Her words shook me. She’d hit the nail on the head. It’s true, we do go through life in a sort of foolish haze until one day we see mortality all too clearly. We no longer have the subtle, irrational voice that says “Naw, that can’t happen to me.” However we project that voice, whether it be guardian angels or simply an unanalyzed idea of being somehow special, too special to die, we go about our days totally in denial of death. Even if we think we understand it, I don’t think we do until it happens. At least I didn’t.

I am no anomaly. “We cannot rationally deny that we will die, but we think of it more as something that happens to other people,” said Dr. Yai Dor-Ziderman about a study that will be published this November. In the study, he documented how we humans shield ourselves from our own mortality.

The denial is made that much easier in a Western society which hides it’s elderly and sick behind the walls of institutions where we don’t have to face their mortality with them. But sooner or later, death comes to us all, and some of us have to go on living after dying.

It’s a new, radically different life one lives after death. Anxiety, my lifelong companion, came to me in new forms after my father’s death. I’d get in the car in the morning, and realize this may be the last time I ever got in a car. An idiot driver swerves in front of me, and it’s not just irritation at their obliviousness, but a visceral anger at their disregard for my life. Goodbyes feel final, as do hellos. Hugs become all encompassing for the brief seconds they last. You listen much more carefully to your loved ones. You try to bridge conflict faster.

Then, over the months then years, you begin to think of death as something in the past, a grief you’ve come to live alongside. You build up your walls of denial again, perhaps not as foolishly as before, but still they return. They fall differently the next time you face mortality.

In July, when my brother was diagnosed with an aggressive, stage IV cancer, it felt somehow both surreal and expected. Parents die without goodbyes. Twenty-seven year olds get sick. These things happen every day. I and everyone I know and love are no exception. You are no exception.

I took many months off from Permahuman, at first focusing on building my tiny house until I hit that wall of fear. I needed to focus on centering myself, accepting the long, and terrible road ahead for my brother. I can’t tell his story, I hope he’ll read this and feel inspired to tell it himself.

In that time off, I strengthened a belief I’ve long held: Some things you just can’t force. Mortality, creativity… these things are what they are. When you sit down to write because of some imaginary obligation, like some business’ gurus advice, but all you do is stare at a blank screen trying not to think about how brutal and violent and unfair existence is, how can you expect yourself to do anything? And honestly, in those moments, you don’t really give a shit about your blog anyway.

Kevin’s father had a quote that I’ve tried to live by these last few months, “Fifteen minutes at a time.”

Life is not a series of plans and executions, not a game with either winners or losers, not a curriculum vitae or a challenge to attain greatness. Life is our entire beings, who we are at our cores, all our dreams and attachments, our truest loves, meeting entropy head-on. No one comes out of this alive.

All we can do is live fifteen minutes at a time. My tiny house if far from done. Permahuman has been neglected. My best laid plans… well, they’re not important. What’s important is right here an now, Living.

November 7, 2019

by Torey