"I sat with death": a reflection on life & current events

written by gil rebollar
edited by sarina e. guerra

I’ve been sitting with
Death.

First, it was at my grandma’s bedside.

Again, less than two weeks later, my mother-in-law drew her final breath.
Then, on a phone screen. A young man. Father. Husband. Shot. Murdered in real-time.
Three deaths. Two face-to-face. One through a screen.
All too close.

Each haunts in a different way.

I used to think I was numb to death.
A millennial born at the start of the ’90s internet boom.
Warped forums. Shock sites. Cartel videos.
The early digital underworld accessed on family computers by dial-up. Shared through instant messaging.
Then came the video games.
Fatalities. Headshots. Glorified kills.
Deaths were seen as points and victories, something to get better at.
Desensitized and conditioned to not grieve and mourn, only to refresh and restart.

I’m not
Numb anymore.

That virtual armor exposed.
Incapable of protecting me from the real, invisible pain of the physical world.
Death has suddenly become present and personal.
Something I’ve now seen. Felt. Touched.

I stood by my grandmother’s hospital bed as her breath slowed.
She had lived. Fought. Survived breast cancer, twice.
A woman who had already faced the ugliness of death and chose to smile at the beauty of life.

My mother-in-law’s passing followed like a painful echo.
I held my wife and daughter as they said their final goodbye to their mom, grandma, and best friend.
A woman who accepted me into her home during a time of my own personal recovery and redemption.

Then came that pixelated video shared on my feed. Over and over.
A public display of violence and chaos.
A man I’d never met leaving behind a wife, children, a voice, a future.

Three lives. Three deaths. Three moments.
The first in days. The second in hours. The third in seconds.
A revelation on how delicate and thin the glass is between our Beginning and our End.

Whether slowly or suddenly, intimately or remote, witnessing someone slip away is…

Something that doesn’t
Leave you.

It’s in the blackness of each blink. In the silence of every shadow. Not hiding but lingering.
Waiting to be remembered.
To serve as a reminder of how little control we actually have.

There’s a strange peace with that acceptance though.
The realization of our own mortality.
That we’re more porcelain than stone.

So what do we do?
Salt your words. Light your hours.
Remember to feel. All of it.
The joys. The pain, especially the pain.
To love harder. To be honest. To stay present.

I sat with Death.
It hurt, but I’m grateful for what it taught me…

About Life.

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