It's a statistic until it happens to you

Content warning: death

God willing I get 8 hours of sleep each night. That's about a third of my life lying horizontal, unaware of anything except whatever bullshit my brain comes up with while asleep. I try not to think about it too much, because if I do, I get nervous, and the nerves make it hard to fall asleep. That's a lot of time, a lot of life. If I'm being honest it's a lot more like 6 hours these days.

But I can't not sleep. Sometimes I think how awesome it'd be if I had an extra 24 hours each day—enough time to do all the things I love, while still having the time to do the things I need to do, that I'm liable to do. To take care of the people I love and myself. I can't do much of anything if I can't keep myself awake long enough to do it.

If you're 25 you hang out with your friends around once a month, that's about 750 times you'll get to hang out with them ever. Or at least, it's anybody's game for what'll come next. You're probably not going to hang out with your friends exactly once a month for the rest of your life, though. Maybe more, but probably a lot less. Priorities change, people move away. You meet new people and you lose old ones. The only constant is change, as it were.

I feel like the only thing that makes this sort of thing feel remotely normal is the fact that most of our worst fears are rare enough that we can expect they won't happen to us. We like to assume we won't lose all our loved ones to an inconceivable and gruesome fate, because it's unlikely we will. We have to hope that one day we'll say goodbye, and we'll never see or hear from one another again. For them to be gone, after their chapter in our own life is over… that's better, maybe. Or at least, it makes it easier to forget. And you have to forget.

A friend of mine—one I haven't spoken to in a long time—told me once that life was too precious to abandon all attachments, even if it's hard to live in a world where they're always dragging us down. What matters most, in fact, is learning to lead a life where you are more than your attachments; where you are capable of living without them, even if you never did. To be under your own control.

You can't forget forever, because one day you'll be reminded. When is hard to say. Most of the most privileged people in the world can say with reasonable certainty that it won't happen to them soon. Some of us aren't so lucky. If change is a constant then know we won't always be a part of its story. "I know that it's a little dramatic, but the word for not changing is death."¹

I used to think those who lived in close proximity to death would get used to it. An old friend of mine, a different friend, was the child of a funeral director. They always had this cool, jaded affect about life and death. Maybe you too, having grown old, having watched your friends and family pass away of apparently natural causes, you'd come to accept it, receiving it with grace. these days I feel less convinced. It's one thing to accept the inevitability of death. It's one thing to accept your own death, or the deaths of people in general, people you don't know. If I die, then my story on Earth ends. There will be no material me to deal with the consequences; all I can hope for is that those I leave behind will be safe. Hopefully the immaterial me will have other things to occupy themself with. For my story to go on, unexpectedly, without someone I love, is something I'm admittedly not prepared for.

I figure I ought to be too young to worry about the immanency of death. Surely I must have it easier than I'm making it out to be; what I fear must be the phantom of death—a perception or irrational fear. Maybe it is, or maybe that's what you can take away from this article. I suppose it doesn't really matter what you think; I offer these personal anxieties without expectation. But I know it's there. It's come, it's gone, it sits just beyond the threshold, waiting patiently. Every now and then, it knocks on the door—not necessarily to ask if it can come in, but just to remind me. I don't think it's something you can prepare for, or should prepare for. I don't know if it's something you can get used to. I've been trying for years.

Perhaps the best you can do is try to forget.

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