I lived for nearly seven years with the awareness that death was my everyday companion.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've always been somebody who's acutely aware of my mortality.
An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.
I nearly died three times in 2008, and when you go through those experiences, you realize that you're blessed every day that you wake up. My world changed, my life changed, and with the help of my wife Jane, I was able to survive.
I think most of us who live into our 50s have had a few experiences with death. You know, we see people we know start to die. We realize it's getting closer and closer for us.
Death always seems to be around me.
Death is a companion for all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we're aware of it or not, and it's not necessarily a terrible thing.
I believe I encountered death, which was a bit too much for a seven-year-old.
When my parents died, it became clear to me that there was an end in sight. Death was never a real thing to me. And then when that happened I realized I only have so many years left, if I'm lucky.
I've worked very hard to become comfortable with how death works and why it happens. I now know that death isn't out to get me.
No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.