The Best Way To Die

This morning I thought of my dad and how he died. It’s only been 13 months since he passed, I don’t think it’s terribly unusual to still think of him daily. Maybe it is-it’s happening regardless. Though he may have been the perpetrator of my most heinous abuses and the origin of so much trauma, he was still my dad, and the only parent that never abandoned me. While my mother could never replicate the physical violence he produced - she, I felt, DID abandon me. She betrayed me and violated the sacred trust I placed in her and only her as my mother so many times…I don’t know who was worse or did more damage. I don’t have the faculties to be the arbiter of that.

The way my dad died was his worst nightmare. He died in the way that he feared the most and took the most action to protect himself from. He was such a germaphobe. When my siblings and I were sick as children, we were not allowed near my father. He did not care for us. He did not comfort us. The contact with us was not worth the risk of exposure. As soon as we entered his home, for our entire lives, we were told to go wash our hands. It was a habit I never quit, and when my 3rd-born child was a preemie, at risk of infection and death, it only took deeper root in my semi-autonomous actions. As soon as I enter any indoor space, I need to wash my hands. If my hands feel unclean, I am ACUTELY AWARE. I avoid touching my face or anything that might go in my mouth unless I’ve washed my hands immediately beforehand REFLEXIVELY. I don’t have to think about it, the awareness is there whether I want to think about it or not, and it is constant. I think that hyper-awareness is a big part of the reason I haven’t been infected with covid yet, but we’ll probably never know how and why I was able to avoid it for as long as I have. I never got it but my dad died of covid. He died infected, sick and alone. He avoided germs in any way that he could and he still got it, infected by my unvaccinated sister because I had cut him off. I know he would’ve been with me if he had to live with anyone but that wasn’t an option and it may have cost him his life. Is there even the smallest measure of satisfaction in that knowledge for me????? Pft, yes. I’ve forgiven him, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever forget what he did. He suffered the consequences of his own actions, and in my opinion, if that had happened more often in his life, he may never have found himself in the position he was in. He was stupid, but there are lessons even the most intelligent among us must spend considerable time on to learn.

“What is my worst nightmare?” I wondered as I traveled along this thought-train. “What is the worst way I can imagine to die?” There are so many terrible ways. My biggest fear is driving off of a high bridge into deep water so maybe that’s it? I think being deliberately tortured and purposely kept in excruciating pain and on the brink of death would also be equally awful though? I don’t know? I don’t know. I DO know the best way to die, though. I do. I’ve thought about it and I know it.

It’s the end of the world. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’s too late and there’s nothing any one person could have done. I’m with my best friends and we have accepted it’s the end and we just talk shit and make wildly inappropriate and morbid jokes and laugh hysterically and love on each other until the very end and when we go, we all go together. That’s the best way I could ever go out - laughing with the loves of my life.

I don’t get to decide how I go out any more than my dad did, but knowing how I WANT to go stops me from making choices that would allow me to go out any other way and that’s something.