DEATH

Words by Paulina Flores
Photography by Emma Sywyj

Growing up Catholic in Mexico, I think death has always been a constant fact of life—from watching a Jesus reenactor being nailed to the cross every Good Friday to celebrating the Day of the Dead right around my birthday. 

The idea of death was, for me, irremediably tied to the concept of eternity—a never-ending existence I could not fully grasp and which terrified me. Dying only to “wake” up in another, more sanitised, definitely sterile, plane of existence and to remain unchanged forever. 

I would lie in bed, and I could feel my vision of heaven closing down on me, surrounding me like a glass casket. I remember seeing in my mind’s eye the clouds of the afterlife as through a windowpane, and they pressed upon me until I felt I would asphyxiate. 

So yes, for a long time, I was terrified of death. I grew up, too, imagining mysterious illnesses that would make this fear a reality. But the truth is, I was, for the most part, unscathed by it. I didn’t know death personally until my college years. 

At family gatherings, especially New Year’s at my grandparents’ house, I remember catching sight of my grandmother and being overcome by the fear of losing her. Every time, without fail, I would think “maybe this is the year” and I would be overcome with anticipatory grief (a term I didn’t know until much later). 

Ironically, I don’t quite remember thinking that the year she died. She had been sick, and the sickness was serious, but I didn’t think about it on that last New Year’s. Instead, I pushed the knowledge far away from my mind. 

I always believed that thinking either good or bad things could stall them, scare them away, make destiny or God or whoever was in control do the opposite of what I thought. And so I grew up avoiding thinking about the good things in life—hopes and dreams and so on— so as not to jinx them. 

I did the opposite with the bad things. I had to envision them in all their terrible potential and learn to expect them if I wanted them to leave me alone for a while longer. 

For a long time, I believed, if only I had thought about my grandma’s death that year, I could have outsmarted it—pushed it back yet another year and another one. 

Although I am more accepting of death now, thanks to something called the death positivity movement, I never quite got over that first death I experienced. I learned to accept the deaths of my remaining grandparents and I don’t quite reject the thought of my own death as much as I long to prepare for it. 

But I still can’t fully grasp my grandma’s passing—how someone I loved so much expired without notice, how it escaped me despite my seemingly ever-present wariness of it. The thought, however selfish it might be, that I should have been the one to stay on top of it, batting it away, is something I haven’t been able to shake off completely. 

By then, I had mostly lost my belief in the Catholic faith and all it stood for. I never quite recuperated it, even though I still envision an afterlife where my grandma was welcomed by that in which she herself had believed in her whole life: I imagine her being received in God’s embrace—and not much after that. 

Certainly not a glass casket closing down on her as eternity passed her on.