Death

If someone asked me now, “what are you scared of the most?” I might think of many things such as not being able to pay off my student loans, failing my class, or being tortured, but none of them would be my answer. It is not to say that i’m not scared of them at all. In fact, I really am! But those things don’t really matter to me or perhaps another way of saying it is, those things scare me but they are not scary at all when I think about death. It comes to every single one of us, of course. And it is an inescapable reality that everyone has to face once to conclude the life they had lived. I know that. But I am very scared of death. Why?

Well, the idea of just explaining why death is scary is like explaining why Hungover movies are funny, meaning it is just funny and that’s all there is to it, but I want to perhaps dig little bit deeper than that to know for myself why I am scared of dying and also why I am scared of other people, such as my family, dying.

It is not a philosophical attempt — let me make it clear — but it’s just a way of clarifying my thought for a bit by writing here.

So, let me begin.

But actually, hold on a moment. I think I want to sort of make a plot for how I go about answering this question, so here is how I proceed to it.

First, I will try to write in a vivid description my image of death. Then, after that, if I haven’t. changed my mind by then, I would like to think little more on what I thought about and possibly elaborate on that. The truth is I don’t really know how to go about telling this, so let me actually just start by describing my image of death and I will think about what I can do after I am done with this task.

When I think about death, I think of it is as something filled with nothingness and little bit of pain, but probably the following sentence pretty much summarizes my main idea of death: the complete surrender to the uncontrollable fate.

It is this uncontrollability and surrendering part I have troubles accepting. It’s just scary like I am down in the bottom of the miles-long well with no way to get out of it. Just try to imagine you are trapped in that kind of well.

For the first few seconds, you may think it’s lucky that you were able to survive after the miles long fall down in the well, but the moment later, when your body is fully drenched in the smelly water under the complete darkness, struggling to stay afloat, it occurs to you how you would get out of here. You may try to touch the thick cold wall to see if you can climb up this well, but soon you will see that it’s smooth and you can’t climb it up like a climber. You would try to measure the diameter of the well to see if you can slowly get up there by pushing your legs against the wall with your back pressing the other wall, but then you will find that the diameter of the well is way too long for you to crawl up like that. Then, as if to find some hope, like a deadly injured zebra attempting to move his head to cling on to its life as it is being eaten by a flock of hungry lion, you would probably try to reach your hand to your surroundings to see if your hand touches anything that can be useful, but nothing is there but smelly water and your own existence, enveloped in the complete darkness.

Then at that moment, you will see that there might be no hope, and the thought of it scares you like hell. Your thinking goes, “I might die here.” This thought however gradually changes. It goes from “I might die here” to “I will die here.” And it is at that moment, you finally accept your fate and surrender. Then the death becomes very closer to you perhaps.

I am trying to relate to this person in the well as much as possible as if this is actually occurring to me. If this actually occurs to me, what would I do? Death is slowly coming up to me certainly. Will I try to reject my fate like a zebra that still resist the lions as they are literally eating his own body? Or will I surrender to the fate with no attempt of resisting. I don’t know.

But as you die in that well, whether or not you accept it or reject it, you will agree that death is closest it can ever get to you, and in that moment, you might think about your life and how you could have lived. You might not dwell on that thought for a while, but the idea of it at least occurs to you. “What if I die now, would I be satisfied with my life?”

I don’t know what you would think about on the verge of death, but if it’s me, maybe I will think about my family.

Imagine yourself lying in your death bed waiting for the death to take your life away. I would probably think about my childhood, and how I was. And I probably wonder those who passed before me, and I might be encouraged by them. My close friend that passed away during my senior year in high school. I might think of him in my death bed.

He was a good friend of mine. I really liked him and he enjoyed being with me. I often try to make fun of him for his interesting and strange actions — for example, one time I caught him watching YouTube with the screen upside down. It was not like he made a mistake (you can never make that stupid mistake), but it was clear to me he was doing it on purpose. I know humans are curious being and like experiments but you don’t watch YouTube with your screen upside down for straight up ten minutes. It still makes me laugh even to this day. I mean what the heck lol!

Anyway, I really liked him because he was little strange but strange in a way that makes people laugh. If you had met him for the first time, you might think he is a descent well-mannered guy. But soon after you get along with him, you will discover funny things about him one after another. And as you discover them, you would feel he is opening up to you in some way, and the thought of it makes you want to get to know about him even more. It’s as if you are digging the hole and each time you smash your shovel into the ground, you discover some gold and you just keep digging it over and over and over again because you keep getting even more gold as you go deeper.

He was interesting person and this guy was bottomless in the sense that he keeps doing funny things over and over again.

However one day, I vividly remember my school teacher slowly entering the classroom with his eyes all red and his cheek wet with tears. My first thought was he looks sick today, but few seconds later, it became clear to me he was crying. Then as he announced the news that my friend, whose name I wish to maintain anonymous, has passed away and said he cannot disclose anything regarding his death until further notice from his parents. I remember the world before me collapsing and falling into pieces.

I just met him and talked him the day before he died. I was expecting to see him in school that day. But he is no longer there. I cannot talk to him. I cannot laugh with him. I cannot make fun of him. I cannot discover his interesting and strange actions. I can do none of those things anymore. He was alive one day and all of sudden, there is his body and he is no longer there, like a deserted house with no residents. It confuses me. Like, I am petting a dog but the moment later, it turns into a rock. It’s no longer there. “I for sure had a dog in front of me but now it became a rock.” It’s that sudden and the thought of his death feels like it’s a magic.

I wished my teacher would reveal to me that it was all magic and he will show up again tomorrow as if nothing happened. But that never occurred. His death felt something distant and unreal until I saw his body lying in the coffin a day later at the funeral. I was overwhelmed with an irrepressible fear, sorrow, and grief.

It still gives me deep sorrow and certain degree of pain, so I won’t write too much about it here, but that moment is very important to me because that’s my closest experience to death. And probably my first ever close-up encounter to death.

I will probably think about those things in my death bed and finally be little bit encouraged perhaps by those people who faced the inevitable fate and surrender to it before me.