Death

It's taken some getting used to.

I was perhaps six or seven years old when it hit me that one day I would die.

It was a sunny afternoon and I was in my bedroom, alone, when this thought occurred. I remember sudden panic, suffocating terror, but not the event (or, more likely, T.V. show) that instigated it.

I remember going to my mother for verification. Am I going to die? She told me yes, though not for a long, long, time, and that if I was good, I would go to heaven. I think that last detail was offered as comfort but it was a stipulation I didn’t like. Just how good did I have to be? Was sneaking spoonfuls of peanut butter from the jar of Jif sufficient to cast me out of the heavenly kingdom? Apparently God was omniscient, so He (I used He, because I’d cast God as a white-haired, stricter version of Jesus) was aware of even my smallest transgressions.

This feeling of impending doom persisted for days before gradually fading away. Sometimes I would re-remember my sad, inescapable fate and fear would seize me anew, a shark slowly circling. Then, I’d forget about it, wondering what was for dinner or why my brother would never just admit he farted.    

My talking about dying annoyed my mother. She said it was morbid. My paternal grandmother became my go-to when the tragedy of my mortality whimsically resurfaced. My grandmother had gone to church until her arthritis made that impossible, and then she listened to sermons over a phone hook-up every Sunday. She wasn’t particularly religious; she just liked thinking about things, and called herself an agnostic- open to believing but she had yet to be convinced. Personally, I thought fairy tales and bible stories sounded equally made-up. Still, I played along, though I worried my inability to believe would be another strike against me when it came to judgement day.

For some reason, I believed in judgement day.

Anyway, now that I’m closer to finding out the truth of the death matter, I find I am able to coexist with its inevitability. People I loved deeply have died successfully, and we, the living, go on. Someday “the living” will be no longer include me, but the world will keep turning just fine.

The thing no one ever told me at five or six was yes, I am going to die, but I’m going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay. I think this is both a comforting and true thought. And for all of it, for everything, the beauty and urgency of life and whatever follows that we can only guess at, I am grateful.