequent, death and
return from death, are to be found in a number of articles floating around the
internet, none of which cite any credible sources. The story may well be true and I have no reason
to think it is not. There have been a number of similar cases.
From my research into the tale, I could find no evidence
that Mr. Olbrich had any memory of the hours during which to the satisfaction
of competent medical personnel, he was dead. His conscious memory recalled the
Tylenol incident, just before his descent into the coma. His next memory was
the pain of hairs being forcibly yanked out by that elastic band the nurse put
on his big toe. He had no visions or thoughts from his dead time.
Since this story has been in circulation for some time
now, I am surprised there is not more information available in news archives
and on social media.
At any rate, it is a strange case, and I hope you enjoyed
reading about it.
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