Leaving on a Complete Note

How I Kept My Word to My Younger Self on How I Would Handle Death

I worked for a medical college many years ago. My boss was a doctor and in between taking minutes and organizing his schedule, I would bug him with my medical questions.

Something I remember asking him was why I always felt like everything had been done and I was simply looking for new adventures to pass the time. He listened to my story (which I will explain below in a moment) and he told me that once you realize your time is finite, you never forget.

Life Comes Full Circle

Tattooed on my right arm below my wrist is a wave with a smaller wave in the undercurrent coming towards it. They will crash into each other and life will have come full circle. I got this tattoo in 2015 when my father passed.

When I was five years old, we were on a beach in Tahiti and I watched a huge wave go over his head. He disappeared under the water and I remember a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach that seemed to pull the life force right out of me. He surprised me by swimming back to shore underwater and popping up not far from me on the beach. The minute I saw him that clawing emptiness disappeared. I never forgot it existed, but I never felt it again until 2015.

The tattoo was to remember that no matter how sad I got, no matter how unbearable the pain was, that second wave would someday come and I would see him again. Either that, or the second wave would come and I would feel nothing at all ever again.

Learning that Time is Finite

This is the near-death experience I told you about earlier. I was around eight years old and during a piano lesson, my hands just stopped moving. All of me stopped moving. I was rushed to the hospital and through all of the chaos, it was determined that I had an issue with the left side of my heart. Long story short I was admitted and spent the first night in the ICU.

My dad stayed with me and they gave him a place to sleep not far from where my ICU bed was. I woke up late at night because I heard crying. It wasn’t just any type of crying, it was a wailing that I would recognize anywhere from now until the day I expire.

The woman two beds down from me had just lost her child. There was a sheet and half a room dividing us, but I could see the outline of her sitting by a bed similar to mine. No one told me what happened, but I knew it wasn’t good. Even if you’re too young to comprehend, that wail she let out was unmistakable. Her world was gone and there was no way to fix it.

Learning that at a young age was a lot. Learning that at a young age while hooked up to a heart monitor shed a lot of light really fast. My mom tearing up by my bedside. My dad not wanting to leave me alone at all. There was a possibility what happened to the child two beds down could happen to me and there’s nothing they could do about it.

I hadn’t reached a double-digit age, but I had the understanding that our time here was finite and most of it was chance. I went from the age of 8 to 40 in the span of a single night.

The funny thing was that I naively told myself that my parents were innocent. They couldn’t possibly comprehend this complex, earth-shattering knowledge that I had come across. I would keep it to myself and ensure that they were kept safe from it as well. I was protective of them and I was protective of our time. There was little of it and I was the only one in the house that understood that.

My Father

My father passed two weeks after my parent’s 45th wedding anniversary. At that point I had an idea that it would happen, but I hoped that he would be that one in a million person that would beat metastatic cancer and complete the Iron Man marathon.

When he was given his diagnosis he calmly told me that he wasn’t afraid. He had completed everything he had promised his parents and was able to do a little more than that. His to-do list was a man’s list. Take care of the family, watch out for his siblings. Bring them all to America and make sure everyone had a good head start into the future. Done and dusted on every bullet point and he spoiled his daughter too.

I asked him what my to-do list was. He didn’t have one. There wasn’t a grail quest for me to take or a life path to follow. He told me to take care of my mom and to be happy. Two simple things, but it couldn’t have been a harder list because it involved me having to look internally.

He was at home with my mom and I, and not in any pain. I chatted with him and cracked jokes and my mom sang. He was enveloped in love and there wasn’t any fear in the room. He would go to the great beyond hearing my mom and I laugh and talk as if it was any other day.

That wave washed over me and I knew that the only thing that would take the feeling away would be that undercurrent coming back for me.

My Mother

She and I had seven years together after my dad died. Half of the time was spent learning a new routine without my dad and then there was getting used to the new life that we had created together.

She and I both believed she would bury me. She would even joke about what she would wear at my funeral. The reason it’s a joke is because I plan to donate my body to science and I doubt UCLA Medical or whomever gets me would have allowed her to sit in on wherever I was headed.

She was diagnosed with a heart condition that didn’t have great results. She and I exist on a spiritual plane where our answer to something like this is to order a chicken salad and call it a day. We contributed to the cure and now it was time to move forward.

With her possibly in her last golden years, I decided she and I had to leave for Hollywood and make our writing dreams come true. I pitched it to her that we could either stay in our home town and live a boring suburban life and let it play out like so many other stories. Or, we could pack everything up and hit the open road. She agreed to a new adventure.

In hindsight, I should have known her agreement was because she knew her time table better than I had clocked it. Every time I make a life decision I draft out a five year plan that leads to a ten year plan. She is a vocal person that would tell me the pros and cons she saw. I can have tunnel vision when I’m planning. For our move across state her only input was to say, “sure, lets do it.” My naivete didn’t allow me to see what was ahead.

We had a beautiful year together. Drives around Southern California to the beaches without crowds because of COVID. We tried different restaurants for our meals because there are so many in Los Angeles and we enjoyed the movies. Her last film was “No Time to Die”. I’m just so proud that the last thing she saw on the big screen was Daniel Craig’s amazing body in a well-tailored suit.

Then she said goodbye to me. I played her mom’s song on my phone and held her hand and she sailed on to the next adventure without me.

My Promise

My childhood promise was to never allow my parents to know the pain of death. From the 80s until today I truly thought I was going first. My promise to myself is that at the last moment I would give the performance of a lifetime. I would tell them that I saw their parents, I would tell them I saw a light, I would let them know that they would be safe and we would see each other again. I didn’t believe any of it, but I promised myself I would give them that comfort for when their day approached after mine.

It didn’t play out that way, but most of me believes that I gave them a good death. They were surrounded by love and comfort and there was no pain or fear. Professor Galloway talked about this on his podcast and in his own essay here. That a measure of a person’s life is the people that they have with them when they pass. My parent’s had me and I hope that I was enough. Like Galloway, I too am an unpleasant person, but deep down I mean well.

What I did take away from this life-long experience is that maybe I didn’t start out the story with all of the answers. They lived long, full lives and maybe, just maybe, they knew when their day was coming and understood it better than what I gave them credit for.

That second wave is still out there. I believe I will have it in me to surf it out with the grace and fearlessness my parents had.