I need to deal with death and its dealings with me. I spent a very happy yesterday at a funeral. There were moments (church choir soulfully expressing) I was moved to tears. There were others I simply wanted the whole thing to be over. But on the whole, I woke up both refreshed and enlightened and my morning cup of coffee is still draped in an unusually morbid shade of black.

I avoid death like the plague, and yet embrace its echoes all throughout my life. Yesterday I could be found emailing my family statements of love, gently caressing my boyfriend’s hand in tender moments, and plotting ways to improve as if it were a new year’s revelatory bash. And then last night I did my usual tally of life’s legacy vs. nervous fear-of-failure and had to woo myself to sleep with whiskey and sad songs.

I want to be alive, and yet I use the specter of death as my fundamental truth.