On Death… - Our Geek This Week

I think of death all of the time.

I’m ashamed to admit that I am a bit obsessed.

Not the death of others, well, sometimes, but definitely not because of me, but rather, my death. My own impending mortality.

I don’t like it.

I wish I wasn’t worried about death more moments than not, but, well, here I am.

I’m not talking about when I am spending time with my family, my girls, my lovely partner in all things, Shalee, my siblings, or my mother. I don’t think about it when I’m with my friends. I very much live in the moment, when there are moments to have.

But during those quiet moments, when it’s just me and my thoughts, yes, I think of death.

Impending death.

My death.

It scares me, so I have to force myself to remember that a life isn’t about ending, after all, we are all slated to die, but I tell myself that life is about the, well, LIFE within that life. I love those moments and I cherish them all, but then I shift to the thought that when I am gone, they will be gone.

Maybe not immediately, but eventually, cosmically soon, everyone I know will also die, and those shared memories, the moments that I possess a piece of, they will be lost when I die and when the people I shared them with die, those that possess the counterpoints to my memory, they will be gone too.

And nothing will remain.

Nothing.

And this frightens me.

I haven’t always been this way, but I have been this way for a very long time, almost as long as I can remember.

I think I was nine, perhaps eight, but I was lying in my bed, the lower bunk, my brother sleeping soundly in the bunk above mine. It was past bedtime, whatever time that was in the early 80s, but it was summer. It couldn’t have been too early because it was dark out, very dark. Night doesn’t fall sometimes until well after 9PM in Michigan, so if it was totally dark it must have been after 10 PM.

So as I noted I was lying in my bed, trying to fall asleep, waiting for my brain to calm. As I tried to drift off to sleep I had a moment of clarity: at some point in time, I am going to die. I will no longer be. Also, my parents will die, and there’s nothing that I nor anyone else could ever do to stop any of this. It was a fact. It was certain.

I am not sure when I first fully learned the concept of death, it couldn’t have been too much before this moment, but I do know that this was when I realized it. Before now the idea of death was conceptual, academic. But now, in that very moment, it was real, immutable.

I nearly panicked and bolted from my bed, perhaps glancing into my parents’ bedroom, but probably not, I don’t recall them saying they were going to bed too, and though I don’t recall descending the stairs from my bedroom to our living room, I keenly remember standing there, looking around and not finding my parents. I heard something outside of our three-season porch, so I went out there.

No parents.

I tore open the frail, aluminum-framed door and ran down the stoop into the night, darting left in the direction I had heard sound, perhaps movement. I am sure there were streetlights somewhere along the street, but all I saw was the inky blackness of night and the barely perceptible presence of existence, motion, within the black. Eventually my mother and father emerged from the void. It was a cool summer night and they had decided to go for a short stroll after we, the children, had gone to bed. They had no way of suspecting that one of those kids, me, was going to suddenly face existential dread at the age of nine (or maybe eight).

I remember telling them, but mostly my mother, why I was out there, why I was afraid. I’m sure she said something comforting, something a child should hear about not worrying, but I don’t remember what she said. Whatever it was, it worked, temporarily, because I was able to finally find some rest that night.

But if I am being honest, most nights when I go to bed alone, which is often due to my nature as a night owl, as I try to sleep my first thought is this: I’m going to die.

I’m

going

die.

I lie to myself and again, as I said, remind myself of the good and wonderful and beautiful experiences that I have had in my life, and believe me, I have been very fortunate for most of my life. I am loved, have known love, and express love. I want for nothing.

But as I get older the voice becomes louder. Stronger.

I’m going to die.

Maybe not today. Maybe not tonight.

Who knows when.

But it is certain.

I am going to die.

We all are.

And that, that knowledge that this is communal, that it will happen to us all, gives me no solace.

Because when we die, we all do it alone.

All of us.

And this scares the shit out of me.

I can’t fully explain why I wrote this. I don’t intend to be a downer, but this is depressing, very much so.

Often I find catharsis in writing, so I wrote this, desperately hoping to feel that catharsis that I hoped releasing this would bring.

And while the act of writing, the process, gave me focus and calm, a kind of meditative soothing, it, too, is temporary.

I have no answers, but this asked to be written, so now it exists.

Sometimes being afraid is all you have.