i didn't become a funeral director because i was brave
i became one because i wasn't.
because death sat too close to me, pulled up a chair uninvited, rested its chin in its hand like it had all the time in the world. i didn't know how to look away
because every silence felt loaded
every hospital hallway sounded like a held breath
every goodbye felt unfinished
like a sentence someone dropped halfway through
if i stood closer to it
if i stepped into the room instead of hovering in the doorway
if i learned the weight of it in my hands
maybe it would stop looming
maybe it would stop feeling like something that could take me out at the knees at any moment
no warning
no explanation
just absence
i thought proximity would make me immune
it didn't
it just made it honest
the first time i touched death like it was real
not an idea, not a fear, not something whispered about in past tense. but real. still
present in its own absence
i realized something quiet and irreversible
it wasn't here to chase
it wasn't hunting
it wasn't waiting around corners
it just was
and that was somehow worse
and also… better
because fear needs movement, anticipation, imagination.
and death
doesn't need any of that
it doesn't rush
it doesn't argue
it doesn't explain itself
it just arrives
and then it stays
in the spaces people marked
in the way a room feels different after, the way voices get softer. like they're afraid to disturb something that can't be disturbed anymore
i stayed because of that
because somewhere between the first body and the hundredth, the fear stopped screaming
it didn't disappear, it just changed shape
it became quieter, heavier, something i could carry instead of something that carried me
i learned how to sit with it, not fix it, not outrun it
not romanticize it
just sit
in that stillness
there's something most people don't talk about
not peace
not really
but clarity
just… final
and there's something about finality that strips everything else down
no pretending
no excess
no performance
just truth
laid out plain
i didn't become less afraid
i became less avoidant
and that's a different kind of courage
one nobody really celebrates
the kind where you keep showing up
even when it still unsettles you
even when it still lingers in your chest a little too long
even when it follows you home in ways you don't talk about
because now i know
fear doesn't go away
it evolves
and if you're willing to stand close enough, and stay long enough
it stops being something that controls you
and becomes something you understand
and understanding it
is the closest thing to peace i've found
