Is everyone dying around me, or am I just dying inside? The answer is yes, of course; we are all dying bit by bit, within and without. I ask, “May I Talk About Dying?” because the conversation has always felt either forbidden and sacred, or, if you understand me, whimsical.

My Childhood “Trauma”: Growing up with Looming Death

All parents traumatize their children. It’s not a question of if,  but how. Most kids’ trauma comes from assertions their parents made over and over – “never have sex before marriage, you’ll get pregnant,” – “never smoke weed, you’ll become addicted to harder drugs,” – “never drink alcohol, you won’t have a life outside of it,” – you know, the classic stuff.

Daughter of a Lawyer

My trauma has manifested itself as a single word: LIABILITY. My mom is one lawyer of five in the family, and the rest of them are equally skilled at making an argument. Law degree or not, I come from a family that is very aware of what it means to be held responsible, accountable, liable, and the consequences that come with it.

Between my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, conversations always seemed to be about blame. Political candidates were liable for the economic downfall of some industry or other. Musicians were liable for the effect their lyrics had on the socio-cultural characteristics of a demographic. Imagine watching Brazilian novellas, and instead of giggling or gasping at the drama, everyone just bickered over who was considered most liable for the root cause of each problem.

Whether or not friends could sleepover was determined by the liability of the child, contingent on whether they were reckless or had dietary restrictions or the parents were driving them. I wasn’t allowed to go to overnight camps because my mom didn’t feel that their forms were sufficiently liable for the consequences of occurrences that could have potentially happened to me. When brought to birthday parties, she’d either stay out of distrust for the parent in question or at least have a conversation with the parent to ensure they understood her expectation of their liability for my attendance.

My mom would say to me, “I could die tomorrow, and then what? Who’s going to be liable for taking care of you and your brother?” I’d look around for someone, anyone, so that I didn’t have to be liable for taking care of my brother. I’d think, I can look after myself, I guess, but I can’t make enough money for the both of us. I was twelve.

Having an Old Dad

My father is as old as my mother’s parents. Crazy, I know. Go ahead and get over it. The point isn’t about my parents’ relationship but rather that I knew death was coming, and always more quickly for the three of them than for my mom. She’d say, “You need to call and visit your grandparents, you’ll never know when it’ll be the last time.” And I’d think, Well, if that’s the case for grandma and grandpa, then what’s to say it isn’t the same for dad?

Having an old dad has its perks, but aside from that, I simply love my dad. And I laugh when he says he’s chosen one hundred and twenty-six to be his coming-of-age reckoning(?), but I confess; there’s always been a knot in my stomach waiting for a phone call telling me the worst.

Growing & Aging

Everyone’s always told me I’m mature for my age. I think the reality is that I’m just an extremely sensitive person with a naturally fantastic preservation of my self-presentation, all of which is calculated by an analytical mind and fueled by blazing rage. (In order, I just listed my Pisces Sun, Capricorn Ascendant, Aquarius Mercury and Sagittarius Moon.) But anyway, they say I’m mature for my age.

Mature or not, there can never be enough wisdom gained in a meager twenty-five years (or fifty-five years? or seventy-five years? or any amount of years?) to commit myself to any philosophy.

In other words, I do not have my shit figured out.

However, I feel an intuitive comprehension of the passing of time that I suspect perhaps not everyone can relate to. Or, at least, not as consistently. That isn’t to say that I live life “in the moment” more successfully than others or even make the most use of each day. Rather, I am discovering the balance between filling every second with new and unique experiences and absorbing the average experiences with as much reflective pleasure as possible, and the process of that discovery often begins quite late for many people.

Learning that Life is Precious

Leading up to my three-week trip with Pete in the backcountry, four things occurred:

1. My dad and stepmom returned from their cruise sick, resulting in the cancelation of our visit to see them
2. My boss’s wife had a (very unprecedented) stroke
3. My stepdad’s father passed after an extended goodbye of Alzheimer’s and Dementia
4. My boyfriend’s father exhibited signs of miniature strokes

I was so jarred by fears of loss I called my eldest half-brother in case my dad was to pass soon. I wanted to be in contact with as many siblings and family members as possible. I had this (semi-, I guess) irrational fear that something was going to happen while I backpacked Colorado and Utah these three weeks.

Big Highs & Lows

Instead, it seemed every time I’d come back into service after days of being off-grid, news from my mother was that my grandmother wasn’t doing so well. Each time, I’d hang up the call and teary-eyed explain to Pete, “My grandmother was in the hospital.” “My grandmother fell again.” “My grandfather fainted from the stress.” “My grandmother’s brain is deteriorating.”

When you’re in the wild for days at a time, pushing your body to its limits, heaving lung-fulls of air on a mountain pass a day, squinting at the blurry trail three thousand feet above and ahead of you, you know you are truly alive.

From the exhilarating thrill of my own beating heartbeat to the cold terror of what may come next for my grandparents, I went for three weeks wondering what day will be the last I have with each of the other soulful, breathing bodies that make my friends and family members.

I returned from my three weeks already dissociating from those extreme highs and lows, trying to get back into routine, and with my other half still in the wild. That’s when his father ended up in the hospital. The prospect of death for people I love continued to haunt me.

Audacious Feelings

Suicidal thoughts have haunted me since my teenhood. I don’t mean that I romanticize death into some mysterious, sexy lover that will embrace me like a cool river, naked and covered in rose petals like some John Green novel (no offense John, love your work).

No, I mean that Death leaves me encouraging scribbles on sticky notes in corners of every room. Death asks me how my day was as it pours me a cup of chamomile. Death shows me my baby photo albums and asks me when I’ll raise my own kids.

Death doesn’t want to swoon and kiss me; it wants me to strive and thrive and grow. It wants me heavy with love and happiness, saturated with life when I eventually take its hand.

Death wants this for me, and it tells me so. And every time I am weary, it waits impatiently for my next adventure. Every moment of rest for rest’s sake, it fumes in the dark corners of my room, demanding and tiresome.

“How dare you,” it says to me, emerging in the light. Its comically cliche black cloak billows into smoke at its feet as it hovers. “How dare you envy me.”

“How dare I?” I respond mockingly, smirking sideways at it as I continue folding my laundry and pretend to ignore it. “How about you quit following me around?”