Death Isn't Scary, If You Live

I had a somewhat unsettling remembrance today as I sat scrolling Facebook. I was wasting my time doing something that doesn't bring me much joy for no reason at all. There are dozens of things I could have been doing that I would enjoy more than turning my brain to mush. So, why wasn't I? 

At the beginning of this year at work, I was assigned to help take care of a woman who was in her final hours of life. While I was sitting with her, I had the chance to take another look at my life and the way I was living it. I decided I wanted to change. After a while, I forgot. But today, sitting there, reminded me of who I want to become.

Last semester, in my English class, we were tasked to write a personal memoir on something that had a significant meaning in our life. I chose to write about the day I watched someone die because I felt it changed my life and could change other's too. It's not very long and obviously there are a few parts that I embellished for the sake of my homework assignment (I do not now, nor have ever, had death anxiety but it is a very real condition) but the message is the same.

It was her last breath that gave me my first. It was her final view of this mortal world that opened my eyes. It was her loss of temporal memories that reminded me of mine. You see, there’s something about watching a person die that changes you.

                To me, death was like a black hole. It sucks everything into a black abyss leaving nothing but cold, darkness behind. I feared death like some people fear heights. My hands began to shake and my stomach churned. As often as I could, I avoided it. I had what you call death anxiety, or the fear of death.

                Now, considering my fear of death, I am familiar with it. I worked in a nursing home, a place where death makes permanent residents. In all my time there, however, I managed to only encounter it twice. Although I had dealt with death closely for years, I was not comfortable in the least.

I was working as a CNA that momentous day and the report I received was anything but ordinary. I had to do the seemingly impossible: end of life care. My only task that day was to make my patient’s transition from life more comfortable. At my first glimpse of my patient, all I could see was death. I was looking death straight in the eyes and I was scared. And then something happened. I realized my sweet patient was alone. No family, just me. My fear of death, I decided, could wait until my shift was over, because no one should die alone. She turned from a dying patient, to a patient that needed me more than ever to care for her.

As I was sitting there, running a brush through her matted, black hair, my mind began to wander randomly to a time when I was younger. I was playing with my older brother and laughing hysterically. That was the day he taught me how to climb up a tree.

My patient moaned and I helped her change positions. My thoughts were brought back to reality as I wondered what she did with her life. Where did she travel? How did she change the world? Who did she love? What were her happiest memories?

My thoughts strayed again as I began to braid her hair. I remembered the time I went fishing with my dad and caught my first fish. I remembered cutting my hair and donating it to kids with cancer. I re-watched myself as I performed in my first band concert, and played my first solo. I thought of the days I spent in other worlds as I finished dozens of novels. I thought about laughing with friends, traveling to other countries, and spending time with family. Hundreds of joyous memories flashed through my brain.

As the memories flashed by, they slowly changed from things I loved and enjoyed to dull, unfulfilling ones. I remembered more Netflix, Facebook, and Instagram in almost a lifeless pattern. Phone, T.V., laptop, iPod, phone, laptop, iPod. Years passed on in my brain and it was a blur of discontent. If I were here, laying on my death bed, is this what I would remember? Facebook statuses and Netflix binges? I realized my life had become overrun by things that would never create true happiness. Death anxiety causes you to be “less satisfied with life,” and it claimed me for a while.

My dying patient shifted one final time. I vowed to never take a moment for granted again. I would create a life I would enjoy remembering. I would make memories with those I loved, laugh at everything, go on adventures, change the world.

As I watched her chest rise and fall one last time, I realized death isn’t scary if you live.