On the Long Road

Michel de Montaigne, a French philosopher from the Renaissance, said,

“To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”

I chose Michel’s words and the picture because death has been weighing heavy on my mind. Pampas grass grew outside the townhouse I lived in with my mother right up until she passed away. There are moments when I feel her presence near, when I think communicating with her would be as simple as picking up the phone.

I remember her daily.

I hear her voice in my head, not as a symptom, but a painful sense of missing someone I love who is no longer here. A professor I write to every once in a while told me that it is a strangeness to lose the person who brought us into this world.

Strange is right, hollow too.

At root, what I’d like to tell her is about my day. At heart, I want to hear about hers. The afterlife of loss is profound. There are instances when my soul lurches and pivots and does cartwheels.

I think about what Michel is saying, how he emphasizes the importance of accepting one’s mortality. It isn’t strictly acceptance, but a relinquishing of the fear that can help us avoid becoming subservient.

I know that I feel subservient to my own fear of death. The unknown is terrifying with its unseen variables. However, I have noticed that my fear of death is in proportion to the excitement I feel learning how to engage with the world again.

Everyday, I grow more confident, a skill that I have been trying to manifest since I was a kid.