“I'd never given much thought to how I would die.”

    “I’d never given much thought to how I would die.”

    Actually, yes I do. Every single day. I think about death a lot, but only because I am constantly surrounded by it. 

    I have been a little morbid all of my life. I enjoy the spooky, the bizarre, the gross. I don’t mind the blood and guts or the taboo and hidden. My job is using technology to look inside human bodies all day, and I would be lying if I said the anomalies and breaks didn’t excite me. I think that explains a lot about me. 

    Death has never really scared me. I think I was exposed to a lot of death as a child, with animals, neighbors, friends, family. I feel like I went to more funerals before the age of 10 than I have been to the rest of my life. 

    Death is natural, although I will say a little intimidating, but it has never been scary.

    But now I feel differently. 

    With everything that has come with Ethan being sick, I didn’t expect to experience death in the way that we now see it everyday. 

    During his first initial hospitalization, after they finally realized that he was in critical condition, I received a phone call from my father in law, telling me that they were taking Ethan into surgery and he might not come out. This was the first time in my life that I was being faced with death on such a personal level. (When I was little and Jones drowned, I think I was too young to fully understand what was going on.) It took a few years to fully digest exactly what this meant because my body went into shock. Every once in awhile my mental barrier would break down and I would feel the flood of emotions that was building up in my brain, trying to work through what it would be like to lose Ethan, but I would quickly shut it back down so I could keep giving him care. In hindsight, I don’t know if this was helpful or not. On one hand I think it was, as it enabled me to help Ethan as well as continue to work. On the other hand, it was unfortunate that I didn’t have time to grieve and take care of myself during that time. Either way, I’m glad I made it to the other side and that I now have more time to work through the hard emotions. 

    It has honestly taken until recently for me to fully comprehend how close Ethan was to dying, and how often he was to dying. Even after he was discharged from the hospital we had some close calls. (Maybe one day I’ll write them all down and talk about it, but right now everything just feels so raw.) Working through these close calls has opened my eyes to all of the other deaths we have experienced the last 2 1/2 years.

    After I graduated I was going to take the summer off to focus on working full time and saving. Then I was going to go back to school that fall and finish the degree that I wanted. That plan died.

    Ethan and I were going to enjoy a summer off where neither of us was going to school. We had a few trips planned. They never got to happen.

    Ethan was only a few semesters away from finishing his bachelors degree. He was planning on finishing and then applying to grad school. We would have moved to anywhere that took us. We were excited and nervous for the changes. But they never came. 

    With my full time job, we were finally going to be able to start saving money to put a deposit down on a house. Now our savings account pays for our out of pocket max, and we live with my parents.

    We thought that by this point in our marriage, we would be able to welcome children into our lives. Now we don’t know when that will happen, if it even still can. It’s devastating to suffer this loss.

    Although I recognize that we have experienced innumerable blessings during Ethan’s illness, I know that it’s good to finally recognize and accept these losses. We have watched the passing of millions of different versions of ourselves in the last 2 1/2 years. It’s frustrating. The life we have now is not one I would have ever chosen for ourselves. 

    We are growing more and more accustomed to the death of ourselves with every decision we make, but it still stings. I have a sliver of hope that one day we will be able to see these versions die and move on more quickly, but right now I know that it’s important to take things slowly and allow myself to feel every emotion as it enters my body. 

    Right now I’m sad. I’m in mourning over the life I thought I would live. And I think that’s what I need to be doing right now. Death is scary right now, but maybe one day, the sting won’t be quite so severe.