f you had to put a dollar value on each day of your life, how much would it be?

Ask Jim Olszewski of Tamaqua. “Every new morning that I open my eyes is going to be a 10 million dollar day.”

Olszewski has very good reasons why he values his life at such a high money number. He has been pronounced dead not once but twice — from a motorcycle crash and from a heart attack, which happened seven years apart.

What’s even more extraordinary was an out-of-body experience he had when he was found “dead” underneath a Subaru Legacy.

Second chance

“It was September 8th, 2013, and I was riding my motorcycle on my way to see my terminally ill wife in a nursing home,” he said. “My daughter had a premonition that I shouldn’t ride my bike, but it was such a beautiful evening, so I told her I’d be fine.

“I came upon the crest of a hill on Route 663 in New Hanover. I was going about 40 mph when I was struck by a vehicle coming from a crossroad. The impact sent me sliding across the road and the vehicle then rolled on top of me and came to a stop.”

First responders and a coroner arrived at the site of the crash.

“I was told later that I had no vital signs for quite some time,” Olszewski said. “They dragged my body out from under the car and threw a tarp over my body.”

During the next few minutes, what happened at the scene of the crash was described in Olszewski’s choice of words, “weird.”

“While I was under the car with no pulse, no heartbeat, I thought I was dreaming,” he recounted. “I felt myself floating in the air above the road and watching them get the woman out of the car that had hit me. I kept going up, higher and higher. I saw a man and reached out to him, but my hand went right through his body, and then I distinctly heard a voice say the four words that have stayed in my mind ever since that day: ‘It’s not your time.’

“I wasn’t afraid at all. I felt a peace that’s hard to describe. It was wonderful. After I heard those words, I felt myself going back down, kind of a ‘swoosh,’ as if I was on a roller coaster ride. And then I knew I had returned to my body.”

More “weird” moments occurred at the site.

“Someone who I was told later was the coroner pulled the tarp off me and I sat up,” Olszewski said. “He was telling the responders that sometimes the muscles of a dead person stiffen and can cause the body to move. I heard every word he said.

I replied, ‘I’m not dead. I’m alive!’ ”

The recovery

The coroner screamed and then called for medical help. They got me off the ground, and with all the physical pain, I still managed to walk to the ambulance. I was in a state of confusion wondering how I got here. I went into shock.”

Olszewski spent two days in the hospital and was diagnosed with a concussion and two broken ribs; one rib pierced a lung and caused it to collapse. His left shoulder was going to require surgery to reattach tendons and ligaments. His spleen was damaged. His right knee would also need surgery, and his left ankle was broken.

“I couldn’t walk again for two months, and I needed four months to heal my body,” Olszewski said. “I had trouble breathing. I slept sitting up on the couch. My son and daughter were there to take care of me.”

Third chance

Death is no stranger to this man who has lived in Tamaqua for the past five years and has worked for Giant Food Stores for the last 16 years. In his first marriage, triplets were born to him and his wife, but they all died on the first day of their lives. His wife, mother and brother-in law all died within three months in the same year he had the motorcycle crash.

As if the Grim Reaper hadn’t made enough visits to him and to his family, another episode with death occurred in 2020.

“I was getting ready to go to a car club show,” Olszewski explained. “I wasn’t feeling well and my daughter said I didn’t look good, kind of pale. It was 8 a.m. on a Friday morning. No doctors were open yet, so I drove myself to an urgent care center.”

An EKG test confirmed that Olszewski was in cardiac arrest.

“They put me in an ambulance to rush me to a hospital,” he said. “I was feeling worse. I must have passed out. They told me my heart stopped and I had to be paddled a couple of times.”

He needed open heart surgery to clear his arteries.

“When I was put in intensive care,” Olszewski said, “I was told again that I almost didn’t make it.”

His determination to never give up on anything in life comes from his mother and father.

“I was taught to never get down, to never quit,” he said. “Put my mind to anything and I can work it out. I was real close with my dad and he passed away when he was just 59. He was my rock, my hero. We did so many things together.”

Olszewski got his sarcastic sense of humor from his father and he uses it with everyone, even joking with the paramedics after his crash and with doctors after his heart surgery. With a laugh he says, “I’m an equal opportunity abuser.”

Lesson learned

Regarding his out-of-body experience, he believes that God sent him back because his wife and children needed his care.

“I think the Lord understood the depth of my devotion to my family, so he didn’t want to take me yet,” he said.

With a monetary settlement from his motorcycle crash, he helped a friend next door who had no heat or hot water in his house and also helped his sister, Carolyn McCloskey.

“We’re very close and she’s a very giving person like me,” he said.

Recent studies report that 17% of people pronounced clinically dead who returned to life have experienced the phenomenon of feeling an incredible out-of-body sense of peace.

From his personal experience, Olszewski offers advice about death.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “When I felt myself floating into the air, it was so peaceful and euphoric. I felt no pain at all. I don’t know when my time will be, but I’ll be ready for the journey.”

For Olszewski, dying twice now has him never taking for granted the gift of his life.