That Time Death Brushed My Cheek

I cleaned my closets, made a funeral playlist, and waited

For a few weeks in July, I was certain I was going to die.

It wasn’t health anxiety. Not the frantic spiral of checking symptoms, Googling possibilities, convincing myself something was wrong. This was different. Quieter. A sense of knowing settled in, like an extra weight in the room.

The strangest part was the calm. I wasn’t afraid. I felt steadier than I had in years. The peace of it only made me more convinced that death was close.

It wasn’t the first time I’d felt a knowing like this. Premonitions have come to me before, so the idea that I could sense my own death wasn’t unrealistic. It felt familiar. Like a threshold cracking open, the air shifting, the edges of my life pressing closer.

I moved differently in those weeks. Slower. Less anxious. Nights that usually pressed heavily on me eased. I lay down and my body softened into sleep, as if it were rehearsing for something final. I woke with the quiet sense that each day might be the last, and yet I wasn’t undone by it. There was no sadness about leaving. Only peace. I thought often about my mom. If I died, I would see her again. That thought felt like relief.

I looked around my house with new eyes. Closets stuffed with clothes I didn’t wear. Drawers crammed with things I didn’t need. I began clearing them out. Lightening the load. I didn’t want my family to carry the burden of my excess if I was gone.

I built a playlist for my funeral. Songs that carried the truth of me better than a resume or obituary ever could. Fly Away by Tones and I. Stevie Nicks’ Crystal. Fleetwood Mac’s Gypsy. Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic. Pink’s Beam Me Up. Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah. James Taylor’s Fire & Rain. Dani and Lizzy’s Dancing in the Sky. And of course some Tupac for good measure. A soundtrack of mysticism and rebellion, tenderness and defiance. A woman both soft and sharp, grateful and angry, joyful and grieving.

One night, I wrote my own eulogy. Then I recorded it, because I wanted to hear the words in my own voice. I wanted to know how it would sound for those left behind.

I said this:

"I wasn’t perfect. I was stubborn as hell. I cursed too much, overthought everything, and took things too seriously. I needed to be in control, always. I trusted slowly, if at all. I hated being misunderstood, but didn’t always know how to let people in. I wanted to feel safe, but I didn’t always make that easy. I wasn’t the easiest person to love, but I loved hard. And I kept showing up. Even when I was tired. Even when I was scared. I lived a life that tried to tell the truth about pain and still make room for joy. And I hope—fuck, I hope—that somewhere in all my mess, someone felt seen.

The words weren’t polished. They weren’t tidy. They were just… me.

I didn’t tell anyone about those two weeks. Not my sisters. Not even my therapist, until it had already passed. I was traveling and half convinced I wouldn’t make it home. On July 30th, I sat in her office and realized the weight had lifted. Death had stepped back.

Later that day I read about the earthquake in Russia, about the energy shift people said rippled across the globe. Coincidence, maybe. Or maybe not. Energy has a way of pressing against us, stirring something in the body, whether we understand it or not.

What lingered wasn’t the certainty of death. It was the way those days rearranged me.

I couldn’t stop noticing the smallest things. The smell of coffee in the morning. The sunlight stretching across the floor. The sound of my dog, Stevie, exhaling beside me. Everything carried the possibility of lastness.

I ran my hand over Stevie’s back and thought, what if this is the last time she leans into me like this?

I brushed my teeth and thought about how even these small, forgettable rituals vanish when a life is over.

Words unsaid became heavier than any object in a drawer. I kept asking myself what story would remain in my absence. Would it be the one I wanted told?

I thought about my sisters. How they had already survived the worst loss possible when our mother died. Losing me would break them again, but I knew they would find a way through.

Yet, what haunted me most wasn’t them. It was my fur-kids. The way they depend on me to feed them, care for them, and love them. Who would speak to them the way I do? Who would notice the small sounds, the quirks of their bodies, the way they tell you what they need without words?

The thought of leaving them behind pressed harder on me than leaving people. That realization surprised me. It made me wonder about the parts of love we never confess because they don’t fit the picture of what is supposed to matter most.

If you’ve been with me for a while, you know this is the kind of writing I do here. Death, grief, the strange and sacred questions we try to avoid. If you want to keep walking through them with me, subscribe.

Recording my eulogy made me think about legacy. Not the shiny kind. Not the resume. The smaller, truer kind.

Legacy is not what you build. It is what lingers.

The way someone remembers your laugh.

The phrases they catch themselves repeating because they were yours.

The song they play on a long drive because it still feels like you are riding beside them.

I asked myself what part of me I want to linger. Whose stories will carry my name when I can no longer speak it. Whether my life has mattered in the ways I hoped for, or if I have been measuring it against something that was never meant for me.

We inherit silence around death. We are taught to keep it neat. To whisper about it only when there is no other choice.

But death is not neat. Sometimes it is rage. Sometimes it is relief. Sometimes it is silence so thick it swallows the air.

During those few weeks, I noticed how much silence I had swallowed about what death should look like. The neat stories. The insistence on peace. The way we hide grief until it devours us.

I asked myself what conversations I am still avoiding because they scare me. Who I would actually want beside me if I were dying, and who I would release from obligation. What silences are waiting to be broken before it is too late?

For me, death came close and then moved on. But the questions remain.

What would I regret if tomorrow didn’t come?

What story do I want my voice to tell, even when I can no longer speak it?

I don’t know when it will come. None of us do.

But I know how it felt when death leaned close. The calm. The quiet. The clarity.

And I know this much: when it brushes your cheek, it won’t ask if you’re ready.
It will only ask if you’ve been awake.

Love today,
Heather 🌸