The Reaper’s Kiss

A friend of mine recently returned to work after suffering a heart attack. He was there during my cardiac arrests, so he already knew that story pretty fucking well. He'd seen what happens when somebody's heart stops. He'd seen the chaos around it. He'd seen the aftermath. But there's a difference between standing in the room when somebody's heart stops and being the person whose fucking heart stopped. That's something most people simply can't understand.

Anyway, he stopped by my office this morning to chat, and eventually the conversation wandered there. We talked about what happens afterward. About how people go out of their way to care at first, and how that care seems to taper off after about a week. At first everybody checks on you. Everybody wants to know how you're doing. Everybody tells you how scared they were, how happy they are that you're still here, how much they care. Then Tuesday rolls around. Life moves on.

And when you look closely at some of that concern, you start wondering how much of it was actually about you. Sometimes people seem more invested in appearing as though they care than actually caring.

They're attracted to the drama of it.

The emergency. The hospital. The updates. The story they get to tell about how worried they were.

Performative concern.

Then the drama ends, and everybody goes home.

My friend and I joked that we belong to a very exclusive club now: Survivors of the Reaper's Kiss. SORK.

Membership requirements are a fucking bitch.

But underneath the joke was something both of us understood without needing to explain it: Nobody can really be there with you when shit goes that fucking sideways.

They can stand beside the bed. They can hold your hand. They can cry. They can pray. They can scream your name. They can watch doctors work on you. But you walk through Death's door alone.

Doesn't matter who's standing in the fucking room. They're not looking through the same door.

That's not meant to diminish the people who love us. It's not meant to be cruel. It's just a fact: You walk through Death's door alone.

And if you're fortunate enough to walk back out, something changes. You change. Your perspective becomes radically different after surviving death because mortality stops being an abstract fucking concept. Before that, death is something you know. Afterward, death is something you've met.

And that got me thinking about conversations I've had over the years and one particular phrase people absolutely fucking love: “I almost died.”

Jesus Christ, people love almost dying.

I've heard it in stories about car accidents that didn't happen, airplane turbulence, falling off ladders, slipping on stairs, somebody pulling into their lane on the interstate before pulling right back out.

“I almost fucking died.”

I used to cringe a little when I heard it. Now I cringe a lot.

Sometimes I'll even point it out: “No, you almost got hit by a car. You didn't. That's not the same as almost dying.”

I'm sure that makes me delightful at parties.

But once you've actually stared through that fucking door, the hyperbole hits differently.

And I think our obsession with saying “I almost died” reveals something deeper about us: We're too fucking comfortable.

Life is too fucking good.

We're searching for mortal peril in the mundane because actual mortal peril has become foreign to most of us. We trip going into Starbucks and turn it into a survival story. We hit turbulence over Denver and suddenly we're Shackleton crossing Antarctica.

We're too fucking bored.

Too comfortable.

Too fat, dumb, and fucking happy.

We have become so insulated from the fundamental brutality of existence that we have to manufacture brushes with death to make our stories interesting.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: tomorrow isn't promised.

I say this a lot. Live each day like it's your last, because it just might fucking be.

It sounds like something you'd find printed across a sunset on somebody's Facebook page until you've actually experienced the alternative. Then it stops being inspirational. It becomes factual.

Your heart can beat normally one moment and stop the next. The conversation you're having can be the last conversation you ever have. The door you walk through can be the last fucking door you ever walk through. The person you love can hear your voice for the last time without either of you knowing that's what's happening.

There doesn't have to be swelling music or foreshadowing or some profound final fucking statement. Sometimes life just stops.

People who have never experienced that can understand the words. But there's a difference between understanding something intellectually and carrying it around inside your fucking bones.

My friend understands now.

I understand.

We're both members of the same shitty little club: SORK. Survivors of the Reaper's Kiss.

We can joke about it because sometimes that's what you do with things too fucking large to carry any other way. But beneath the joke is something neither of us needs explained: Tomorrow isn't promised. Not metaphorically, philosophically, or as some inspirational fucking slogan. Literally.

And once you've walked through Death's door and somehow found your way back out, you don't need to invent stories about almost dying. You're too fucking busy living.