Gods: we project them first in the boldest of sketches, which sullen Fate keeps crumpling and tossing away. But for all that, the gods are immortal. Surely we may hear out the one who, in the end, will hear us. — Rainer Maria Rilke
I am sitting in my overstuffed chair, gazing across the valley, watching the way autumn paints the hills with amber. I have a warm cup of oolong in my hands. And I am thinking about death.
Death is, in our culture, firmly embraced by a conspiracy of silence. We ignore it, pretend it will not come for us or for anyone we love. It is taboo to speak of — to do so shatters the comfortable illusion of our immortality. I would like to break that taboo.
I live in a town of about 300 people on the Snake River Canyon. It has a wonderful name: Bliss. I have lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boise, and Germany — but I keep returning to this place. There is a love I have for it that I will have for nowhere else on this planet. Bliss is the kind of town where everyone knows your business before you do. Secrets are not possible. My fellow inhabitants find me somewhat unusual — I am, as far as I can tell, the only gay Buddhist vegetarian who practices yoga and meditation within at least a hundred miles. Regardless, this is home. The people here are some of the kindest souls I have known, living simple lives of ranching and farming. You have almost certainly eaten one of their potatoes.
Death has been visiting Bliss lately.
Hunter was twenty-three. Handsome, gentle. He was struck and killed on the freeway after his car broke down and he stepped out onto the road. His mother Natalie has been a cashier at my family’s store for eight years. She is a friend.
Bailee was seventeen. He had a strikingly beautiful smile and loved to ride his dirt bike. His mother graduated the year above me. She comes in for Mountain Dew almost every day.
Rachel was forty-three — a mother, a rancher. She had a heart attack in her sleep and aspirated from complications of bronchitis. She ate at our restaurant nearly every day. Chicken wraps and sirloin steaks. Two of her daughters have waitressed for us.
Death did not knock. It did not ask permission. It never does.
And in its wake, something clarified. Not despair — though grief was present — but something closer to the opposite of despair. A sharpened awareness of what is actually here. Of the preciousness of the time we have, and the people we share it with. Death, encountered honestly rather than avoided, has a way of doing this. It strips the inessential away and leaves what matters standing.
This is the gift — not the sadness, but the waking up. The recognition that we, the living, are here to inhabit our lives fully. To create, to love, to be genuinely present with the people who bring us joy. To remember that it is the simple things that turn out to matter: time, light, friendship, curiosity, the warmth of a cup of tea in the hands while autumn does its work outside the window.
Let the certainty of death not depress you. Let it empower you. Let it remind you that you are holding, right now, the most extraordinary gift the universe offers.
Dance. Create. Dream. Remember.
This is the invitation death extends to the living — not dread, but waking.