Death is some­thing I think about of­ten. It might be my anx­i­ety dis­or­der, but most days, the thought en­ters my mind, “Am I dy­ing?” I mean, tech­ni­cally, the an­swer is al­ways yes. We’re all dy­ing every day. The pan­demic makes this that much worse. Add to that my no longer be­ing re­li­gious and, there­fore, no longer be­liev­ing what I used to, and you’ve got your­self quite the cock­tail of anx­i­ety.

I’m barely be­gin­ning to ex­plore how other peo­ple view death. It was­n’t some­thing I gave much thought to for most of my life, and I ar­ro­gantly thought that any­one not be­long­ing to my re­li­gion was with­out hope when it came to death. See, I thought I had all the an­swers. That death is tem­po­rary; that it’s like sleep—you’re asleep one mo­ment and then awake again the next.

Religion can be ex­cep­tion­ally com­fort­ing in that way. I did­n’t think about my mor­tal­ity or what the fu­ture en­tailed. Most be­lief sys­tems con­vince you that you never die.

But I don’t be­lieve that any­more. And it’s tough. I feel as if I’ve been robbed of some­thing. The af­ter­life was al­ways rep­re­sen­ta­tive of an ideal life. A life in which I was per­fectly healthy, I had a home with­out a mort­gage on the beach some­where, and I could en­joy my life away from the suf­fo­cat­ing grasp of cap­i­tal­ism.

I don’t mean to be re­duc­tive, but be­liev­ing in an af­ter­life is kind of like be­liev­ing in Santa Claus. It would be fan­tas­tic if it were real, but there’s just no ev­i­dence to prove it fac­tual. And hon­estly, it’s hard for me to ac­cept it. It is the re­al­iza­tion that there is no per­fect life, and that just as so many be­fore me, one day I will cease to ex­ist and my life will be over.

But truth mat­ters to me, and from my re­search, this is the re­al­ity. Living in truth means ac­cept­ing dif­fi­cult things that defy what I thought to be true. And I don’t want to be dog­matic about it ei­ther; I don’t know 100 per­cent what will hap­pen when I die. But com­ing to terms with the fi­nal­ity of life also gives it a beau­ti­ful new pur­pose. It helps me cen­ter and be pre­sent and ap­pre­ci­ate every mo­ment. It helps me re­mem­ber that I need to tell the peo­ple I love that I love them. It helps me be mind­ful of the im­pact I have on oth­ers and how they feel in my pres­ence.

So while this new un­der­stand­ing of death has been dif­fi­cult (and will con­tinue to be), I’m ul­ti­mately grate­ful that I have the chance to ac­cept it and grieve it now. That re­al­ity will in­flu­ence every­thing I do with the rest of this won­der­ful life that I have. And that is a gift.