How often do you think about death?

How often do you think about death?

The brute fact of it.

The guarantee that at some future time that’s not that far off you, as an individual, as a force in the world, will cease to exist?

Maybe you hardly ever think of it, and when you do, it’s just a passing notion or fancy. The thought of it appears in your consciousness and then fades away so quickly that afterwards you’re hardly even aware that you had the thought in the first place.

If so, I envy you. At least somewhat. Maybe the sheer terror of what is barreling towards you has never seemed anything other than a distant dream. Sometimes I wish I was like an animal, that had no idea there even was a such of thing as death or that it was certain to strike me down.

Of course mixed with the terror is a sweetness I’m not sure can be achieved any other way.

How often do I think about death? I’m not sure exactly. But it’s often. Probably two dozen times or more a day.

Sometimes it is just as a passing notion. Like holy shit, one day I won’t be here anymore.

Other times it provokes deep contemplation, and never do I think about how much I love those closest to me more than I do while wallowing in the deepest contemplative thralls, considering death and its ultimate implications.

I am not religious nor am I prone to wishful thinking. I do not believe that after I die my soul will float off into some ether and that somehow experience will continue.

Sometimes I do wish I did believe this, but when considering the known facts of the universe, biologically and physically, the history of ourselves as an evolving species, it seems highly unlikely. Which isn’t to say impossible. Someone used to tell me that I would be happier if I believed in an afterlife. Maybe. But you can’t force yourself to believe in something that logic does not bear out. This is called delusion.

I was raised as a baptist and as a child nothing scared me more than the apocalypse. That, perhaps, was my first encounter with the concept of a grand finale. I was terrified that it would occur before I had the chance to grow up and live my life. For years, every night, I would pray, for one thing only. I’d look out my bedroom window up at the moon.

“Please, dear god, don’t let the world end tonight.”

And then in the morning when I’d wake up I was so thrilled that my wish had been granted, that rivers of blood were not rushing through the streets taking the souls of the damned along with it.

In my early twenties I had several years of anxiety and panic attacks when considering death. Sometimes it was because I would smoke too much weed and my imagination would run away with itself. I could actually imagine disappearing, ceasing to exist. I would have to go on long walks outside through the streets of Hollywood because the space inside my tiny studio apartment was too claustrophobic.

One thing I often feared was a car crash.

Once, a college professor of mine told me how he feared much more the sudden, unexpected accident than the slow progress of some terminal disease.

At one point I sold some magic mushrooms to a friend of a girl I was dating at the time. Three weeks later the friend got hit by a car while riding his bike. We went to the wake which took place hours before the Type O Negative show we had tickets for. He was only like 23.

A few years ago I looked up the first girl I had ever dated when I moved to Los Angeles. Her name was Lauren. We did not date long but she left an impression on me and I wondered what had happened to her. What I found was a mortuary notice about her funeral. She was only 33 when she died and I tried to figure out what happened to her but I never could find any details.

The girl I lost my virginity to is also dead. She found me on facebook out of the blue some years ago to tell me that her father had died. We became facebook friends but didn’t talk all that much. Went back to check in on her and she had had an aneurysm.

About three or four years ago I witnessed a motorcycle crash.

I was stopped at a light at an intersection and the moment the light turned green a motorcyclist who was next to me mashed the pedal and went racing across the intersection. A car ran the yellow/red light, hitting the gas to try to beat the signal change, and smashed into the driver at like 50 miles an hour.

At first I was stunned because it happened so fast. I was like, Where’s the motorcyclist? And then I saw him. There he was, high up in the air, ten or fifteen feet off the ground. It was almost like he was floating, arms and legs akimbo. Then he fell. I got out to go check on him but he was dead. I later learned he was a twenty-five year old fashion model from Canada.

That haunted me for a long time.

The place I most often think about death is in the car. Maybe because I’m usually by myself and the time is ripe for contemplation.

I think about how every person I set eyes on will one day no longer exist.

I think of the billions of people who have already lived and died and I think, well, they got through it. Why shouldn’t I?

Sometimes I think how weird it is to live now, rather than any other time in history.

Why am I not already dead, or not yet born?

Everyone has to live sometime, I guess, but more than that, those of us living today are some of the luckiest and most privileged throughout all of human history. There is less disease, hunger, hardship and early death than ever before.

So it’s a little like having won some sort of lottery.

People a hundred or two hundred years ago could scarcely dream of living like we do today. That, too, should be acknowledged.

Most of what we do is an attempt to stave off death, or quicken it, this I’m convinced of.

We have children and create art so that we can live beyond our own lives.

We fuck, because for a brief moment it makes us forget that we will die.

We work out or try to eat healthy so that we might live longer.

Sometimes a sadness washes over me when I look at my children and how they have grown.

One day they, too, will die.

I can hardly fathom them getting much older and not needing me anymore.

When I hug my son I never want to let him go, because I know someday I will no longer be around for him, but I always want him to carry the love I feel for him everywhere he goes for the rest of his life.

Ditto my wife.

There will come a time when one or both of us are dead.

So I try to milk every single moment for all it is worth.

Sometimes this adds to the despair at what is coming because I often wonder if I am actually not appreciating things enough, or if she’s not, or if my children aren’t.

They don’t think about things as I do.

Maybe one day they will.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving.

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Thanks for reading. My debut novel HELP ME I AM IN HELL is out now.