Mortality

The first time I thought I was going to die, I was 19. I was in the hospital, and spent an entire night awake, fearing that if I closed my eyes, I would die of an air embolism due to the IV in my arm. Well, it didn't kill me (unless I'm in the world's most boring afterlife), but it did do a lot to remove my fear of dying.

Now I'm in my mid-40s, and while I'm still okay with the fact that I'm eventually going to die, I find myself worrying about just how it's going to come about. The Grim Reaper has been picking off family members in ways that are slow, horrific or both. Of course, I understand that the things that happen to my uncles, great-aunts, et cetera don't really have an impact on me directly, but it all brings home the difference between understanding that one day, I'm going to die, and understanding that there are specific ways of dying, and I'm going to have to go through one of them. And some of them are better then others.