We Start at the End
Not to be all “I open at the close” but here we are, in a new writing space, and we are starting with death, my friends.
Lately, I have very much been Barbie when she stops the dance party to say “Do you guys ever think about dying?” I had a moment in my small group Bible study back in January where I said something similar. Something like, “Yeah, but don’t any of you ever think there’s something super wrong with your body?” They kindly, but honestly all said no. And then they asked, “… do you?”
To be fair, to my knowledge I am a relatively healthy 36-year-old. I get regular sleep. I try to exercise daily. There are no obvious signs pointing to imminent death.
My life has largely been one of comfort and love, little joys strung together, and room to breathe and stretch — but I have brushed with death and I have watched as it stepped into the scene and left with not just people I know, but people I deeply love. I have lived through what, to me, is the worst case scenario of death and I have spent years mourning and moving through significant losses.
I watched one of my grandmothers recede right before me in the fifth grade. She had taken care of me since I was a wee one. As I got old enough for school, she would drive me in the mornings, pick me up in the afternoons, and cart me to my dance classes and piano lessons. She was the kind of person who always arrived extra early at special programs to save the good seats. Then over Christmas break in the fifth grade, Alzheimer’s, which she had quietly and probably ferociously tried to keep at bay for some time, rushed the field of her mind. Over a two-week period she became someone who couldn’t care for herself, let alone me. She lived for another seven years, but the clear-minded version of her did not return.
My dad and my mom have had their own bouts with cancer at 39 and 49 respectively. They are, mercifully, both examples of what can happen when the disease is caught early and swiftly dealt with. Thanks be to God, they have lived and flourished many decades beyond those hospital days. Being under 10 in one case and a senior in high school in the other, I was largely shielded from the worries and threats of their cases. I caught just a glimpse and felt just a prick of the threat.
My nephew Rhett was born with an exceedingly rare genetic condition and lived six and a half months.
I am not unaware that scary things can happen to our bodies and our lives without our consent, which is partly why I have, for many years, felt a mild dread at the possibility that cancer — or some other life-threatening condition — may be sitting on my path like a lazy lion, ready to pounce when I turn the corner and happen upon it.
Up until recently though, I had what felt was the denial of youth — how rare are the cases of people in their teens, 20s and early 30s? Passing the threshold of 35, though, did something to me. Plausible deniability was the price at the door.
I now hear of cases of people my exact age or younger being diagnosed with serious diseases and the dread that was once a faraway baseline has turned up to a frequency I feel everywhere in my body. Sometimes it turns up to a shriek that makes me cower and cry out in fear. (Or in reality, lay awake until the early hours of the morning unable to sleep.) This isn’t a frequent occurrence, but it has happened several times this year and made me feel like Barbie when she record-scratch-stopped the dance party to ask if anyone ever thinks about dying.
Three years ago I had an anxiety attack — my first ever — in the middle of a Broadway show. My chest felt a way I had never known before and I wondered, “Am I going to die right here during Funny Girl with Beanie Feldstein on stage because I don’t want to get up and disturb people’s view?”
My fingers were still tingling as we later wandered into Times Square shops, on the hunt for jackets due to the surprisingly chilly weather. That night as we walked to dinner in Chelsea, I followed in my friend’s wake, walking slowly with my hand over my chest and trying to will peace over my body and my mind.
Last week when I had this moment that ended up being several days of anxiousness all over my body, I asked myself some questions about why I was so afraid. After all, my faith teaches — joyously I might add — that this life is not the end. In fact, if it wasn’t so dang long, I would ask that this quote be carved into my tombstone. (Who knows, though — maybe we’ll just add a QR code to my headstone or my website after I die. That’s a thought.) Beyond the teachings of my faith tradition, I have a personal belief that Jesus will be with me in the end, whatever it looks like. My experiences with Him so far have given me this confidence. In addition, after years of stiff-arming the idea that nothing happens to God’s beloved without God’s permission, I still believe it to be true. I will not go before God is ready to welcome me into what’s next. I will not be early or late to that party — I will be right on time.
(If you’re still here reading, thank you for hanging. I know it’s hard for some people to read or talk about the Big, the Bad, the Scary of life.)
But back to the question — why am I so afraid?
While I may not be afraid of what comes next, I am afraid of pain. All it takes is a cold for me to mourn the gift of my healthy, strong, vibrant body. Real, enduring physical pain? I just don’t know how I will take it.
I’m not a fighter. I always prefer to bow out rather than bump heads with people. How would I contend with this kind of threat?
I am afraid it will be my fault because of my weight (whatever the number currently is), my stress, or some practice (or lack of practice) I’ve held over the years.
I’m afraid of the pain it could cause people I love. A lover of Irish goodbyes, I would much prefer to slip out then have people to walk me down a long and painful path. I know this is selfish and shortsighted and even cruel to those who love me — I would fight on their behalf and walk every step I could with them and I know they would do (and want to do) the same for me.
What if my health insurance isn’t enough to cover the costs and I am sunk forever after? This isn’t really a problem if I die, but only if I live …which reminds me of the time my friend told me she’s not afraid of dying in a plane crash. “If it’s my time, it’s my time,” she said. Quickly though she followed this up with “… but what if it’s just my time to be paralyzed?”
I’ve never personally had something Big, Scary, Terrible happen to my body. And because it hasn’t happened, I do not want it to happen. I know science and medicine are miraculous and for all the things without cures, there are perhaps more incredible treatments and surgeries and ways to heal the body. There are many trained helpers out there and they would help me too. I also know there are many, many people who didn’t have the privilege of living to my age—across this generation and the many, many before us.
I want to live.
This last one — I want to live — makes me cry when I think about it. Despite the heartache, despite the distinct and unique losses, despite the challenges, despite all the harshness of the world, I want to live.
Life to me is many things —
Sun on my skin
Arms open to an extra big hug
Hearing my name called from across the room
The shock and rush after doing something I thought I couldn’t
The feeling of settling in as someone I love tells the same story for the 500th time
The aliveness running under my skin when an artist of any kind gets it right
The look on my brother’s face when he’s saying something he knows is true and/or a bit cheeky
Songs that meet me in the exact right moment
Traveling somewhere I’ve never been before
Dancing in my living room
Color everywhere
Shedding old versions and becoming new versions of myself
Driving with the sunroof open
Gentleness
Curiosity
Grass under my feet
Trees over my head
Looking people in the eye
Listening to the birds sing
Pulling the words out of my mind and putting them down on a page
Beauty, beauty, beauty
Friendship with Jesus
Conversation — random, long time coming, run of the mill
Going through, not around
Hearts on my path
Remembering I don’t belong in anyone’s box
Reading bedtime stories to the children I love (which will hopefully someday turn into texts and phone calls and who knows what else)
Walks at sunset
Coffee at sunrise
Shivering in the cold air
Rivers of sweat down my back in summer
Asking questions
Laughing at nonsense and tomfoolery
Using the word tomfoolery
Healing
Hoping
Getting back up and saying “onward”
Life is so many things and I want to live. All of this I told my counselor this week and afterwards I saw a friend post on Instagram, “What if everything actually works out the way you hope it does?”
I don’t know if it was little by little or in a few large slides, but I have lost much of my muscle for this kind of hopeful imagining. This day, though, I sat in my car and decided to imagine, just for a moment, what things could be like if I don’t perish from the earth due to a Big, Scary Thing in this decade or the next or the next.
If it actually worked out, I would be 87 and ready to move on. It would happen quietly in the warmth of my bed. Before then I would have loved with all I’ve got, over and over. I would have written and read so many things. I would have talked to so many strangers. I would have enjoyed long relationships with the adult versions of the children I now love. They would be okay to see me off — and I would leave my apartment in Paris to them. I would live in the same house or facility as my friends because we would have finagled a way to make that work. We would have spent our last years together, talking, checking in on each other, and probably Venmo’ing back and forth the same 20 dollars we always have. I would be old and full of years and ready. Willing.
What a privilege that would be. I don’t know if I will make it that far, but I can’t live under the stress of worrying every day that I won’t.
So I guess my work now is to do more of what will make me feel ready and willing. Part of that work, I think, is here on the page. It may only be me here and that’s okay. I need to be here. I need to be noticing and writing, sorting out and sharing. The 87-year-old version of me wants that for me. So does the 36-year-old version.
If you choose to check back in here, I promise it won’t always be about death. It will life — so much life. Some of it unserious, some of it the most serious — but life, life, life it will be.
Love you, mean it,
Caitlin
The same $20 Venmo’d back and forth. 💜
I love you and I love your writing. As long as God allows, we are in this together.