Memento mori

The other day I noticed some swelling on my forehead. A little lump had formed to the right side of my head and I couldn’t come up with any reason for it. I started thinking about the headache I had had for a few days and some equilibrium imbalance I had experienced every now and then. My stomach turned over and I felt a wave of cold sweat as the pieces started coming together in my head.

I mentioned it immediately to my partner and came clear on how worried I was as I listed the symptoms I had had before noticing the lump. I was prepared for google to give me a death sentence. He laughed lovingly and reminded me that of course it wasn’t anything and that I was making things up. I laughed too first, but then realized something and looked him in the eye as I said:

Imagine, if this is the moment that we look back to as the first sign we got of my illness? When we’re at the hospital, after months of treatment, I’ve lost my hair and I’m laying pale in the hospital clothes and we think about this exact moment and how we should have reacted? How immortal we felt, how naïve we were?

As the tears started forming in to my eyes, I could see his eyes glimmer too. We looked at each other for a long time, as if we were living through the moment of finding out I was dying. 

Our circumstances change all the time as we move from place to another every 1-6 months. We’re very used to the fact that nothing lasts forever and things that we’ve planned for a long time don’t end up happening at all. This seems to bring death closer to us. If we’re not paying attention to the present moment, it’s really easy to fall into a limbo as there’s always something new and cool in the near future. 

It has affected the way we talk about our future. Because everything is so uncertain, we tend to say “if” instead of “when” – even when we have set a clear plan for the future. For example, we really want to move to Japan this autumn but instead of saying “when we move to Japan…” we tend to say “if we get to go to Japan…”. 

And the thing is, everything is always unsure, no one ever knows what’s waiting behind the corner. As a stable, full-time working, home-owning-adult there’s just this illusion of control and stability and life altering events come as unpleasant surprises that seem unfair. It’s never a good time to hear bad news but someone has to be the one who died too young. And there’s a chance it’s me – or you.

So, take this moment to Memento Mori – remind yourself that you must die. And before you do, you’ll keep receiving one moment at a time, a present, that might turn out to be the last one. 

xx