I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. If death is possible think about it. Grasp, believe in, and truly accept.
I’m only young now to an 80 year old, but I have like a young person dealt with death with denial. Intellectually I know about it. I don’t believe in Santa Claus or Heaven. But viscerally, even though I have at times been suicidal, I have never wrapped my mind around my death, or the deaths of those closest to me.
As COVID takes a 911 worth of lives every few days, as I grapple with the deaths of my parents, my ending becomes more real, and yet, never comes into focus. It’s a hole in my retina. It’s in my blind spot. I catch glimpses. Evoking horror. Or a curious numbness. But mostly, I’m no closer to any understanding or closure.
Instead this gasping fear, this hideous dread, of finding myself in the hospital or hospice bed with my sad family gathered around me. Saying goodbye.
Or it’s an abstraction, devoid of panic, fear, only a mix of sadness and an attempt at acceptance and resignation. Aphorisms. For everything a season. He lived a rich and full life and was loved.
Everything dies, my mother said. That’s just the way it is. And if I’m going to die, I wish I would and get it over with. This said while she was in uncontrollable pain for a month or so.
So I’m left wondering, what do I do with my fucking life, now that I know, at some level, my days are numbered? What matters enough to do? To give myself to utterly?
It’s down to writing. Some part of me wants to join some mythical brigade of tree planting climate warriors. Or armed defenders of the weak against the rising right-wing white supremacist GOP fronted menace that threatens anyone and everyone but those most like me. But what the fuck, when has that ever been me? I got closest to that with my trans kid, writing about and learning about them, fighting online for them, and once virally boosting a boycott that helped shut down a few right wing radio jocks.
I had businesses contacting me begging to be taken off their show’s sponsor list.
But mostly I have gamboled and angsted perched on some high terrace of Maslow’s heirarchy of needs.
And I want to throw myself into something. Completely. Make some small mark. Be for something. Be about something. Time not on my side. At an age when many of my heroes have been dead for years.
Trying not to stare into the sun and blind myself. Trying to snap out of the daydream of immortality. Withdraw from the anodyne of streaming media. Leave the party and roll up my sleeves and get to work. Work eighteen hours a day, to make up for all the lost time. All the self-indulgence.
Until the end.
Until I am dragged, kicking and screaming into the unknowable.
