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Lying in a coma after a train smash, Ray Burgess saw a white light and thought he was going to die.
But the sound of his wife's voice and a vision of deceased loved ones at the top of a staircase snapped him out of his two-week slumber.
The 49-year-old Auckland courier driver says he would not have even made it to hospital alive if it had not been for emergency services.
And to say thank you, Mr Burgess is appearing in a fundraising drive for Auckland's Westpac rescue helicopter service during the national appeal this month.
"If they weren't there I wouldn't have lived," he said. "They were amazing."
The last thing Mr Burgess remembers that day last year was stopping his car for a train as he left a driveway off State Highway 16, west of Kumeu on October 12.
He stopped about 20cm too close and the train smashed into his van, leaving it in a ditch and him pinned underneath by his shoulder.
He was not wearing a seatbelt because courier drivers are exempt from having to do so.
About six staff from Westpac, police and firefighters used their bare hands to lift the van off Mr Burgess.
Boiling hot diesel oil was leaking into his mouth, and he now has burn scars on his face, shoulder and back.
He received serious internal injuries including damage to his liver, kidneys and pelvis and needed $15,000 worth of dental treatment to replace missing teeth. And he had to learn to walk again.
But instead of being bitter about the accident from which he is still recovering, Mr Burgess and his wife Angela Burgess-Maber are grateful.
The pair, married for 15 years, had been separated for three months but reconciled after the crash.
Mr Burgess had been in a coma for more than a week when his wife came to visit.
At the time she arrived, Mr Burgess recalls a vision in which he was heading towards a white light at the top of a staircase, but was met at the top by four friends and family members who have died.
"My Dad, my Grandma, [Angela's] Dad and my mate Mason ... all kicked me in the arse," he said, laughing.
"They told me to go back. That's when I heard [Angela's voice] - I saw them. I heard her say: 'Live, don't die, be strong."'
He awoke from his sleep enough to open and close his eyes and a week later had fully awoken from the coma.
He left rehabilitation after three weeks having learned to walk again and three months later walked Auckland's Round the Bays event.
Mr Burgess has declined further operations , saying he doesn't need skin grafts for burns to his right eye and hand, because it's "only cosmetic".
However, he still needs surgery to the nerves and tendons in his left shoulder.
He says he is not religious, and puts his survival down to "stubbornness" and "pig-headedness".
"It could have gone either way and we're just happy - elated actually - that it's gone the way that it has," Mrs Burgess-Mayber said.
Adds her husband with a grin: "I always thought I was invincible. Now I know I am."
Mr Burgess says he now wants to compete in a marathon.
