meeting your death

Dear Diary,

3 weeks ago I was reclined in a dentist’s chair with a numb mouth and tubes sending the sweet scent of nitrous oxide down my nostrils. I was as high as I have ever been. I was meeting my mind in profound ways. Have you ever been on nitrous? I encourage you to make up an excuse for getting it the next time you go to the dentist. Once you get past the slightly awkward sensation that you might be leaving your body you can settle in for the trip of your life.

I was deeply attuned to the music playing vaguely and mutedly in the far distance. It sounded like a rave party on horse tranquilizers. It came and went as my brain would remember to hear things. The dentist and his assistant tried to hold a conversation, something about someone’s birthday. The assistant did her level best to sound interested as the dentist droned on, the way that women do, the way that men do. I had major insights into the way the Patriarchy works but they have since left my brain. It’s hard to hold on to anything when you’re on nitrous. Ideally you would experience nitrous with a voice recorder and no dental work.

In the middle of the procedure, which I later found out took TWO HOURS (felt like 30 minutes, again, thank god for nitrous), I had a thought that I am unable to shake, remarkable given the fact that I promptly forgot two hours of pretty profound thoughts that I was fighting hard to keep. It was this:

Oh.

This is how you will die.

Not on a dentist chair (although, maybe, who am I to say?). Your teeth will kill you. Maybe not this time around, but eventually. When your teeth have finally reached a critical point and you are going in for more and more work, when you’re on the 3rd replacement of this fucking molar (they only last 10 years on average); there will be a point when you look at your life and you say, “thank you, that was lovely, my face hurts too much now.” And you will take your own life.

My grandmother just died 2 months shy of her 102 birthday and my other grandmother died at 97. Both of my parents are remarkably well and active in their 70s. There is very little cancer in my family. Some vascular issues. But I expect to have a long life. And were it not for this nerve I probably would, if I manage to stay out of harm’s way. But I don’t think I’ll see the end of my natural life. Today, that’s how I feel today. I know, maybe tomorrow brings a cure. Maybe. I hope so.

I find myself hoping that Zane doesn’t have children so that it will be easier when the day comes. I look into the future and see myself as maybe 70, but not much beyond that. I used to plan my 90s, trying to be realistic about Matthew’s chance of staying on with me, but now I imagine I will leave him a widower. What that would do to him. Feeling like you have met the reaper and you know when he’s coming when you don’t have a terminal illness and certainly not one that is going to do its business anytime soon creates a cognitive dissonance that is intellectually interesting to engage with. I kind of like it. We all know that we are going to die but very few of us can walk around knowing what it will look like.

If this has made you sad, I’m sorry. It makes me kind of happy, kind of warm. If Matthew’s play Life Plan has taught us anything it is that living without knowing when or how you will die is a bit of an anxiety game. I am all for anything that can reduce anxiety and knowing my teeth will most likely kill me is oddly doing that.

Love you, mean it.

xoS