Death Scares Me in Some Ways and Not at All in Others

Living with both terror and acceptance of mortality has reshaped how I love, how I live, and how I hold the people closest to me.

Photo by Valeria V on Unsplash

When I consider death, I feel as though I am at a train station waiting for a train to arrive, the only difference being I don’t know if or when it will come, or which track it may thunder down.

Some days, the sound of the train in the distance makes me brace, heart racing, wondering if this is really it.

Other days, I forget the tracks exist entirely until a sudden thought returns me to the knowing that I can never escape them.

Life feels like a party I don’t want to leave

The first time I felt frightened by death was not because of the death of someone close to me, but rather when I realized how much I love being alive.

The love came at a completely ordinary moment.

I was walking home one evening, and the air smelled like rain on concrete, and the chai stall by the corner was a symphony of voices, and at that moment, I felt alive.

In the same moment, a thought sliced through me, like a shadow passing through sunlight: one day, I will…