I Am Not Afraid of Death
I am afraid of watching the people I love die.
It was an afternoon two months ago, when the impact of the coronavirus was just beginning to gain steam, that I received a text from a friend, “Dude, this pandemic situation is getting serious. My friend’s aunt died because of the virus. They couldn’t even find a place to treat her because all hospital beds were occupied.”
The sorry I felt for the death of a stranger’s aunt was quickly replaced by anxiety about death. Suddenly, the virus wasn’t a distant disease that happened to strangers or some statistic that I saw on the news. It was beginning to creep up in my backyard and the impact of the pandemic, moving forward, was only going to get more real for me and the people I love.
“Damn, this is scary. Sorry, for her loss though,” was all I could text in response. What do you say to people who have lost someone they know because of disease and chaos?
Before COVID-19 Death Was Neither Apparent Nor Distant
I have been curious about the nature of human existence ever since I was a child. This curiosity led me to devour many books on spiritual paths and philosophy. In Hinduism, every spiritual school of thought starts with accepting that death is the only thing that’s permanent. Everything…
