End of Days

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.

Dear Lord, as a loyal Catholic I come before You with a modest request: when judgment comes, please apply ‘time served’ toward my Purgatory sentence before entering your kingdom.

Dealing with leftist liberals and their endless nonsense down here has felt like boot camp for the soul. Surely that counts toward time off?

The past few weeks have felt heavier than usual. The pain, once a familiar shadow, has sharpened into something relentless, digging deeper with every movement, every breath. Nights stretch long and broken—waves of ache pulling me awake again and again, leaving my mind foggy, thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind. Sleep, that quiet refuge, has become a battleground, and without it, even simple clarity feels out of reach. I find myself whispering, Lord, I need relief. Please.

Yet in the midst of this storm, a quiet certainty holds firm: I still trust in God’s plans, even when they remain hidden from me. I don’t see the full picture—why this intensity now, why this prolonged season—but I cling to the promise that He knows the path, that His ways are higher, purposeful, and ultimately good. Jeremiah 29:11 echoes in my heart: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I repeat it like a lifeline when doubt creeps in.

I’ve been through worse before—sharper spikes, darker valleys—and God carried me through each one. This sustained burn is different, testing endurance in new ways, but the truth remains: I’ve survived.

When the pain surges and words fail, I turn to what I can do: meditation to quiet the racing mind, focusing on slow breaths and His presence, letting the tension ease even if just a little. Prayer becomes my anchor—simple, honest conversations where I lay it all bare, asking for strength, for rest, for mercy. These practices don’t erase the hurt, but they shift my gaze upward, reminding me I’m not alone in it. They create small spaces of peace amid the chaos, helping me endure one more hour, one more night. A few puffs of the medicine as needed.

I’m weary, yes. Desperate for true relief. But I’m not without hope. God is weaving something through this—even if I can’t yet see the pattern. Until then, I keep reminding myself: He’s been faithful before. He’ll be faithful again. And in the waiting, His grace is enough.

Lately it feels like death is circling closer, and the circle is tightening faster than I expected.

It started with the expected ones: aging parents slipping away, old neighbors we’d wave to as kids, an elderly Lodge Brother after a long illness. Those hit hard, but they felt… almost in order. Part of the natural progression.

But now the pattern has shifted. Increasingly, the losses are people my own age—mid-40s, early 50s—or sometimes younger. An ex-girlfriend gone suddenly from what was supposed to be a routine procedure. A roommate from college who posted about feeling “off” one week and was gone the next from a brain tumor. Another gamer taken down with kidney disease.A friend I used to spend evenings discussing life with, taken by a liver thing that came out of nowhere. Most succumbing to health issues, some to injury, and sadly a few to suicide. One dear friend who just gave up on life and silently let the darkness win. Each one lands heavier, more personal, more bewildering.

I keep turning it over in my head at 3 a.m this morning: Is this the lingering shadow of the pandemic years? The lockdowns that made people delay check-ups, skip screenings, let stress and isolation compound quietly? The way hospitals were overwhelmed, or how “elective” care got pushed aside until it wasn’t elective anymore? Or is it simpler, and sadder—I’ve just reached that age where the people I’ve known my whole life, my peers included, are quietly entering the twilight of theirs? Where mortality stops being abstract and starts showing up in group chats and solemn conversations.

Both explanations feel true at once. Both feel insufficient. The numbers might say one thing statistically, but the lived reality is this steady drumbeat of absence.

Anyone else noticing the same shift? The way the obituaries now include names you recognize from your own timeline, not just your parents’? How are you carrying it?