My brother thinks Jake has more than a year left to live. I’m an optimist. Miracles happen, but it doesn’t seem likely.
My entire life, the thought of Jake dying torched my soul. I avoided this idea entirely.
Until one evening, about two years ago, when I drew a bubble bath and began reading a book called Being Mortal. I distinctly remember gripping the book, and digesting a passage about how our bodies are slowly deteriorating. By the age of thirty, our lung capacity declines and the demise continues from there; our teeth slowly decay, our hair changes color, we lose muscle mass….Each word I consumed felt like my gut was stepping into a bottomless pile of quicksand.
After reading this passage, I peered down at my left index finger. I observed the criss-cross wrinkle patterns on my skin. I stared at my hair follicles. The deeper grooves on my knuckles. Dang, I need to moisturize more. Why is my finger hair so much shorter than the ones on my arm? Where did this shiny shield we call a “fingernail” come from? How does my my brain Simon-Says this finger to bend back and forth anytime it wants?
I’ve been the caretaker of my dying finger for 25 years, and never had I observed it in such vivid detail.
It was this bubble bath-the pondering of my finger’s fate- that gave birth to my obsession with death, and, not coincidentally, the moment some of my friend’s questioned whether or not to check me into a psychiatric ward.
I became intrigued by the fear surrounding death. Why are we all so afraid of it? Why do we feel like a kindergartner stuck alone underneath a rainbow parachute every time we think about our loved ones passing? Why does no one talk about it?
Death is one of the few things in life that is 100% certain. It’s unavoidable. Yet we treat it like it’s not just the elephant in the room, but the largest tyrannosaurus rex of the kingdom. It’s as if we think that acknowledging it will somehow bring us down faster.
A few months later, I consumed another book, True Refuge. The author, Tara Brach, talks about an exercise she performed at a meditation retreat. The participants were told to find a stranger and hug them. While arms still wrapped around their partner, they were instructed to repeat the following: “I’m going to die. You’re going to die. And all we have are these precious moments.”
I immediately began trying this exercise on every person I encountered. My mom, friends, teammates, the mailman (jk, I didn’t take it that far). I asked for a hug, and when they obliged, I’d hit them them with the dialogue. Again, most of them further questioned my sanity.
For me, it felt like a similar experience to the night of my finger analyzation. When I acknowledged death, everything seemed to matter more.
From this point on, I started consciously accepting that Jake was going to die. I was greeted with deep sadness, but it wasn’t as scary as before. I found I cherished our time together even more.
On an off day, I whimsically drove with Jake up to the Oregon coast (his favorite place) and we hopped around from beach to beach, ending at Oceanside, the location of my childhood beach house. I pulled up to a side street, rolled down the windows to breath in the roaring ocean air, and climbed to the backseat to cuddle with Jake. I slept less than three winks the night, but I didn’t care. I knew this may be our last time here together.
