Recently I was talking to a close peer, and they were telling me about how their dad had to be resuscitated after being without a heartbeat for 20 minutes. That happened over a weekend. Two days after, the same thing happened but for five minutes. A few days after that, he was about to get taken off of the devices he was on. I don’t know the entire situation, but the way it was presented to me was that her father was asked if he was ok with this, and if he wasn’t, he should blink twice. He blinked twice. To confirm that response, they also asked him to squeeze his hand into a fist. He pressed his hand into a fist.

For years I’ve repeated that I’m not scared of dying. I’m afraid of getting old and having to have my family care for me. Just like a car, when it hits a certain amount of miles, it starts to act funky, and the check engine light comes on now and then. I don’t want to hang onto myself for that long if I have to go under maintenance continuously. This story has brought a new perspective to me, though. To be fair, it has had me in between two theories. Either being alive is vastly better than being dead regardless of how much maintenance you’ll have, or the worst situation is that the afterworld wasn’t a place that one enjoys even if it’s only for 20 minutes like my peer’s father.

I think about what happens when you get to the other side of the light. I’ve heard mixed stories from people who have talked to their relatives about it. It seems some people have a certain amount of fear when they talk about it, so they’re cautious about it. In my view, there are a few things that could happen. One, you love it, but you’re afraid you won’t make it back if you get brought back to Earth. Two, you hate it, so you don’t want ever to see this again.

Either way, I started to write this out to talk about how I’d like to enjoy the life I have here before I ever reach my death bed. I want to be able to have no issue letting go if that time comes, but I want to have a reason to keep fighting if that opportunity comes up.