I’m Afraid of Death

A few months before my 1st birthday, my parents took me on a road trip. When we were driving home on the second day of the trip, I kept screaming. <br><br>My parents had no idea what was wrong with me. They made sure I was properly fed and changed, but nothing they did made me stop crying. Eventually, my parents decided to pull over to a gas station to see if I would calm down when we weren’t in the car. At this point, I was starting to get tired and my crying slowed down. My parents were confused. <br><br>After my parents finished pumping their gas, they received a call from a gas station attendant. He told them that one of their employees witnessed a car crash take place on the road they had been on before they stopped at the gas station. He told them that the car had crashed and caught fire. He explained that all the people in the car had died. <br><br>My parents were shocked and confused. They wouldn’t have been on that road at the time the accident took place. My father hypothesized that the employee saw them pull over and thought that they had been in the accident. It wasn’t until they saw the police car pull up behind them that they realized that I had warned them that they were going to be in a car crash. <br><br>From that day on, my parents knew to listen to me. Once, I told my mom that our dog was sick. She took him to the vet, and he was diagnosed with cancer. I knew things before anyone else did. <br><br>As I got older, I started to realize that something was wrong with me. I could see things that other people couldn’t see, and I could hear things that they couldn’t hear. <br><br>I wasn’t like other kids. I could see the reaper himself. I could see how many threads made up a person’s life. And I could hear when the clock of life struck a person's final hour. <br><br>There was this kid in my class named Austin. He was my best friend in elementary school, and I loved him. Something was wrong with him. He was born with a condition that made it impossible for him to grow up. I could count the threads that made up his life. 10 threads, to be exact. I was 10 years old, and I realized that Austin wasn’t going to make it to adulthood. <br><br>As I got older, I could see that Austin was getting closer and closer to death. I was 13 when he died. I never forgot about him. I wished that I could have saved him, but I knew some things were inevitable. <br><br>I decided to become a doctor so that I could help people who were sick or injured. I knew that I couldn’t change everything, but I could try to make things better for as many people as I could. <br><br>But even as a doctor, death is everywhere. I see him all the time, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. <br><br>One day, I got into a car accident. I was driving to work when a truck crashed into my car. The next thing I knew, I was rushed to a hospital. They did everything they could, but I could hear the clock of life ticking down to zero. <br><br>I could see the threads being cut, one by one. I was watching myself die. <br><br>I realized that life is short. No matter who you are, everyone dies eventually. Some die young. Some die old. But every person dies. <br><br>And I’m scared.