Collective World

The Coronavirus Is Making Me Obsessed With My Own Death

I know this is something very strange for a 23-year-old to think about, but I often think about it—and with this coronavirus outbreak, I can't help but think about it even more. 

By

Sharon McCutcheon

I’m obsessed with last impressions, so I guess it makes sense why I’m curious about my death. I know this is something very strange for a 23-year-old to think about, but I often think about it—and with this coronavirus outbreak, I can’t help but think about it even more.

How will I go? Tragically? Suddenly? Painfully? When will I go? Today? Tomorrow? Next year? Who will attend my funeral? People I barely know? People I’ve hurt? Friends? Family?

Will I have impacted enough people by the time I leave? And if I have, how will they remember me? Because I want them to remember me as the silly, joyful ball-of-mush that I can be, and not as the serious, sad, confused person that I most often am.

I hope I will have mended all my fences, because I don’t wanna leave without apologizing to the people I’ve hurt. I don’t wanna leave without giving them a chance to say their peace. A part of me even wants to reach out right now as I write this, but the rational part of me knows that some things might just be better left unsaid.

I want the way I lived my life to inspire people to love bravely and freely and fearlessly. I want that to be the mark I leave on the world. Because although I hide my pain and my secrets, I pride myself in how real I can be. Real with my thoughts, real with my feelings, and real with how I treat people.

But no matter how real I will have been, no one will ever have a full picture of who I was. Some will know about the battles I faced; some will know about the strength it took to face them; some will share the music I loved; some will listen to the music I wrote; some will have read the blogs I published; some will have read the blogs I kept secret; some will know about the people who inspired me; some will have become the people who inspired me; some will know about the adventures I’ve been on; some will know about the adventures I wished I could go on; some will know about the pain I have lived with; some will know about the pain that I have overcome.

All I can hope for is that at my funeral, all these people come together to create a mosaic with the different pieces of my personality that I’ve left scattered in their hearts.