Death has not played a pivotal role in my life, at least day to day. Or maybe because of my own thoughts of death, I kept it as an abstract concept. So it did not bother me as much as it did.
I have a very distinct memory of being 4 years old, lying in my bed, shouting to my mom in her room down the hall in the little 2-bedroom apartment we lived in.
“What happens when we die?”
She shouted back, “It’s like a long sleep.” in the most comforting voice a single woman could muster at 3 am.
There were other parts to the conversation, but that has been the piece that stuck with me. Maybe my mother could have been warmer in the moment to a child in the dark, maybe the long shadows, the idea of a long sleep, or maybe regardless of the circumstances, I was never going to be a fan of death.
That was the first time I remember talking about and thinking about death. For most of my life since that moment, I feared death. It didn’t help that my mom and, to a larger extent, my family weren’t religious, so heaven and hell weren’t options to soothe my young soul. I don’t have any other real fears, I don’t think. I don’t love surprise spiders or insects longer than 1 cm. I don’t want to jump out of a plane, but I don’t fear heights. I get nervous about doing public speaking, but it doesn’t shut me down. My debate coach used to toss out this stat:
“The #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. death is 8th; spiders are 4th.”
That always made me chuckle. I was captain of the debate team, but make me think about death, and I was folding like a house of cards. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned what I fear is not death, but the unknown. The idea of death being a long sleep isn’t comforting to me. When you sleep, you dream. Sleep, no matter how disorienting, you still wake up and remember what came before.
The world was reckoning with the hot healthcare assassin; I checked my phone to see the latest jokes.
That death didn’t directly affect me, or really anyone in the world other than the slain millionaire’s family. It has indirectly affected us, the catharsis reverberating across age, sex, and political lines. His death, the most high-profile of the year, wasn’t enough to stop the world. His company's stock went up. The President made another cabinet pick; a revolution occurred in a country half a world away. The world kept turning.
“Fuck that guy” I think to myself as I flip from one social media platform to another.
The screen flashes from dark to light, and the square borders begin to form on the edges of my phone. I enjoy seeing the photos my friends post. It’s almost always a snapshot of a moment in their life they felt like they wanted to share. There’s a lot to say about the ills of social media, but I do like to see my people happy and winning.
The first picture loads—it's a headshot of my college buddy in a tux. He looks good. My eyes drift to words below—it’s rather long. He doesn’t post much here, or really is one for brevity. As my eyes scan the words on my phone, it takes a second for my brain to understand the words.
Oh. Oh shit, he’s dead? Like, dead, dead?
I don't imagine my imminent demise, even in the face of my own death, but maybe that’s denial because of my fear of death. I have had a “cancer scare” in college that doctors were way more worried about than I was. I got tests and imaging done. $40,000 worth of tests and imaging. All to say it was nothing, a shadow on an x-ray.
Some 7 years later, I wound up in the hospital for 10 days with a gut issue; my first night they used the word “sepsis.” I have seen enough medical dramas to know that isn’t good. I never lost consciousness or had to have an emergency surgery. I was also pretty good and high on painkillers for that time, so maybe that is why death wasn’t really scary to me at the moment.
For some people, death casts long shadows over their lives. They lose close family or close friends, young. I never had that. Of course people in my life have died, and in those moments I felt sad, but it was never about death. It was the fact that they’re gone. No longer there to say hello in passing at school, to hear them say hello when I made awkward calls to grandma’s for Christmas, to have them send you random drunk Snapchats.
Not major aspects of my life, but these things created a little hole in my universe. While yes, new people come into our lives, it is never the same person twice. Those little moments from people in our lives shape parts of who we are.
In my last year in college, there was a massive Halloween party thrown by some guys who worked at the restaurant adjacent to the bar I worked at with some of my closest friends. Probably my favorite job I have ever had. We got invited to the party, and all I really remember from the night is walking home with my friends, and one of them got convinced to start chucking two liters down the street, and then once he lost the two liters, he started shaking each street sign we passed on the walk home. We still talk about that to this day.
As I tell my wife the news of his passing, I start to tell this story for the umpteenth time to her, but when I tell that story this time, instead of it only being a night of drunken shenanigans, it comes with a bit of bitterness.
I scroll through my phone again later.
I see the news that Nikki Giovanni has died.
It was my 22nd birthday. A friend beforehand had given me some edibles, and with nowhere to store them, I ate them both.
Stoned, I had the pleasure of seeing her do a poetry reading. This ended with me crying at how moving it was and just how high I was. Seeing the news of her passing, I furiously read the bits of poetry, wisdom, and quotes the internet collectively cried out. I saw this quote of hers on death:
“I’m not convinced. I think death is a bad word. I’m not convinced that anything dies. I—I think death is not a good term because I think we transition. I think that anything—if I put any of us in the ground, something’s going to grow.”
Death to her wasn’t the end. Death was a transition. This transformation comes when our time as humans, with consciousness, ends; we will become something else. She lived a long, full life. It should be celebrated as a remarkable one. A third bout with cancer at 81 would be hard on anyone.
I do think she transitioned on. Hopefully peacefully.
Reflecting on my recent trip to the Met. There, I saw a white marble tablet with a woman, carefully, carved into it. She was dressed in a traditional Roman robe. She was carrying a pitcher of wine and holding loaves of bread. The museum label read something like:
“With her garments like so, we can tell this was a depiction of a middle-class woman going to a festival for the Roman God Bacchus, or the woman could be bringing the offerings to the temple of Bacchus.”
Any of these pieces from the ancient world, do you think they were created to last a millennia? Was it to have their labor, their art, to last forever? To have the moments of their life—happiness, sadness, joy, life, death—for an eternity? Even if they did, did they realize their reason would be up to interpretations from people several dozen lifetimes removed, whole worlds away?
I lied at the beginning of this. Or rather, I committed the sin of omission. My conversation with my mother continued.
I replied back, So we’re just gone? Forever? My mother, exhausted by the combination of the time of night and the existential questioning by a 4-year-old, replied,
No, not forever. We live on in the memories we make with loved ones; they carry us on as they tell people about you.
That’s a type of transition. From physical to spiritual. Living on in the stories told and the memories created. Eventually, though, memories fade. Like photos tucked into an album, only to be pulled out at the occasional family function or spring cleaning. The pages of the album getting louder each time it is pulled out and thumbed through. The plastic meant to protect them eventually sticks to them and smudges the image. Distorting the faces and places captured. Eventually you can only rely on the placement and backgrounds to determine what the photo is of.
Doesn’t the same thing happen to memories? Wrapped in the protection of our subconsciousness, to be dug out when we want. Each time the memory is pulled from the bank, it gets warped more and more. Bending to the realities as we saw it, as it changed as times changed. Encounters, nostalgia, and melancholia, all of which have a chance to twist and hew the memory on each recall.
That story from my friend is how I remember a drunken college night, 9 years later. There were two parties that weekend; I don’t remember which he threw the 2 liters at and which he shook signs. Or if it was the same night. I remember which sign he shook and which street he threw the soda bottles on. I don’t remember how the nights started. (Though this may be because the weekend started with Crown, Hennessey, and Hypnotiq.)
Do the minute details that make the story matter? Does the warm feeling and smile I get thinking about that story become any less happy because I don’t remember which party the night was or where they were?
Have his thoughts, dreams, and love transitioned into the memories of the people in his life?
My friend is gone. I won’t get to see his name light up my phone when he texts me about the Bills beating the Chiefs. Or when he’s out drunk hitting on women. All I have left are the memories created. How I remember them. How I want to remember him. I get to decide how I remember him.
I am disconsolate. I didn’t fear death for him, maybe because I didn’t know it was coming. I don’t know what he hoped for. Money, a wife. Sure. I don’t know if he wanted to see the world. I don’t know if he was happy—I hope so. I thought so. If he does live on in this way, in my memory, are his wants lost? Does it matter now that he isn’t here?
The sun rises and sets. The world spins and moves another day around the sun.
I awoke this morning to check the same social media again. Again, the small boxes of the photos begin to load; this time a relatively familiar photo materializes within the lines on the screen.
An old, weary Palestinian man holding a little girl in his arms. She is covered in ash and dust. She has a few small cuts on her face and arms. Against the ash, the blood is as dark crimson. Her eyes are closed; if not for the rubble and ash, she could have been sleeping. I knew she wasn’t sleeping. The photo was familiar because 13 months ago, the video of Khaled Nabhan holding his dead granddaughter in his arms, peacefully, but mournfully, him kissing her eyes and calling her “soul of my soul” was taken. The big block letters in a burning yellow at the top of it read:
Khaled Nabhan Killed by Israeli airstrike.
His death, or transition, was violent. Like his granddaughters, not even a year prior. Violent like the death of the healthcare CEO. I feel no sympathy for the CEO. Condemning tens of thousands to death to protect profits and shareholder value. I openly celebrated his death like millions of other Americans.
The death of Khaled Nabhan gives me hope that if we do transition, we transition into the stories we tell. The hope, joy, and love we can make people feel. The memories affected. While I am not sure what comes after death, I hope he is reunited with his granddaughter, in whatever possible sense.
As an almost 30-year-old man, the thoughts of What Comes Next™ don’t worry me as much, but they do still come. I was hoping that, maybe in writing this, it would give me some catharsis on my thoughts of death. Ease my mind so that when I lay my head down at midnight, I don’t fall asleep some nights till 3:00 am, thoughts of What Comes Next™ running roughshod over my mind. While these don’t happen often, the fear of death still makes me a scared 4-year-old boy some nights, hoping the things his mom told him are true.
This is not a catharsis, but a reckoning with the death of a friend, the death of an idol, the death of a healthcare CEO, and the death of a martyr.