Clinically Dead: My Encounters with Death, Miracles of Survival, and Second Chances

By G. Ofori Anor

Having survived a massive heart attack from which the overwhelming number of victims never recover, the author engages himself in a conversation on Why him? It is a conversation that recalls, with humor and candidness, other times in his life that he had escaped close shaves with death. It ends with an emphatic admission rooted in faith that a third factorGod, an unseen hand, a guardian angel, an ancestral spirit, etc.most certainly has always interceded on his behalf to upturn logically fatal outcomes. This is also as much an essay on Akan cultural practices as it is a commentary on Ghanaian political history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524502904

G. Ofori Anor

G. Ofori Anor received undergraduate education at Cape Coast University and graduate education at Long Island University when he migrated to the United States in 1985. He has spent most of his adult life studying and teaching African cultural traditions and history. As an editor and publisher of ASENTA News magazine, he authored numerous editorials, articles, and essays on matters of topical importance to Africans and is widely published in several magazines and newspapers.

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Copyright © 2016 by G. Ofori Anor.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016908352

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-0292-8

   Softcover   978-1-5245-0291-1

   eBook   978-1-5245-0290-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 06/06/2016

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter I Yaa Asabea Kaakyire

Chapter II The Water Well

Chapter III The Stump in the Road

Chapter IV Obosomase: Home Not Sweet Home

Chapter V A Happy Town Called Kpando

Chapter VI Before and After Circumcision

Chapter VII Death Called Twice in College

Chapter VIII A Lucky Break at Assin Foso

Chapter IX The Bright Lights of Accra

Chapter X In Pursuit of United States Visa

Chapter XI The Mother of Miracles

Chapter XII EPILOGUE

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To Papa Anor and Mena Yaa Asabea

through whom I came from God

FOREWORD

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

C. S. Lewis

In this book, Clinically Dead: My Encounters with Death, Survival Miracles and Second Chances, the author, G. Ofori Anor tells the story of the unseen hand of God, which has many times and in different ways delivered him from death and destruction. These are his miracle stories. Miracles, as the late British academic, novelist, and theologian C. S. Lewis points out, are very much around us. However, not everybody recognizes them because one needs more than mere experience to see them. It requires the revelation of God! Those who see the mighty work of God must tell it. This is what the author does here. This memoir captures the recollections of and reflections on events in the author's life he considers miraculous. Indeed, the occurrences narrated, especially his recent near-death experience, is nothing less than miraculous.

G. Ofori Anor is well-known within many circles in the United States and Ghana as an exceptional teacher, orator, journalist, and go-to person for matters on Akan culture and poetry. His involvement and leadership in the African and especially Ghanaian communities in the New York Metro area cannot be missed. Thus, news of his sudden and massive cardiac arrest and subsequent clinical death sent shock waves through many of these communities. Many prayed and hoped for divine intervention. It happened. Reminiscent of the case of Lazarus, this sickness is (was) not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it (John 11:4). Many things worked together in his favor. He was resuscitated and restored to life. Today, he lives without any major physical disabilities. Incredible! Personally, it is always a joy to see him and talk and pray with him. That he lives to tell his story is a miracle in itself.

Parts of this story have been told through the grapevines and by friends and family. What this book seeks to do is to give a fuller account from the horse's own mouth. In addition, by providing the reader with the true inside story and eye witnesses accounts, the book also leads us to think critically about the brevity and frailty of our lives; about the interaction between our physical and spiritual lives and about God's love and mercy. It even provides some insights into Ghanaian culture, history, and politics.

Miracles have always been a difficult concept for some, particularly the nonreligious and secular-minded, to understand or accept. The skepticism toward miracles associated with the rise of the scientific world view of the seventeenth century and even Protestant Reformers a century earlier still lingers on in different forms. While some perceive miracles as simply scientifically impossible, others consider them as mere luck or happenstance.

For Ofori Anor, miracles are for real. While he cannot fully account for their existence, nature, and purpose, he has seen them, experienced them, and will testify about them! In his testimony, he reminds everyone that there is a power beyond our human selves---the power of God, which is capable and willing to change hopeless situations into hopeful ones.

While we read this delightful and inspiring story of redemption, let us give thanks to God for the life of the author and all who have seen miracles in their lives.

Rev. Dr. Moses Biney

New Jersey

INTRODUCTION

Had I been a cat with nine lives, I would be getting concerned about getting close to using them all up. And if I was only human with one life to live like everyone else, I would be gone by now. I must fall somewhere in between because I am still here, with little or no worries about how many lives I have left. Why worry about something which you have no control over? If ever I worry, it is about unanswered queries relating to who or what keeps throwing chance after chance at my way when majority do not get a second chance to make a first impression in identical circumstances.

This is not a story of my entire life. Neither have I written a chronicle of notable achievements and excitable adventures of a great human figure in history. I have no such credentials that would enable me write a classical autobiography.

Mine is simply a nonfictional pamphlet, maybe a journal, that narrates events in my life that I believe to be indicative of the presence of an unseen hand---the hand of a God, a Guardian Angel or an Ancestral spirit---in changing what should be the normal outcome of events. I most definitely have been the beneficiary of this presence in more ways than one. My gratitude runs for eternity.

What you are about to read are truthful recollection of notes tucked away in my memory, notes of things said, done, seen, touched, or told. Some are from family records---written or transmitted orally. If you find the narrative to be too good to be true, then it is. That's what miracles are made of.

I didn't drown when I was only a crawling infant; I fell into a well full of water. Neither did the wheels of a bus crush my skull as I lay underneath it. A ceiling fan broke and fell exactly where I sat. I landed unscathed on grass knoll rather than the concrete ground floor when I was literally flung from a third floor verandah. I visited a friend while on vacation and found a job that made me a star. Have I not been granted reprieve even when I did egregious wrongs to my fellow man? You bet I have! A bunch of vigilante night prowlers missed me when they came to exact revenge. Then I survived a massive cardiac arrest that, instead of turning me into a vegetable or a statistical number as it normally does other victims, made me into the miracle man that many see me today.

How else could these be explained---chance coincidences, miracles, lucky dips, or what? Unable to extend my understanding beyond the limits of my intellectual