Attribution: Mike Kalasnik from Unionville, CT, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The empty Del Taco was the perfect place for my family to chow down on our dinner in peace. Desolate, remote, and quiet. Fast food chains, although unhealthy, were like a safe haven for my family. We got something to eat for cheap, and it was a place for quality time with family. 

A middle aged lady entered the Del Taco and approached us. She wore disheveled clothes. Tangled hair. Beat up shoes that had seen better days. She was likely homeless. My parents gave my siblings and I the look. The “Stranger danger. Let the parents handle this. Don’t do or say anything.” type of look.

The lady asked us for some money to buy a meal. She clearly wasn’t in the right headspace. My parents could sense that she was possibly drunk and not thinking straight. Reluctantly, they handed over a dollar to get her something to eat. The lady took the dollar and ordered a small meal. She came right back and asked us yet again for money. Luckily, she walked out of the restaurant after my parents dismissed her request. A witness asked us if the lady was harassing us, and my parents said we were fine.

As we left the establishment, red and white streaks blinded my eyes and siren wails deafened my ears. What could have been the cause of the commotion, I wondered. Curious, my dad drove my family past the scene. On the street, ambulances and first responders were scrambling. I could not discern what specifically had happened, but my dad and brother were able to get a closer look. The first responders had just zipped up the body bag of the lady we had seen alive and well moments before.

Attribution: No machine-readable author provided. Kirtap assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

My great grandmother had passed, but I couldn’t feel anything. As my family browsed the photo album with all of her old pictures, weeping, crying, and mourning, I struggled to produce a single tear. Four or so year old me hadn’t even known what death was. I couldn’t fathom someone just ceasing to exist one day. How was that even possible? As the TV blared the show Arthur, an episode about loss and grief played. It finally struck me. One day, we’re all going to die and stop living. Even me. I vividly remember sobbing for weeks. A neverending existential crisis that still persists to this day. Learning about death for the first time, I was devastated, but I was also intrigued. In bed, I would close my eyes, relax my body, and imagine myself dead, and how that would feel. No matter what I did, there was always some sliver of consciousness within me. It was impossible. From that point on, I’ve always been mystified with what happens after death. Heaven? Hell? Nothingness? To this day, I still don’t know. No one knows for certain. I guess ambiguity is what adds to the beauty of mortality. At first, I found comfort in nihilism. Everything I do from now on is meaningless, and none of this will matter, I thought to myself. However, this mindset caused me to become demotivated from everything, because I felt no purpose, point, or joy in doing the things I love anymore. I felt sad and disillusioned with the life I had been living. With nothing better to do during quarantine, I laid in bed counting every popcorn on my ceiling to pass the time and pondered my future. What was I even doing with my life anymore? I soon came to terms that this mindset was hurting more than helping me, and so I pushed for change in my thinking processes. Now, I feel I’ve come to accept death as arguably the most important aspect of our lives. If we didn’t die, what value would our lives have? Death is what makes our lives so precious. Life is like an adventure, and has so much to offer, and it’s up to us to give it the worth that we want. I now use my mortality as motivation to live my life to the fullest, rather than using it to fuel pessimism and nihilism.