
I’m trying to make friends with death, trying to get closer without scaring myself too much. I’m trying to understand whatever I can understand. About death. About my death. I’ll be 77 this coming March so the road ahead of me is significantly shorter than the road behind me.
I sense death inching closer every day, every hour, every minute. There will be no escape. This is true for every living being, of course. Human, animal, sea creature and plant. Worm and living cell. All will end up dead. I’m trying to get comfortable with that inevitable outcome.
I have witnessed death. I could fill pages about the deaths of my animals, my brother, my parents, and a couple much-loved teachers/mentors. I’ve grieved them all. Especially my beloved parakeet, Dusty, who died when I was 16. I wept for each of my dogs when they died. Cal, Stoney, Timmy, Peri, Olivia, and Libby.
I didn’t cry when either of my parents died, not like I’d cried for my dead animals. My parents each died bit by bit over many years, so by the time they actually left, I’d already let them go. I wasn’t with either of them during their final moments, although I kissed each of them good-bye soon after. Those cold cheeks. Those empty bodies.
When I walked into the room a few hours after my father had died, the air felt tense, disturbed. He had tried hard not to die but death had found him anyway. I sensed his spirit still hovering in the room. So I talked to him until I felt the room shift and until I was sure my dad was the rest of the way gone. Then I kissed him and left.
My mom died two years later, in her sleep. It was a gentle end, in a way. No pain or fear. But it came after five years of living in a nursing home, partially paralyzed by a massive stroke, unable to walk. She’d asked death to come years before. It hadn’t. When I came to her bedside the morning after she finally died, the room felt peaceful, not unsettled as my father’s room had been. She’d definitely moved on. And even if she hadn’t, I had nothing left to say to her. Evengood-bye felt redundant; I said good-bye anyway. “It’s finally over, Mom.” And I kissed her.
Am I saying now that I know a thing or two about death because I observed death in a parakeet, multiple dogs, and my parents? No. It’s just that it’s easier to talk about those deaths than the death I’m trying to cozy up to, to get a better look at. A death yet to be. My upcoming death.
I like to think that the prospect of my death doesn’t scare me, because I’ve already had a few experiences with being dead myself, sort of.
In 1990, when I was forty-two, I was hospitalized for weeks with a mysterious illness: fevers of 106, inflammation of my liver, spleen, intestines, and heart. I was dying and no one knew why or how to stop it. I longed to end the pain and boredom of being so sick. One dismal morning I considered killing myself. But, as soon as I considered it, I remembered that I’d promised my therapist, Emily, many years before, that I would never “harm myself by accident or on purpose.” I’d meant those words when I’d said them. I’d meant them for forever. So, damn it, I said to myself that morning. Suicide is off the table for me, even though I feel like I’m already dying.
I did almost die that summer, but IV steroids and good spiritual medicine saved me. When I was well enough to leave the hospital, I was immensely grateful to be alive. I don’t have the space here to elucidate that gratitude but, believe me, it was limitless.
My other close experience with my own death occurred during a heart ablation, a procedure to correct a misfiring of my heart. It is a minor operation, done under anesthesia. I expected it to be no big deal. But it was a big deal.
When the procedure was finished and I began to wake up, still on a gurney, a voice (my doctor’s?) told me that I was going to the ICU recovery area. I was still sleepy, but I was pretty sure that the ICU had not been part of the plan. The voice continued to explain that something had gone wrong during the ablation.
I had no time to worry about what “gone wrong” meant, because as I was wheeled into the ICU, I suddenly felt myself falling asleep again. “I feel weird,” I told my doctor. I didn’t tell her that everything was going dark, but it was. I heard an anxious voice say She’s throwing PVCs! I recognized the word PVC from the TV medical shows I watch, and I was pretty sure that PVCs shouldn’t be thrown. Someone said something about giving me a drug through my IV.
And then I was suddenly in a quiet dark place. I guessed that I was in trouble, but I didn’t feel afraid. Whatever the PVC situation was, I knew I couldn’t fix it. Maybe the medical people could. But maybe not. I realized, without any fear, that I might not make it back into the light, into my life.
I felt myself slowly, gently falling, floating in darkness. I called on my deceased father to help me manage this, whatever this was. I also called upon Richard, a friend and mentor, also deceased, to be with me. I imagined that these two men, both of whom in life had loved and cared for me, could guide me to wherever I was going. I felt held, not by their human arms, but by their love. I stopped trying to know what I should do. Clearly, I should do nothing. I told my two deceased protecters that it was okay if I died now because “I’ve had a very
rich and fulfilling life. I’ve done what I came here to do.”
And then the medical voices returned, and the lights filtered through my closed eyelids. I was lifted off the gurney and onto a bed. A nurse spent the night at my bedside. When I woke enough to remember that something unexpected had happened, I asked the nurse to explain it to me.
She said that my ablation had had to be stopped before it was complete because my pulmonary artery had spasmed, and if it had continued, I would have died. The artery spasmed again when I was being delivered to the ICU and that was why I passed out.
“PVC’s?” I asked her.
“That means your heart was beating too fast.”
“Could I have died then?”
“In a way, you did die. Twice. Briefly.”
I died briefly. Twice.
So I guess I’ve met Death a few times in my life now.
The first time, when I was so sick, wasn’t so much a meeting as just a knock on death’s door. A realization that I stood on the threshold. With the ablation adventure, I’d walked straight through the door, but I didn’t stay. I wasn’t allowed to stay.
I’d been planning, in this blog, to say that these brief experiences with death were close calls, narrow escapes, but that would make it sound like my
brushes with death were terrifying. They didn’t seem terrifying at the time. I wasn’t terrified when I was dangerously sick; I didn’t have the energy to be terrified, I also wasn’t terrified the two times when I died briefly: I was anesthetized during the first, so I felt nothing, and during the second, I felt calm, safely held.
I suppose these experiences actually were close calls, close calls that were scary only afterwards, not at the time.
So have I made friends with death, then? Let’s just say that we’ve met, death and I, but we’re only casual friends, not intimate. I wouldn’t feel comfortable inviting death into my home, for example. Not at this point. There’s much more I need to know.
A slightly different version of this essay appeared on the Psychology Today blog page, January 2025