Death

Yeah that’s right. The dreaded D word. I feel like over the past two years we’ve practically been over exposed to death. Covid has completely changed how we interact with it. Everyday we check the number of people who have died from Covid. We’ve become obsessed with hospitalisations and deaths. Has it cheapened death? I don’t know, but over the Christmas holidays, we (actually me, Chump was my unwitting victim, bahahah) went on a Timothee Chalamet binge. We watched The King, Little Women and Don’t look up. I loved them all. Chump only realized after the fact that Timothee was in all of them. And before you tell me, I’ve already seen Lady Bird. Anyway, there was something in The King that just changed my life completely. I won’t spoil the movie for you, because you should go watch it immediately, but something that Timothee Chalamet’s character said just opened my eyes. “We are born to die”. I mean we know this right? We intellectually know we are all going to die. But do we actually really know we are going to die? It’s an inevitability. And yet it’s so far from my mind. I’m lucky. I’ve never really had to face death in my personal life. My grandparents have all passed away and it was sad, but I haven’t lost any loved ones close to me. Thank god. But one day it will happen. And I still can’t accept it. I still haven’t understood that one day we all die. I know we all die. But it’s almost like I don’t believe it. I don’t think I’m going to cheat death, but it just seems like such a remote thing right now. Of course what we don’t know is when death will hit us. We think we are all entitled to old age, but something may come for us sooner at any time. The practical reality of finally understanding this is that I can now have very logical conversations with my parents about estate planning. Before whenever they would talk to me about it, I would beg them to stop, put my fingers in my ears and just pray for them to stop talking about dying. I’ve even started talking to Chump about our estate planning needs. I know it’s all morbid and awful, but it’s a sad necessity. I’ve never really feared my own death, because I figure I won’t be around to deal with the consequences, but I do fear the death of my loved ones. I fear the grief. I fear the fear itself. The fear of being on my own. I fear all the admin involved with death. I don’t want my kids to have the fear of my death. And I don’t want them to have fears about what they will do if I die. So I think about my estate and my will. And it all comes circling back. We were born to die. Every minute we walk towards our death. So the way I see it, we can either face it and accept it and be as prepared as we possibly can be. Or we can avoid it and deny it. And then leave everyone that we love screwed. It’s tough. I will admit I’m not entirely there yet. I hate admin with a passion and getting all my shit together is no mean feat. I mean when you’re as disorganized as me, it’s a proper pain in the backside. I’m also trying to keep my wardrobes free of clutter and I look at some of my accumulations and think : will the kids just throw this out when I die? if the answer is yes and I don’t need that thing anymore, then I just get rid of it. I don’t want to burden my kids with clearing out all my clutter. And to be clear, I’m not dying. I don’t think. So don’t be freaked out. All this is a roundabout way of saying I’m trying to keep my house clean and tidy and sort out all my paperwork.