Too many people have died around me lately. Friends. Family. Past loves. Brothers. Most older but a disturbing amount my age or younger. The grief often hits without warning: a strange tightness in my chest, scrolling past an old friend’s obituary, or the memory of holding my grandmother’s hand as she fought for her final breaths. Sometimes it’s simpler and stranger—glancing at my phone and realizing I still have half a dozen dead people in my contacts. (Once, caller ID actually rang from one of those numbers. Not cool.)
In those moments, mortality stops being abstract. We’re mortal. I’m mortal. This life ends—no do-overs, no extensions, no saved games to fall back on, no negotiation. The truth lands like a brick, and for once I don’t shove it away like I did when I was younger. I actually let it sit.
The feelings crash in, messy and overlapping. Fear arrives first and hardest. Death doesn’t care about my schedule or my bucket list. It could come tomorrow—a drunk driver, a random clot in this cursed leg, or my heart simply deciding it’s finished. The sheer randomness and infinite possibilities terrifies me.
I used to picture dying peacefully in my sleep, maybe surrounded by family, or at least leaving some meaningful mark. Instead I confront the possibility that it could all just… stop. Lights out. Gone. It feels like a cheap shot from the universe. Just a kick in the spiritual balls. A cosmic street fight. No rules. No promises.
And yet, right beside the fear, something calmer slips in. Not the brittle, forced “everything’s fine” peace I usually sell to myself, but something real. When I stop fighting the fact that I will die, the pressure releases. Tomorrow stops feeling like an enormous final exam. Suddenly the coffee has taste. Music becomes music again. I notice how the wind moves every leaf on the trees behind the restaurant next door. Background noise turns into the main event and my own personal concert.
I admittedly still dread the unknown—no one likes stepping out of existence—but there’s also relief in dropping the pretense of forever. No more chasing things that don’t matter. The fear keeps me awake and grateful; the peace lets me stop running myself into the ground. They don’t cancel each other—they coexist.
Joining my Lodge and learning Hiram’s legend gave me an unexpected lens on this strange fragility. Death is the great equalizer: Master Craftsman or newest apprentice, it claims everyone. Through ritual’s blind allegory, I faced death symbolically, watched the body rot beneath debris, and saw the spirit reborn. For a brief moment the earlier feelings of finality clashed with that promise of renewal.
My ideas about how death “should” happen have shifted too. I once wanted guarantees—painless, quick, maybe skipping straight past Purgatory to the Heavenly Gates. Reality offers no such promises though. Accepting that brings humility. You look at your life not with gloom, but with a stunned “fuck, I’m lucky to still be here.” type of mentality. You say the things you’ve held back. You stop wasting time on garbage that doesn’t count.
I’m told people who’ve stood at the edge often report the same arc in their final hours: terror is real, then something shifts. The struggle drains away, and a quiet settles in—like the soul finally exhaling. That’s the peace I want.
Bottom line: knowing you’re going to die doesn’t ruin life. Sometimes it illuminates it. The fear keeps you human. The peace sets you free. You walk a strange, beautiful line between being scared shitless and strangely okay with it all. And oddly enough, that’s exactly when you start really living—seeing in true color, hearing the hidden notes in songs you’ve known forever. In the final moments… you truly live.