Death, Breath, and Life

I always considered death something to avoid, if I considered it at all. I even turned away when, near 40, the concept of my own mortality and physical frailty slapped me in the face and Death sought to catch my eye. “I am here,” it called. “I am real” it whispered. “I am just a step away or a life time away, but I am here and you will know me.”

“I know you enough already” I thought back. “I know you in theory and in the abstract. I know you from a distance. Everyday you enter my world through friends and acquaintances and in the news. Every day you appear and everyday I brush you aside as if to keep you at bay. I don’t want to know you, because I don’t understand you. I am busy yet being immortal. Come back when I am a very old woman and we’ll talk.”

Then, my life changed unexpectedly. Going in for a minor surgery I had ever-so casually and confidently signed approval for ‘just-in-case’ contingency plans. Those contingency plans became a reality I was ill-prepared for. I woke up staring right into the eyes of Death and I was not able to look away. Waiting and without answers, the last shred of my immortality perished. Death borrowed my soul and held my heart. It danced in my dreams and captured my waking moments. Unable to see anything but an ending, my days were wrapped in a shroud of loneliness and shadow. Unable to visualize alternative futures, I felt lost and abandoned and hopeless. Perspective sought a foothold in my daily life, but found none. I drifted alone in an emotional sea of helplessness. For long weeks, Death woke me in the middle of the night and would not release me back to sleep. It crowded into tender moments with loved ones. It instilled fear into everyday activities and thoughts. It kicked me loose from the roots of my life and tossed me into the whirling unknown. It haunted every living moment I tried to have, making them surreal by trying to capture and preserve the essence of life in each one.

Feeling suffocated and distanced from the life and people I loved so much, I cried. I cried for what I would lose, and who would lose me. I cried for all the things I would miss and all the things I would never do again. I cried for not knowing and I cried for the sheer weight of responsibility of going away.

And then Time came and I breathed. I took one conscious breath and then another. I opened myself to the prayers of others when I could not pray for myself and when I feared I could not pray enough. I breathed deeply into the parts of me where I couldn’t feel the fluid motion of energy and being. I named my biggest fears and I spoke them out loud even when I and others would have preferred denial and even when there were no answers. And I breathed.

I kept breathing. Some moments it was all that I could do. And in my breaths, I came to see that it was I who held so tightly to Death, not the other way around. As I breathed in more and more conscious Life, my grip on Death loosened slowly. With time, I came to see that Death did not hold me, Life did.

I came to realize my misconception that we come here and we stay for a long time until we are very old and unlucky people die early. The truth is that we come here and we live UNTIL WE DON’T ANYMORE. That’s it, just until we don’t. This is no secret. We are told over and over to live in the moment and to make every day count. I thought I understood that, but I didn’t. I do now. Now I spend my time doing things of the heart - doing things that matter, doing things that bring me joy. After all - no matter how long I’m here, there isn’t time enough to do anything else.

Death still stands closer to me than ever before, but I, newly reborn into a mortal being, give my embrace and my breath to Life.