Scared of dying
I remember the first time I got scared of dying. I've had chronic sleep troubles since I was little. I was 5, and after my fourth visit to her room, my frazzled mother would say, "Samuel, just lie down and close your eyes. You're not sleeping in here tonight." I'd made a habit of the warm spot between her and Dad.
I'd lay there under my NFL bedsheets and force myself to close my eyes. My mind could only hold one thought for so long: "Keep my eyes closed, my eyes closed, keep my eyes closed." And then my mind drifted to George Washington. We'd heard the story about him and the cherry tree that day ('I cannot tell a lie').
"He was a real person. Where is he now? He's dead." I could see George lying in the ground keeping his eyes closed. "Some day, I'll die too. Just like George." The bottom bunk in my NFL bedsheets felt like cold, wet concrete walls deep beneath the earth. I didn't want to die. I made my fifth visit to Mom's room and slept there.
The closest I've come to dying was, to my knowledge, in 2019. It was rainy, I was driving on I-81 and I was late. A truck was in the right line, gushing rainwater onto my windshield. I pressed the gas to get around him and felt all four wheels lose traction, I went into a spin, lost control of the car. I was going 80.
"Don't cut the wheel; you'll flip," I thought. And then“I’m about to die.”
I slid into the median and the grass caught the tires, so I kept the wheel straight and hammered the brakes. The car stopped. I didn’t go over 50 the rest of the way to Knoxville and still hate driving on the interstate in the rain.
Later that night, I texted my girlfriend of a few weeks, and she said, "That was when I realized I really cared about you." Shockingly, we didn't last.
Today, I read an article about how more young people are being diagnosed with cancer than ever before, and they don't know why, especially colorectal cancer. I was at the GI doctor last week because of my IBS, and he wants to do a colonoscopy even though I'm 32. Now I know why.
We're all hypochondriacs. If you're the person who could read an article like that and not frantically Google until you feel better, congratulations. You're the only one. The rest of us fall on a spectrum from needing an article or two for sanity to reading so much that it drives the fears deep into our minds to the point where they become part of our core identity.
The strangest thing is there's a peace I don't usually have when I go to the dark place of my own mortality.
Yeah, if something happens, I worry about my family. But it's the pain of having to lose someone I wish I could spare them, not worrying about their survival — my family and my friends are here. I think about the goodness of the Lord.
I'm not going to start a non-profit or book a trip to Iceland out of some "one life to live" crisis. I find that stuff lacking.
I don't think life's brevity gives it meaning.
The 90-minute time limit of a soccer match doesn't make it meaningful. It's knowing who the teams are, and where each team is in the standings: the meaning comes from the larger story.
And I think the larger story of my life is a redemption story. Knowing that makes dying feel different. It makes living feel different too:
I feel what a gift today is to lie on the floor and watch my daughter throw her little strawberry toys as she giggles and whispers, "Dadada." I feel the gift of calling my friend Spencer to overshare my health anxieties and talk about stories we want to tell. I feel the gift of being invited to choose the good portion every morning in my garage when I procrastinate my Bible reading plan, enjoy the quiet, and let every thought, vapid or not, turn into a prayer that finds its way to thanksgiving.
But it's late, so I think I'll lie down, close my eyes, and see if I can fall asleep.
Today’s work of art came from a Dutch master named Nicolaes Maes. He was a student of Rembrandt’s and became an extremely popular portrait painter later in his life. His work Abraham Dismissing Hagar and Ishmael comes from the same time as the sketch above.