On Tuesday, Robert Jackson Bennett and I started following each other on Twitter, and we chatted a bit, the way two writers on Twitter are wont to do. He mentioned that he wanted to write a blog post about his anxieties about death at some point, and I encouraged him to do so in spite of his reluctance. In fact, I said if he wrote the post, I would write about it too.
@robertjbennett Oh, do it. I’ll do it too. Although I don’t think it’ll stop the neurotic novel production.
— Amy Sundberg (@amysundberg) January 21, 2014
I kind of didn’t think he would do it. But he wrote this beautiful post, which is very much worth your time.
So. Here we are. And I have to keep a promise to write about death.
I’ve been afraid of death since I was eleven years old. At that time, my mom was clinically depressed, and she was suicidal. Death, I understood, could come at any time, and it was very, very real. All of my questions about death, all of my uncertainties, came with the very high stakes of immediate relevancy.
I hear that teenagers have this period of time in their development when they think they’re invincible. I never had that. I knew I could die. I knew life was an appallingly fragile thing, and I knew tomorrow might devastate me, leaving a hollow scream where my heart had once been. I knew tomorrow might never come.
I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I tried anyway, of course. I watched for signs of imminent doom. I learned to read people. I was inconveniently present. I sang “Candle on the Water” over and over. I never let my mom leave the house or go to sleep without telling her I loved her. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. But it was all I could do.
When you live like that for long enough, it changes you. By the time my mom died of cancer eight years later, I had formed an intimate relationship with death and uncertainty. And one way this anxiety about death manifests itself is in my relationship with time.
You see, I never feel like I have enough time. Surprisingly enough, this hasn’t resulted in me being a workaholic or dashing around an overscheduled life. What it does mean is that I’m very aware of the passing of time, and I care about doing what’s important to me right now, or as soon as possible to right now.
It also means I hate wasting time doing things I don’t think are important. I don’t like running errands. I am the worst carpool participant I know because I calculate exactly how much longer I’ll be driving instead of already being at an event or doing the next thing I want to do. I don’t like how long it takes to clean my house or brush my teeth or cook my food. I get very restless when I’m waiting. Meanwhile, I am perfectly happy spending hours talking to a friend or walking around with my dog or practicing singing or writing or teaching a student or sitting on a plane so I can see or experience something amazing. I am either approaching infinite levels of patience or else I’m struggling to find any patience at all.
I know in my gut there will never be enough time. I love the world so much, how could there be? I will never have enough time snuggling with Nala, and I will never have enough time to write all the books I want to write, and I will never have enough time to learn all the things I’d like to learn. I won’t have enough time to meet all the people I’d love to meet, and I won’t have enough time to see all the places I’d love to see.
And most painfully, I won’t have enough time with the people I love. They will all die too soon for me, no matter the circumstances. And I will die too soon to love them as much as I want to love them. And all of us will be wiped away, our lives and loves and stories forgotten.
What, then, is left? How do I deal with this anxiety around death?
I love with everything inside of myself, even if my heart breaks repeatedly. I notice what is precious to me, and I hold it close. I celebrate being alive right now, and I celebrate that you’re alive too. I grieve when you leave because I refuse to downplay your significance in my heart. I laugh and I play and I work and I do things that scare me. It all matters to me, and when it doesn’t matter to me, I ask myself what I need to change so my life will become more in line with what I care about.
Robert Jackson Bennett said: “Maybe this is what I think the human condition is: shrieking and raging at the universe to pay attention, begging it to understand that this matters, and hearing silence.”
I’ve been hearing that silence since I was eleven years old. Bad things happen, and they change how you see the world, and you know it’s happening and you don’t want it to happen and then it happens anyway. And you can never return to that place of innocence that you never appreciated until you lost it.
But we still have choices. We can choose to be ruled by our fears, or we can cultivate bravery. We can give up, or we can work for what we care about. We can be silent, or we can tell our stories. We can close down, or we can open up.
If the universe answers with silence, so be it. We don’t need the universe to tell us what matters. We already know.
Death is always there, lurking in its otherwise deserted corner. Every moment it stays there is a victory. Every achievement I make, every milestone I reach, every hug I give and every connection I strengthen. Every breath I draw, every story I tell, every place I visit, every song I sing, every day I make the smallest bit brighter for another person. Every time I look into your eyes and we have a moment of truly seeing the other person standing there. They are all victories, and they all matter.
I am afraid to die, but I am so lucky to have this chance to live.
” I am afraid to die, but I am so lucky to have this chance to live.”
That’s exactly how I feel. It is such a wonderful thing to be ‘aware’ and to share and connect that I would never tire of it, or of the soap opera called current events. Regarding Twitter, however, I am on it, but I am not sure if we are Twitter chums, or even how to chat on there which is a shame, as other people seem to love it so much
I’ve never had much fear of death, but it’s been coming upon me lately in a very sudden fashion.
Very deep and touching blog. I usually don’t mix my personal beliefs with my postings but I couldn’t help but look up this link. Feel free to read from it if you want. If you don’t agree with it or are not interested, no harm/no foul.
http://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/wp20140101/is-death-the-end/
If you don’t mind, I’m going to argue with you on one point: you are *not* the worst carpool partner ever. I found you to be a charming, interesting companion during both of our three-hour-plus road trips.
Even though it was raining and I was terrified I’d slide the stupid car right off the road because I’m from L.A. and have virtually no experience in rainy conditions. Hopefully that particular fact was lost on you. 😉
Hi!
I came across this post on G+, and read it and the one you link to. I am glad there are so many people in the world who do contemplate their existence in the first place, without their main worry being what Katy Perry wore and how this or that dress will fit them … Sorry if it sounds cynical, but I’ve felt for a long time that the human society would evolve to such higher places all together if some level of self knowledge were cultivated.
But, I wanted to share my point of view, since it is different. And not exactly a point of view, but a finding of my own introspections.
I am 29. When I say it to some people, they think I’m soo young, to some I have come so far since being a toddler. To some, I should’ve had kids by now.
But to me, it is a number. It has always been and am quite sure will always be a number. I have had a perfectly happy life, single child, very loving and supporting family, great in school, lovely start of a career, found a man who loves me and whom I love. But that is the “earthly” me.
For I have always been in search or questioning what this whole existence is all about. And to start from the end of my conclusions so far, I am not afraid of death.
It’s not related to religion, faith, after life, science, cryogenics etc. To anything. I have this vision of my own life so often as if I’m looking upon it through a telescope from far away. I was a child, I am a daughter whose parents are too far away to care for them as I wish I would, I love them, and yet I know they will die, as did my grandpa, as will my grandmothers who aren’t in great shape. My grandma was a widow early on, so I’ve pictured losing the man I love young , or old.
I am not afraid to die. What I do not want to experience, is suffering. I would suffer when the ones I love (because we’re endowed with empathy , what can you do?) suffer, or die. I would suffer myself from either physical pain when I’m old, or have an accident or become disabled. I would suffer if they suffer for others. But I am not afraid to die. I have never understood the craziness (for me, personal p.o.v) of “öh dear, I’m another year older”. I wanted to be older and still do, to experience more, to see more. But if I don’t, it’s fine. My body is just a vessel, encoded by DNA, working its way through life and chemicals and decay and young or old age. I do wish somehow life would go on, I do believe in God in a weird approach, I do hope this whole Earth-Big-Bang-Universe full of variations doesn’t exist as we explore it for nothing.
And children…I want to have a child to see it grow and evolve, to see if I can in fact teach it as I believe, I have no expectations of its greatness in business or sports, but I would like it to be healthy …this bodily vessel is tricky to handle. But seeing this society and what it’s done and continues to do, how power of one influences lives of many and the many will sometimes stand it for no apparently rational reason and suffer… why bring another child into it? So the human race survives? So it suffers?
So I wonder, why am I alive in the end? Of course my parents wanted me and loved me and still do want the best for me. But why did THEY want to bring me into this world? Where after a few years of life in the baby-toddle cocoon I’d inevitably hit the world, get sicknesses, growing pains, a boyfriend, fear MSTs, my lies (although I never did anything from simply fear of hurting them and from respect, which made me end up quite a nice child to have I guess), fear accidents, poverty, the husband, future grandchildren being born with problems etc.
We do this to ourselves, and I will have a child (if the vessel allows it ) mostly because my husband wants to and I want to for some reasons. And I will love it and cherish it or them and we’ll be happy through whatever comes our way.But I’ll always be looking at myself and my life through a telescope. Because nothing will change the nature of our life. And nothing can be done for the body decay (whether we discover scientifically how to live to 1000 , we’d still die somehow).
There a brightside: I can go over bad stuff in a strange way, because I get behind a telescope. I become a robot when I need to and there’s no depression because I already accept it all…
Be brave and keep the introspection running, I am sure we all have a balance point where “Knowing thyself” kicks in for life if we can search for it up to the end.
C
Beautifully said, Amy.
“We can choose to be ruled by our fears, or we can cultivate bravery. We can give up, or we can work for what we care about. We can be silent, or we can tell our stories. We can close down, or we can open up.”
Especially this.
Thank you.
I don’t think I have ever been afraid of death. Life, on the other hand, has many times terrified me. I never felt invincible or like I would live forever or that it could never happen to me. I am afraid of suffering: to linger with cancer, or to be paralyzed, or to lose a limb, or to go blind (I’ve had glasses most of my life), or to go deaf, or to lose my precious mind to something like Alzheimers or dementia. If I ever have unprotected sex I will get the girl pregnant.
When I’ve been through a few suicidal periods in my past the thing that kept me alive was not any hope for the future, but the feeling that there was no reliable way to kill myself; a gunshot to the head or an attempted hanging could leave me a vegetable, jumping off a building could simply cripple me, pills or other substances might only make me violently ill and leave me alive with organ damage.
When my mother died, I dealt with it fairly easily because I’d spent ever day since the day she told me she had cancer convinced she was going to die (I never told her that). Most of her life that I could remember she spent overworked and exhausted and with few friends, and toward the end the cancer crippled her body and, near the end, discombobulated her mind.
I watched a friend’s grandmother live into her late 90s, becoming a burden on her child and grandchild. Stooped over, confined to a walker or wheelchair, losing her mind to dementia, prone to falling and/or blacking out.
After I buried my mother, I traveled to sights I should have seen years before. My life changed. I’ve traveled more miles in the last 4 years than I did in the 15 before than, and more frequently than any point in my life. I’m 32, but I know lots of people who tell me stories of the places they traveled when they were kids and teenagers. In many ways my life began at 28; that there will never be enough time is often painfully obvious. Parts of Ken Burns’ National Parks miniseries made me cry for all the scenic beauty I have never (and perhaps may never) lay my eyes upon.
Death is a release, not a punishment.
Yes, yes, yes.
On second thought, maybe one fewer “yes”. Lack of a reliable way to kill yourself is a poor reason to stay alive; see http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15389230 for example. As an alternative reason, if suffering is any concern, consider how killing yourself may affect people close to you.
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