This could be a great start for a movie. I like the switched-at-birth or mistaken identity stories. There was a film that came out a few years ago called The Life Before Her Eyes with Uma Thurman that had a great premise but was unfortunately not very well executed. It was about two best friends and the aftermath of a Columbine style shooting. One survived, the other didn't. But which one? This car accident story reminded me of that film for some reason.

It's true that the life and death stories always resonate the most with us. We all view life in our own way and we all spend time in this giant waiting room but eventually we all have to face the same thing. We can play chess with death and try to postpone the inevitable, dig through a wall with a rock hammer or threaten to commit suicide on live television, or maybe make movies that inspire people to reevaluate their lives. Maybe all stories are just a variation of the same theme; the grand question if you will.

On a lighter note, here's a short film some friends of mine made a few years ago about a man with an expiration date on his birth certificate:

http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/18yt

I'm fascinated by the process whereby humans acclimate themselves to the reality of each of our own demises. Psychologists say that a child develops no real sense of permanence until they are at least 5 or 6 years old. I wonder if that's the case to enable children to incorporate the idea of death into their consciousness. W/o permanence, death is... what... an illusion? "Bang-bang, you're dead. Okay, now get up, and this time you play the bad guy and I'll be the good guy." To kids, death is just play acting?

Something happens whereby we incorporate terminus into our consciousness, otherwise I have to believe we would be incapacitated emotionally. Then we spend endless energy doing everything we can to avoid / ignore the certainty of our deaths.

So yes, perhaps all stories are about death in some fashion. All the better to remember when we write our stories...