On Death

When I was little, my grandmother would not let us say the word "death." She thought it was unlucky. At the time, I did not really know what death was. I only knew it was a word that should not be spoken lightly—as if, so long as we did not say it, it would not come near us, and once we did, we might invite something bad. So my earliest understanding of death was not the end of a life, but a taboo. It was vague, distant, and frightening.

The first time I saw death up close was probably when I was in elementary school. My great-grandfather passed away. We called him "old grandfather" in our local dialect; in ordinary terms, he was my great-grandfather. I still remember the crystal coffin in the mourning hall. He lay inside, completely still. Everyone in the family was grieving. Some people wanted me to cry, but I could not cry at all. Looking back, I do not think that means I was heartless. I was simply too young to have a real understanding of death, and my grasp of the feelings between people was not yet as complicated as it would become. A child can know that "this person is dead" without truly understanding what it means that "from now on, I will never see this person again." At that moment, I was only seeing, for the first time, a person change from someone alive into a body that would never move again. Death had happened, but I had not yet truly understood loss.

Death Became Concrete

Later, death was no longer only something already finished inside a crystal coffin. When I was in my second year of university, I woke up one morning and saw that my mother had called me at two or three in the morning. My phone had been on silent, so I had missed it. When I called her back that morning, she was furious. She told me I was never again allowed to keep my phone on silent at night. Only later did I learn that my uncle had suffered something like cardiac arrest that night. Fortunately, my aunt happened to be sleeping beside him. She was also a nurse. After noticing something wrong, she performed CPR on him continuously. By the time the ambulance arrived, the situation was already very grave. From what I heard later, the medical staff were not optimistic about continuing resuscitation. It was my aunt's insistence that kept them going. He spent a long time in the ICU afterward, and fortunately he was saved in the end.

That was one of the times death came very close in my memory. When my great-grandfather died as a child, I had stood much closer to the body, yet I never truly felt how near death was. Years later, a missed call in the early morning suddenly made me realize that the distance between life and death is sometimes not as wide as we imagine. A person can be fine the day before; the next moment, their heart may stop. If my aunt had not been there that night, if she had not noticed in time, if she had not known CPR, if she had not insisted on resuscitation, if any step had been delayed even a little, the story I know might have ended differently. That was when death began to become concrete for me. It was no longer only something the elderly would face sooner or later. It could happen on an utterly ordinary night.

After that, such things seemed to happen more and more often. I have an older uncle from my grandparents' generation. For a long time he lived alone at the factory where he worked as a gatekeeper for us. His wife had cancer. They loved each other deeply. Last year, she passed away. I cannot say I was especially close to this aunt, but she was someone I knew. What truly upset me was how my uncle looked after she died. In my memory, he had always been a fairly strong and optimistic person, but after his wife fell ill, he seemed suddenly crushed. After she left, he remained depressed for a long time. During holidays, I sometimes visit him. He lives there alone, and life goes on as before—eating, sleeping, watching the gate. Nothing in life seems to have changed, yet something is clearly missing. What used to be a life for two has become a life for one. I slowly came to realize that perhaps the heaviest part of death is never only the moment of dying itself. Death also leaves things behind. It takes a person away and leaves an absence for those who remain. The dead depart; the living go on. Perhaps, in many cases, it is the latter who truly bear death.

What I Fear Is Not Death

My grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer several years ago. Over these years, I have watched a person's body grow weaker in a very real way—less energy, more difficulty moving, a spirit worn down by long illness. That, in turn, made me begin to fear something else. To be honest, I do not fear aging itself. What I fear is the loss of autonomy in the process of aging. Gradually being unable to walk. A body that no longer obeys one's will. Things that were once effortless now requiring help from others. Even the most basic parts of life may begin to feel undignified. Death is sometimes blunt; decline can be long.

When I was little, I always thought my grandmother would forever be the kind of person who feared death. But in recent years, her attitude has changed greatly. She used not to let us say "death." Now she actively talks about what should be done after she and my grandfather die: how to handle the funeral, how to divide belongings, which family and financial matters are best settled in advance. A person's attitude toward death really can change. When younger, people may resist death by refusing to speak of it. When truly old, they may instead begin to arrange for it. Since we cannot decide when it will come, we can at least settle what comes after in advance. That is probably a kind of acceptance too.

And now I am not especially afraid of my own death. Of course, I mean only my own death. Perhaps this is also related to an experience I once had. Once I was admitted to the hospital because of bloody stool. That time I went alone, without family beside me. Later, while using the bathroom, I suddenly lost consciousness. Strictly speaking, I cannot call it true "near-death." I do not know how dangerous the situation actually was, nor can I be sure what caused that experience. Perhaps it was related to blood loss and fainting, or perhaps it was only a long and strange experience produced by the brain when consciousness is lost. But one thing I remember clearly to this day: I seemed to see what people call a "life review."

Memories from the past that had really happened and mattered to me returned one after another. They were not a few images flashing quickly. At least in my perception, time became very long. I seemed to walk back into the past and could slowly relive those memories again. During that time there was no fear and no pressure. Quite the opposite—I felt a comfort that is hard to describe. My heart was warm. I could even say that at that moment I was happy. Then I suddenly woke. Because it was a squat toilet, when I fainted I leaned against the side, my face near the door frame, and my glasses had already fallen somewhere I could not find. Reality rushed back all at once. Looking back, I cannot say how long I was unconscious. Perhaps only ten or twenty minutes, perhaps not as long as it felt subjectively. Yet in that span of lost consciousness, I seemed to cross a much longer stretch of time.

That experience later changed my imagination of death somewhat. Of course, I would not therefore claim that after death there must be another world, nor explain that fainting as some supernatural evidence. I do not know. As for whether consciousness remains after death, humanity still seems to have no answer that could convince me completely. But at least that once, I left normal consciousness for a brief moment, and what I experienced was not fear. So sometimes I think perhaps death is not as grim as the living imagine. Even if consciousness can continue in some way we do not understand, death might only be another beginning. Of course, this is only my imagination. But that experience has made me less afraid of my own death.

If one day someone in my family were suddenly taken in an accident, I would probably still need a long time to absorb it. One's own death and another person's death are completely different. If consciousness truly disperses after death, then what sadness remains for the dead themselves? Nothing. A person will not know they are dead, nor know what they have lost. For the dead, all is empty. And even if after death there is something we cannot understand, that seems to belong to the dead person's own journey. But those who remain are different. They must remember, mourn, and face the empty spaces left behind. So sometimes I feel that death may be merciful toward the dead themselves. What is cruel is how unfair it is to those who remain alive. The dead have left; those who loved them must continue living. So I am not especially afraid of my own death. What truly worries me is the people I love leaving first, while I must go on living in a world with less of them in it.

Family relationships become somewhat contradictory here. They are a kind of protection, and also a kind of bond. If I consider only myself, I sometimes feel that how long I live does not matter so much. Some people want a few more years; I sometimes feel that a few fewer years would not matter either. What keeps me from fully thinking this way are my parents, my family. Because one's life has never belonged only to oneself—at least while one remains within various relationships, it is hard to think otherwise.

Planning a Funeral for Myself

In middle school, we had psychology class. If I remember correctly, it met about once every two weeks. Once, the psychology teacher gave us a strange assignment: plan a funeral for yourself. She did not mean for us to actually hold one. She asked us to imagine: if you died today, what music would you choose for your funeral, and how would you arrange the ceremony? Then she had each of us write down five things most precious and hardest to let go of in life. Some wrote parents. Some wrote games. Some wrote pets. Some wrote friends. Some wrote favorite books. Then the teacher told us to remove two. Five could become only three. That was already hard. But then she said: what if you could keep only one of the three?

I remember someone in class really did cry—a boy. Usually he seemed strong and easygoing, not the kind of person you would think especially sensitive. But when a person is truly asked to keep only one of the things they cannot bear to lose, they may still cry. To this day, I feel such a choice is impossible. Feelings between people were never things that could be ranked by size. How do you compare parents and friends? How do you compare a pet and a passion? How do you compare a memory and a specific person? We love to ask, "What matters most to you?" as if everything in life could be arranged into a ranked list. But when a person is truly asked to delete, they discover that some things are not on the same ruler at all.

Still, that class was the first time I realized death has a strange power. While alive, we are always making choices—school, work, income, lifestyle, even how others see us. Often, what we call "my choice" is in fact mixed with our parents' opinions, the pressure of reality, social status, and the gaze of those around us. But the condition "suppose you are already dead" suddenly removes many of those things. You no longer need to worry about income. You no longer need to maintain a so-called future. You no longer need to care what others think of you. You only need to answer: if everything were truly about to end, what would you be unable to let go of? And that question is astonishingly difficult.

Also in middle school, I once very much wanted to travel around the world. It was a boarding school. Every day I walked roughly the same paths, saw roughly the same scenery, and lived in the same place for a long time. Life felt boring then, monotonous, so I kept thinking that one day I had to go out and see the world. Once I talked about this wish with my mother. She asked why I had to travel around the world. The answer I gave then still seems a little strange to me now. I said that if one day I died and my consciousness had not dispersed, then at least I would have enough memories to savor slowly. I could walk through those places again inside my own consciousness and relive everything I had experienced in this life once more.

Later, that episode of losing consciousness in the hospital strangely echoed this childhood imagination in some way. I had thought it was only a child's fantasy about the world after death. But many years later, in a moment I was completely unprepared for, I had indeed, after losing consciousness, relived some memories from the past. The two things certainly prove nothing. But whenever I think of it, I still find it a little uncanny. At that time, I probably thought the proof that a person had not lived in vain was having enough rich experience—having been to many places, having seen many things, leaving behind a large pile of life fragments to remember.

But later that wish slowly disappeared. After university, I discovered that I am actually a very lazy person—or rather, I was not as passionate about distant places as I had imagined as a child. I do not like traveling. I do not like commuting. I do not like going out every day. Going out feels exhausting to me. Crowded people, unfamiliar environments, constant interaction—all of it wears me down. It is not that I cannot talk to strangers. If I really need to, I can speak with people naturally. I simply have no desire to approach them on my own. I like staying home—bed, chair, computer—doing things that can be done while sitting.

If the me of middle school could see my life now, he would probably be disappointed. The person who wanted to travel the world ended up becoming someone who finds going out troublesome. But now I feel instead: this is me, that is all. If I like this life, why must it be worse than traveling the world? When we talk about death, it is easy to feel another kind of anxiety. Life happens only once, so we must see more of the world, experience more, make our lives splendid enough—as if not doing so means wasting life. But what if a person simply does not like those things? Must we force ourselves to live another way simply because we will die? Death reminds us that time is limited, but it should not become another whip. To cherish life does not necessarily mean filling it to the brim.

In the End, We Have Nothing

In recent years, I have heard more and more about death, online and in real life. For example, someone said a "top courier" in some city had died. A top courier is someone among delivery riders who completes an extraordinary number of orders in a day. One more order means a little more money, so they keep grabbing and delivering orders, pushing their labor to the limit. It is said that person died while waiting for an order, sitting in a chair. My first reaction was that it was not worth it. A person worked so hard to earn money, trading today's body for tomorrow's income, yet tomorrow never came and the person was gone first. Of course, I also understand that many people work that hard not out of greed. Life itself may force them to earn more. That makes it even sadder. A person works hard to make the future a little better, yet never reaches that future.

Recently I also heard that in my hometown, at a dental clinic, a middle-aged man died two days after having a tooth pulled. I do not know exactly what happened. Such matters involve complex medical causation, and of course we cannot simply say the tooth extraction caused his death. But after hearing news like this, I still feel uneasy. Because once death appears often enough in life, it begins to invade things that were once ordinary. Accidents happen while sleeping. Accidents happen at work. Accidents happen while seeing a doctor. We tend to think death should appear in hospitals, ICUs, late-stage cancer, or very distant old age. But it has no fixed place.

Life is too fragile. Sometimes I even feel that life is, in a sense, a kind of curse. It gives you a beginning, yet never gives you any guarantee about the end. You may stop abruptly tomorrow, or you may live a long time—but living long does not mean living well. No one knows how long they will live. Strangely, the whole of society still runs on a nearly firm assumption of the future. We study for later. We work for later. We save for later. We maintain our bodies for later. We accumulate experience for later too. We are willing to trade today for tomorrow because we assume we still have tomorrow.

At the same time, we are constantly asked to strive, to struggle, to create value, to bear responsibility, to become a "useful person." We often speak of free will, but how much can truly be freely chosen? If you do not want to work, can you really not work? In theory, yes. But you need to eat, to have housing, to see a doctor, and you may also have a family to support. For society to keep running, people must keep laboring, producing, and consuming. This has nothing to do with any particular ideology. Society is a vast organism. Everyone is wrapped in layer upon layer of structure. We think we are choosing, yet often we are only choosing among options the era has already prepared.

But when you return to a specific person, this becomes somewhat sad. Society can exist for a long time. A person's life lasts only a few decades. They give most of their time to work, to rules, to responsibility, to the life others consider correct. One day they grow old, fall ill, or die suddenly. From society's point of view, a position opens and someone else soon fills it. But for that person themselves, that was already everything.

So what meaning does death itself have? I think perhaps it has none at all. If there is a creator, death may simply be one of this world's laws. No living thing can avoid death. Even a stone changes shape over billions of years of weathering. Eternal as the sun is, it too will one day go out. Humans are even less able to resist time. Death does not become gentler because we assign it meaning. It simply happens.

Tonight, I thought of all this again. My grandfather showed symptoms of a cerebral thrombosis today. My parents went out late at night, first to my grandmother's to pick up my grandfather, then took him to the hospital. Later the doctor said he needed to be hospitalized. My mother called and asked me to help my father pack a few things: a ventilator, a box of medicine, a charger, a charging cable. Not many things. I packed them and waited alone in the garage for my mother to return. After a while, the car came back. I handed the bags to my mother. Tonight my father will stay at the hospital with my grandfather. Then they left again, and I went back inside.

Nights like this always make me worry. I do not know what will happen at the hospital, nor what message I will receive when I wake tomorrow morning. Of course, I am not saying I think my grandfather will come to harm because of this. It is only that over these years, I have found it harder and harder to treat illness, aging, and death as distant things. Sometimes they do not arrive in any dramatic way—only a phone call in the deep of night, a few hastily packed items, a ventilator, a box of medicine, a charger, a charging cable. Then a father goes to the hospital to keep watch, a mother drives away, and I stand in the garage, watching them go.

When I was little, my grandmother would not let me say "death." Later, I once stood in my great-grandfather's mourning hall and did not know why I should cry. Later still, I once lost consciousness in a hospital bathroom and, in a span of time I could not measure, walked through some memories of the past again. Now I can write so many words about death. But at the end, I still do not know what death is. I only know it is not so far from everyday life.

I suddenly feel that life is probably like this. We talk about meaning, about death, about freedom, about how a person should spend a finite life. And in the end, we have nothing.