Yesterday, I was having a conversation with someone about the bank account I opened in my name for my dad to use. He couldn’t create one in his own name because of errors in his birth certificate and identity details, so this was the easiest solution. It was meant to be a simple, practical discussion about money and logistics but somewhere in the middle of it, my mind wandered to a place I hadn’t planned to visit.
I thought about the inevitability of death and I realized that when my dad eventually dies, that account and whatever is left in it comes back to me. The thought sent chills through me. Not because of the money, but because of what it implied. An ending. A future without him, a world where his voice and presence no longer exists.
And the strange thing is, my dad isn’t thinking about any of that. Maybe he is but he doesn’t show it all. All I know is that he is living. Like truly living. He laughs easily and still makes plans. Existing in joy without constantly measuring time or counting how fast the years are running. He is aging, yes, but not shrinking or retreating into fear. He is simply here, choosing life every day and very unbothered by the shadow we all pretend not to see.
I don’t want my dad to die and I know that sounds childish, selfish even, because death is the one appointment no one can cancel. But loving someone does that to you, it makes the truth unbearable. It makes you wish time would slow down, just a little. That years would walk instead of sprint. That people you love could stay untouched by decay.
That conversation made me realize too that we often live too far ahead of ourselves. We prepare for endings while forgetting to inhabit the middle. We plan inheritances, legacies, and what-ifs, while the people we love are still here, still breathing, laughing, asking for tea or telling stories we’ve heard a hundred times but will miss a thousand times more.
My dad is teaching me something without even trying. He is showing me that the important thing is not how to die well, but how to live until you die. To live without constantly rehearsing loss, to find joy in everything and just age without surrendering wonder.
Living, I’m learning, is an act of courage. It is loving people knowing you will lose them. It is building memories even though they will one day ache. It is you choosing their presence over panic and gratitude over fear.
One day, death will come. That is unavoidable. But today, my dad is alive and so am I. And perhaps the truest way to honor that reality is not to fear the end so much that we forget the now but to live so fully that, when the end does arrive, it finds us having truly been here. Because I think the important thing, really, is how we live, until we die.