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| "Death Will Find You" Bridge |
Wherever death
finds us, it is sure to do so. I choose
to live my life in the here and now, day by day, sometimes hour by hour, rather
than either trying to hide from death or passively waiting for it. Do I seek death? Absolutely not. Do I fear it? Less and less since childhood,
when I made friends on my sister’s pediatric ward at Duke, these burn victims
and cancer patients dying much sooner than she did some eleven years
later. Death found my sister in her
sleep.
And when I was
ten, death found my grandma on the toilet.
She died of an aneurysm, my closest and favorite grandma, and so I began
to lie awake at night, gripped by terror, trying to combat death, armed with
the illogical misapplication of knowledge that only a child can have. I was convinced from my years in church and
my misreading of the Bible that as long as I was vigilant, the world couldn’t
end because the Bible says that the world will end when no one expects it. I made it my job to expect it.
I recently started
skydiving, kind of on a whim. It was
something I’d always wanted to try, but I don’t know if or when I would have
followed through on this desire on my own initiative. Instead, I started dating a skydiver and
spending time at the dropzone. Of course I couldn’t wait to do my tandem. I felt so calm during the signing of the
death waiver and while watching informational videos on possible
disasters. I felt calm on the
plane. I experienced an intense
sensation of being alive as I plummeted to the ground at 120 mph, but I
experienced no fear. Why? Because I
trusted the people who operate the dropzone, the people who take care of the
equipment, the skydiver I was strapped to, the process I had witnessed
countless times, everyone returning to earth exhilarated, safe. My soul soared in the sky. I discovered my happy place—one that I was
prepared to train to play in, one that helps me escape the thought that death
will find us all, even my daughter.
Just try telling
people that you like to jump out of planes for fun.
A less-typically
voiced, probably more often thought response is the infuriating one I got from
my orthopedic doctor, this time not a surgery-pushing, opiate over-prescribing
quack but rather a conscientious man who says I remind him of his daughter, who
actually prescribed me yoga and meditation and agreed to let me do physical
therapy on my own at home with the aid of youtube, and who always remembers to
ask about my daughter, Nadia, who has cystic fibrosis—although he did use that
fact against me as he said, “Your decision-making isn’t living up to your IQ.”
He proceeded to lecture me on the dangers of skydiving, asking who would take
care of Nadia if I died or the both of us if I were crippled, relating how he,
too, had given up the follies of his youth such as riding a motorcycle or
driving a flashy fast sports car because of the dangers inherent, dangers he
could avoid…
By this point, I
had to try really hard not to put my fingers in my ears and stick my tongue
out, although I was doing these things on the inside as I tuned him out,
determined to show him how smart I was, determined, too, not to let fear stop
me from living.
I read in some
recent issue of Parachutist magazine
that there is irrational fear and rational fear and that a lot of preventable
skydiving deaths occur when the line between these two are blurred, when people
ignore their rational fears. My doctor had begrudgingly given me his medical
clearance to jump, so, begrudgingly I thought, and I realized that I am calm
when it comes to skydiving [mostly] because my fears are [mostly]
irrational—because I have been through ground school not once but twice,
because I have been at the drop zone almost every weekend since August (it is
November now), because my boyfriend skydives, because I’ve absorbed so much
there, because I am smart, because I read, because I ask questions. I am a risk-taker, yes. An adrenaline junkie, even. I’ll give you that. But I am a calculated risk-taker. And although each jump (I’m only seven in because
the weather has been uncooperative) finds me somewhat nervous that I can’t
trust my own abilities at this point, I rehearse and review and visualize and
read and watch until I reach that perfect, focused calmness and jump…
Because I do trust my decision making skills and the equipment and my instinct and my knowledge and the process and my instructors and my faith.
So where will death find me? Living.
