I don’t fear death. I think about it sometimes, but I am more curious about it than scared.
Maybe it’s because I saw a lot of it when I was a kid. I grew up in the country and there were just a lot of animals who died.
One day I was riding my bicycle on the road. I was about 8 or 9 years old and a bird almost hit me on the head when it dropped out of the sky. Scared the crap out of me I must say. I looked at it. It was dead.
Then there was the time I had to get a big shovel and scoop my favourite cat out of the horses’ water trough after it had fallen in and drowned. I might have been around 10 when that happened, and I remember it was hard because he was so heavy. My dad was away on business or he would have done it.
Cats, dogs, birds, coyotes, skunks, horses, mice – there was no shortage of things that died. It was just the way it was.
I saw a man die once. We were training race horses and his horse ran into a fence. I ran to help, and as other people got the horse off of him and were calling 911, I knelt down beside him to comfort him as he lay in a twisted heap.
He asked me to move his arm for him, which was trapped under his body. I told him the ambulance was coming and to just hold on, that everything would be okay. Then his lips turned blue and his head rolled back and it wasn’t okay.
I moved him then. I knew he was gone, but did CPR on him anyways. The paramedics finally came and they tried to force him back into the world using all of their skills, but to no avail. He didn’t live there anymore.
Death is just a part of life. So live while you are alive.
Embrace each day and live the hell out of it.